Mike Duncan (podcaster)

Duncan began The History of Rome in 2007, after failing to find any good podcasts about ancient history.[11] The project turned into an award-winning weekly podcast which aired for 179 episodes until 2012 and was downloaded more than 100 million times.[9][11]

The podcast covers the time period from the origin of the Roman Kingdom to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, focusing on the most accepted chain of events according to historical consensus.

In the 2010 Podcast Awards, The History of Rome won best educational podcast.[12]

Revolutions aired from 15 September 2013 to 3 July 2022. The podcast covered modern political revolutions, beginning with the English Revolution.[13] Each season was dedicated to one revolution or revolutionary wave and discussed the revolution through a chronological narrative approach, as in his podcast The History of Rome, but the shorter time periods and longer episode length for each season allowed greater detail for individual events. Seasons began with one or two episodes 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 supplemental episodes). The series covered the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, Simon Bolivar and Gran Colombia, the July Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Mexican Revolution, and finally the Russian Revolution, ending its run of narrative episodes in July 2022. This was followed by a series of retrospective episodes, taking a broader look at the structure of revolution.

Revolutions also featured supplemental episodes, excluded from the normal count of episodes, and of varying length (compared to roughly half-hour normal episodes). Some of them focused in depth on a particular topic or person, while others were 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."[14] As he had done with The History of Rome podcast, Duncan ran a series of tours to accompany the podcast which visited historical sites mentioned on the show.[15] Publications including Time,[16] Popular Mechanics,[17] and The Guardian [18] have included Revolutions on their lists of recommended podcasts. 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".[19] The introduction to each