D (7:26)

That you yourself created?

C (7:27)

And I responded, nay, sir, I shall not live in this way. And so I did not. So in my opinion, the Revolutions Podcast really begins with episode 3.1. When people ask me where they should start revolutions, I tell them, start at season three. That's when it gets good. That's when I get good.

D (7:50)

I say that aside from a few.

C (7:51)

Stray references, mostly you don't need to know anything from the first two seasons to understand what's happening in the French Revolution. The world building begins there. The voice and groove and style of the Revolution's podcast are established in season three. And so I uncorked 55 episodes on the French Revolution and never looked back. But now that it is time to look back, it's clear that if the Revolutions Podcast really starts with episode 3.1, that it's ultimately about the long 19th century and the great revolutions that defined its trajectory. The Revolution's podcast is set between the twin pillars of 1789 and 1917. And if that's what it ultimately became, I am more than okay with that. I think it's cool as hell, honestly. I love it now. By the time the French Revolution series is rolling, the one year deadline to make the podcast work came and went.

D (8:46)

It worked.

C (8:47)

So I got to keep podcasting full time. I did not have to go get a real job. Then, In March of 2015, right around the 250th episode, I got an email from a literary agent named Rachel Vogel. Ever thought about writing a book? She asks. Oh boy, have I ever. I reply.

D (9:06)

So she said, well, what do you got?

C (9:08)

And I sent her a bunch of ideas. Most of them were about the French Revolution, because that's what I was in the middle of. But attached to one of the emails was an idea. I had to go back to Rome and cover this one particular period of late Republican history. And she said, well, that. That's the one. Let's do it. So we spent the spring and summer putting together a book proposal for what.

D (9:29)

Would become the Storm before the storm.

C (9:33)

So that brings us to the greatest day of my life, which I believe will remain the greatest day of my life for as long as I live. I mean, honestly, it's impossible to beat. On September 28, 2015, two things happened. First, my daughter was born. I've got two kids, and that's all the kids I'm ever going to have. So already here, we're talking about a.

D (9:55)

Day of miraculous joy that is only.

C (9:57)

Even matched by one other day. But then, about six hours after she was born, I got a call from Rachel saying, public affairs would like to buy your book now. This is pure insanity. I've wanted to write a book since.

D (10:11)

I was a kid, so this call.

C (10:13)

Represents maximum lifelong wish fulfillment. And it is taking place just hours after the birth of one of my two children. So the idea that this day can be topped just beggars belief. When else am I going to arrive at a day that tops the combo of A, the birth of one of my two children and B, the sale of my first book, plus a third thing of equal measure, to make it the greatest day of my life? This is not going to happen. It's like somebody topping Johnny Vandermeer's record of two consecutive no hitters by throwing a third consecutive no hitter. This is not going to happen. It's an odd thing to know that you've already lived the greatest day of your life. But man, what a day that was. Now, after she was born, I took eight weeks paternity leave and then dropped the first episode of the Haitian Revolution in December of 2015. I've said this many times in many places, but Haiti was a story that transformed me. It transformed my worldview. When it comes especially to my understanding of European and Atlantic history, my life has strong before the Haitian Revolution and after the Haitian Revolution vibes. Very early I was reading about the big whites of Saint Domingue, these large estate owners and major merchants of the colony, and I was like, oh, I see, John Hancock and George Washington are big whites, aren't they? Oh, yes, they are. But writing about events in Haiti which were so intimately connected to events in both Europe and the Americas, is when I truly recognized the vast interconnectivity of all these revolutionary events. These revolutions I was writing about were not discrete national events, but instead one big event with several different theaters. Writing about Haiti is when I finally saw the one big revolution sloshing back and forth across the Atlantic in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I am all on board with the great Atlantic Revolution. The Haitian Revolution is also the work I'm most proud of. White Europeans wrote the Haitian Revolution out of our history practically the moment after it happened. People just didn't talk about it, they didn't teach it. By the 20th century, it wasn't even an active act of omission, but simply one generation of scholars passing down this massive blind spot they had been told wasn't really important or worth talking about down to the next generation of scholars. But by the mid to late 20th century, this blind spot was being revealed.

D (12:42)

And historians of Haiti and the Caribbean.

C (12:45)

Have been pushing the Haitian Revolution back to where it belongs in our shared historical consciousness as practically the only revolution worthy of the name. This process is still very much unfolding, but I can report that way. More people talk about the Haitian Revolution now than when I was making these episodes back in 2015 and 2016.

D (13:06)

Now, I am not here to take credit for that. Other people are far more responsible for.

C (13:10)

This than I am. But to whatever small degree I have contributed to raising a bit of awareness about the Haitian Revolution, well, I count that amongst my proudest achievements. Now, by the time the last episode of the Haitian Revolution aired, we have entered the year of our Lord 2016.

D (13:28)

With all that comes with it.

C (13:30)

In addition to writing the podcast, I.

D (13:32)

Was hard at work on this book.

C (13:33)

About the disintegration of a centuries old republic and was not thrilled by current events. There was this running joke on Twitter where the latest piece of insane political news would break and people would write to me and say, mike, you gotta write that book faster, man. And I would say, I'm writing the book as fast as I can. I meant for the storm before the storm to be vaguely prescient. That's the vibe I was going for. I was not happy at all that the book stood in danger of being overtaken by events. But In December of 2016, I turned in the manuscript and held my breath, hoping it wouldn't be totally obsolete by the time it finally hit the shelves.

D (14:12)

Now, throughout 2016, I was also doing Spanish American Independence, which finally ended with Simone Bolivar dying in February of 2017. The end of that season marks the end of what I've come to think of as Part one of the Revolutions podcast. Part one covers the first five series, with the English Revolution serving as a little prequel, thematically foreshadowing what's to come. But the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and Spanish American Independence. These are all constituent parts of what's been dubbed the Age of Revolution or the Great Democratic Revolution or the atlantic revolution. This 50 year period of political upheaval after the end of the Seven Years War, driven by new ideas and new technologies and new classes of people that redefine the nature of political power, legitimacy and sovereignty. This great democratic revolution is tied directly to the political question that we've been talking about for all this time, where a combination of ancient and modern political virtues churned up in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were given real political force. Liberal institutions like constitutions and bills of rights and participatory political assemblies. We have great ideals like liberty and equality. This is when Republicans challenge kings, popular sovereignty challenges divine right. Subjects become citizens, colonies become independent states. This period is also linked to liberalism and the rise of capitalism. The transformation of social systems and economic systems to produce bourgeois democracies. The rule of parliamentary systems controlled by the capital owning class. All of it produced the institutions and values necessary to build the modern world, to build a world better and freer than the world that came before us. But if that's all that was ever needed, then there wouldn't have been anything left to say. But there was a lot left to say, because we know it's not that easy or clear cut. And while this revolutionary period from the 1760s to the 1820s produced good answers to the political question, it also paved the way for a society left with an even bigger question, the social question. And so part one gives way to part Two, when revolutionary energy passes from liberals to socialists, the two groups were ultimately born of the same parents, liberty and equality. It's just that liberals came to believe that with the political question answered, liberty and equality had been achieved. But socialists looked around and say, how can liberty inequality exist in a world of such torturously destructive inequality? It's a good question to ask. So part two mostly gets going with the revolutions of 1848, which are simultaneously liberal political revolutions against archaic medieval empires, but also the first time we see organized socialists and anarchists challenging the nature of capitalism and the social order. The 19th century was born of a massive, cataclysmic, all encompassing war, which gave way to a life of iron and steel and coal. The rest of the long 19th century is battles over land and mines and factories and railroads and docks. It's no longer just about taxes and parliaments. It's about the meaning of human dignity in societies rapidly transformed by the industrial revolution. People have often asked me how revolutions has changed my own beliefs. And one thing I'll definitely say is that everything I've covered since 1848 has helped me emerge from a narrow minded and parochial liberalism that was focused exclusively on the political question. I figured as long as there was a strong constitutional order, a bill of rights, the rule of law, independent courts, and citizen participation in the crafting of legislation, that that was freedom. We now have a free society, and after that you just kind of let things run their course. And don't get me wrong, I always thought there needed to be rules and regulations and like environmental protections. But beyond that, success or failure, rising or falling, this came down to the hard work and talents and efforts of each of us as individuals. But as I said, I now see this as narrow minded parochial liberalism. And when I look at history and I look at current events, I just don't feel like that's enough anymore. I care deeply about these revolutionary concepts of liberty and equality. That hasn't changed at all. That's been the same throughout. But I now recognize that political rights are only the skeleton, necessary but not sufficient for a healthy body politic. We need some meat on those bones. And I think that by 1848 I was coming to not just understand that, but believe it. Series six on the Revolution of 1830 sits on the dividing line between part one and part two of the podcast. It's very clearly a liberal political revolution, but it also serves as a prelude to the Revolutions of 1848 and everything that comes after. But mostly what The Revolution of 1830 means to me is that it's when.

C (19:19)

The Lafayette book snapped into place.

D (19:22)

Lafayette had been all over the American Revolution and the French Revolution and had become a living symbol of the great democratic revolution. But when I got into 1830, I was shocked how big of a part Lafayette played. And then as I was doing those bonus episodes on the Carbonari of the early 1820s and then the June Rebellion of 1832, I found his name popping up over and over again. So I felt like I needed to do something to mark his death. In 1834, I started working up a standalone retrospective of Lafayette's life and career. Right at the same time, I needed to think about what I'd like to do for a second book, just in case the Storm before the Storm did well. The outline for that episode eventually turned into the book proposal for Hero of Two Worlds. In October 2017, the storm before the.

C (20:11)

Storm came out and y'all went ahead.

D (20:13)

And put it on the bestseller list.

C (20:15)

For me, for which I am eternally grateful.

D (20:18)

But the thing I remember most about this period is going out on the road for the bookstore tour and like, finally meeting my fans for the first time. I'd been podcasting for more than a decade at that point, but never really met my listeners.

C (20:34)

I just worked and published things online.

D (20:36)

I didn't meet people that actually listened to the show other than the tours. I never encountered fans of the show in real life. And I very specifically remember going into the Harvard bookstore on Pub day not.

C (20:48)

Knowing if anybody was going to show.

D (20:50)

Up, and then being absolutely blown away.

C (20:52)

By how many people were there. Now this might sound like a humble.

D (20:55)

Brag and fair cop to that, but for the record, I do want to make it clear that I am just insecure enough that I didn't really know if I was going to be walking.

C (21:03)

Into an empty room. I really didn't know. And what I learned on that tour.

D (21:08)

And which has been confirmed to me on all subsequent tours, is that you people out there are the nicest, friendliest, smartest, funniest, and most considerate fanbase in the world. Truly you are. And that's not just me saying that. Wherever I go, I talk to the managers or workers after the event. And no matter where I go, they always report just how lovely everybody was. Which I happen to agree with.

C (21:32)

You guys make me look so good.

D (21:36)

Now, after the success of Storm before the Storm, we took the Lafayette pitch to the publisher.

C (21:41)

I spent a bunch of time working on this pitch.

D (21:43)

It was very detailed as I earnestly made the case that Lafayette deserved a.

C (21:47)

Biography covering his whole life. They loved the idea and said yes immediately. And I realize in retrospect that I.

D (21:54)

Probably could have just said I wanted.

C (21:55)

To write a book about the French guy from the Hamilton musical and that.

D (21:59)

Would have been enough, because I'm pretty sure that's what sealed the deal now. Before revolutions, I never really cared about French history or French culture or French anything. I was always far more of an Anglophile. I never studied the French language, as is obvious from my adventurous pronunciations in the French Revolution series. But as I wrote the podcast, things changed. I started getting really into French history.

C (22:27)

Like really into it.

D (22:29)

So much so that among other things, the Revolution's podcast is also Mike's general history of modern France. By the time the Lafayette book was getting approved, I was working on the series that covered the Second Empire and the Third Republic and the Paris Commune and had left no French Revolution unturned. With this new mindset and with an eye towards writing a book about Lafayette, I had been aggressively studying the French language for about a year and was.

C (22:55)

Getting pretty good at it. Then after the Lafayette proposal sold Mrs.

D (22:59)

Revolutions and I started talking about how I'd need to go to France to do some research over a series of conversations, this turned very quickly from let's spend a summer in Paris to Let's sell everything and move to Paris, thus completing my heel turn to full blown Francophile, to which I can only say, allez les bleus. We moved to Paris in July 2018, and after a few months getting settled, I launched the series on the Mexican Revolution.

C (23:29)

As I noted at the time, it.

D (23:30)

Was very weird to move to Paris and then immediately start writing about events in Mexico.

C (23:35)

But I did find a bunch of.

D (23:36)

Really cool books on the Mexican Revolution at Centre Pompidou.

C (23:40)

So I spent months in the heart.

D (23:41)

Of Paris writing about Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, thanks to the course I had taken at Texas State all those years ago. It was probably the revolution I knew the most about going into the show, along with, of course, the American and Russian revolutions. Now a big unanswered question is when did I decide Russia would be the last series I had, after all, started out aiming to do 20th century revolutions like Cuba and Iran, but by the time I got to Russia, I was.

C (24:11)

Saying, this is it, I'm done, I'm stopping here.

D (24:15)

So when did I make this decision? Why did I make this decision? And the honest answer is I don't know and I don't really remember. My best guess is that by the Time we got to France and I was working on the Mexican Revolution, I.

C (24:28)

Could tell that the hours were getting shorter.

D (24:31)

And at some point in there, I decided that when I got to Russia, I would just pour everything I had into it to make it the best it could possibly be, to have it.

C (24:40)

Last as long as it needed to.

D (24:42)

Last, but that when it was over, whenever it was over, that would mean the show was over.

C (24:48)

And so that's what I did.

D (24:50)

And that is how it came to pass that the series on the Russian Revolution lasted three calendar years. Episode 10.1 came out in May 2019, and then I spent the rest of the year simultaneously working on the podcast and Hero of Two Worlds. Except a problem developed. The weekly deadline of the podcast naturally took precedence over the much longer deadline for the book. Whatever podcast episode I happened to be working on was due right now, this week. While the manuscript wasn't due to be handed in until late 2020. This meant that when push came to shove, the book is always what got pushed and shoved. So by the end of 2019, I was like, Rut Ro. I am failing to do two things at once here. So I decided to carry the story of the Russian Revolution through the end of 1905 and then take six months off to finish the book. And as you might remember, this is almost precisely when Covid broke in February and March of 2020. So just as I commenced this hiatus, we entered a long lockdown period, 23 hour a day lockdowns in Paris, which is when I wrote the first third of Hero of Two Worlds. There was nothing else to do. Now, as you also may remember, things became quite a bit more complicated for me. In September 2020, just as I was meant to be finishing the book manuscript and returning to the podcast, my right kidney revolted. It produced stones so large they could not be passed, and I needed surgery. Also, the manuscript wasn't done yet. The French had also lifted the lockdown over the summer and then entered second lockdown in the fall. So I was bouncing in and out of French clinics and hospitals and pharmacies, getting Covid tests and blood tests, and then twice being on an operating table. It was all quite grueling, to be honest. It was not until December 2020 that I emerged from this ordeal, manuscript finished and my health mostly restored. If you ever want to relive the fine details of all this, go check out the episode what happened. But that turned out not to be the end of it. Round about late February or early March 2021, my other kidney revolted. Same deal. Stone's too big to pass. Only this time we had the added complication that we had plane tickets booked to return to the United states set for April 18th. This was quite an immovable date on the calendar, and unfortunately, I found it impossible to convey to people how much it would not work for my initial consultation to be set just a week before I left the country for good. I was, in the end, saved by the father of my daughter's best friend, who was a hand surgeon at a hospital, and he heard about my plight, popped in to see his friend the urologist, who just set me up on his schedule outside of all normal channels. This, I've been led to believe, is a very French experience. A million bureaucratic rules and procedures that don't matter if you know somebody. But even here, it was absolutely down to the wire. 48 hours before I was set to board an airplane to depart France for good, I was heading into a French operating room for my final procedure. This was quite a stressful weekend, let me tell you, but there were no complications. I got fixed, we got on the plane two days later and flew home. Our three years in France lasted forever and went by in the blink of an eye. I'd say more about it here, but on my way out the door, I dropped an episode called the Streets of Paris, which sums up my experience far more poetically than I'd be able to muster here. After we got back to the States In April of 2021, it was all downhill. The second half of the Russia series was well underway and aiming towards 1917 and beyond. And then in August of 2021, hero of two Worlds came out. It was another great success, thanks to all of you out there. And the thing I'm proudest of is that you all heeded the call to throw sales to your local indie bookstores, not the website that shall not be named. So Hero of Two Worlds debuted at number one on the bestseller list for the Booksellers association of America, which covers all those independent bookstores. That news was very sweet, but since we were still in Covid as an acute emergency, all plans for a live tour were canceled. And instead I did what felt like about a bajillion zoom interviews through the end of the year. I spent the first half of 2022 finally bringing the Russia series to a close. More than three years and 103 episodes later, pretty close to what the entire Revolutions podcast was originally supposed to be. And I think back on that guy sitting there with a one year old on his lap in 2013, not knowing if any of this was going to work out or not. And while I'd like to go back and tell him, relax, man, it's all going to work out, he's going to figure it out for himself eventually. Why ruin the surprise? It is, after all, a pretty good one. It worked. It all worked. That brings us to the final phase of the Revolution's podcast, and while it maybe would have been nice to drift easily into retirement, we elected instead for an insanely tumultuous final few months. I don't need to remind you of what this was all about, because it just happened, but the paperback for Hero of Two Worlds came out in August of 2022, and I hit the road for a long overdue live book tour. This tour took me through 14 cities in 18 days in September, and then transitioned into six more cities in October for the monologue shows. All the while I was writing up the final appendices, I traveled everywhere with my microphone. I recorded one episode in a hotel in Denver, another in a hotel in New Orleans, another in a hotel in Austin. The tour was exhilarating and exhausting. But now I'm home. The final appendix was published last week, and this final episode is almost done. Podcasting has changed a lot since I started Revolutions. They definitely hit the mainstream long after.

C (30:47)

I started the show.

D (30:49)

Back when I was doing the History of Rome, and even in the early days of Revolutions, I would tell people.

C (30:53)

What I do and they would say.

D (30:54)

Oh, what's a podcast? And I would have to explain it to them. It's like an on demand radio show. But then as I continued on with Revolutions, I got to a point where.

C (31:05)

I would say, oh, I do a podcast.

D (31:07)

And people would get excited and say.

C (31:08)

Oh, I've heard of podcasts.

D (31:09)

Those are really cool. What's yours about? Of course, these days we've hit the stage where I hesitate to tell people that I'm a podcaster because people will say, oh, podcasts, everybody's got a podcast. And when I look ahead to the future, one of my goals in life is to still be podcasting. At the point when the response becomes podcast, people are still podcasting. And I will say, yes, I am. So does that mean there's going to be another podcast? Well, yes, of course there's going to be another podcast. Over the course of my many travels and many conversations, there is one topic that far outstrips all the others. That is the question of what am I going to do next? Mike, what are you going to do next? Please tell us what the next podcast is going to be. And I've always laughed and said, ah, yes, there's going to be another podcast, but no, I'm not telling you what.

C (31:59)

It'S going to be.

D (32:00)

I'm keeping that a secret. Well, the time for keeping secrets is over. It's time to tell you what I'm going to be up to next. Because it is, in fact, all lined up for a while now. The great writer, historian and presidential biographer Alexis Ko and I have had a little mutual appreciation society thing going. A few months ago, she asked what I was doing after revolutions, and I said I had some notions, but nothing seemed to be fitting exactly right. So we got to talking and we got to talking about working together and we hit upon a very simple idea, the simplest idea in the world, really. We both love history, we both love books, we both love history books. We love talking about history books, we love writing history books. And so we are going to team up to talk about history books. This new team of Duncan & Co. Is going to talk about new history books and old history books and big history books and little history books. But that's what we're going to do. We're going to start a podcast where we talk about history books. These things that are so near and dear to our hearts and which I know are very near and dear to your hearts too. Now, as soon as we started talking about this idea, I got very excited. The idea of talking with somebody of Alexis caliber about history books every week just seems like the best idea in the world. I, for example, absolutely have to take a break from long form narrative history podcasting. Seriously, you guys, I need to rest that part of my brain for a while. And so a conversational show sounds absolutely wonderful. And besides, you guys haven't really heard casual conversational mic that much. Unless you hear me on somebody else's podcast, you're getting scripted, Mike, all the time. I also have not really been able to read off topic for like 15 years. I have had to remain laser focused on whatever the topic of that week's show is. So I've just been reading Roman history books and books about the various revolutions I've covered for, again, like 15 years. So getting to read a variety of books on a variety of subjects is going to be a really nice change of pace. I can't wait to read books that are not about Rome or revolutions and not feel guilty about it. I am also beyond the stage in my career where I feel like I have to fight tooth and nail for my own place in the world. I feel like I've kind of carved out a place for myself in the world. And so now I would like to use that place that I've carved out to help other people who are fighting for their own place to find their place. I've spent my whole life looking up at a summit that I've been trying to reach. And now that I've kind of reached that summit, I want to look back down and help other people reach the summit too. I remember how hard it was for me in the beginning. I remember how hard it was when I published my first book. And Alexis remembers all this stuff too. And that's the last bit of this. The thought of working with somebody like Alexis Ko is thrilling. I, in fact, cannot believe that she pitched me on this idea. So there's no official start date for this. I do need to rest, but I'm not going to rest for very long. Stay subscribed to this feed and I will let you know when The Duncan & Company book show starts up. It's going to be great. I can't wait. Well, okay, yes, technically I can wait a little bit, but it is coming. But that also means that Revolutions is ending. It is time to close this chapter of my life. It's important for stories to have endings. That way new stories can begin. And there are so many stories left to tell now. I did this once before when the History of Rome ended. It was a difficult decision. It was bittersweet. But it was also the right thing to do. And just as I did with the History of Rome, I'm going to drop a little donation link into the show notes for this episode. If you've enjoyed Revolutions and are going to miss Revolutions and appreciated some of those 342 episodes and 190 hours and 1.5 million words. Maybe you want to drop a couple bucks in the tip jar on your.

C (36:17)

Way out the door.

D (36:18)

Whatever you think is fair, I think is fair too. This show has been my life for nine years. It means so much to me. Every word I wrote, every minute I recorded, every episode I published. They all mean the world to me. And I could not have asked for a better audience to write for. I love Revolutions very much. I love all of you very much. And so I will bid you now that fond and bittersweet adieu. But I promise that we'll see each other on the other side.

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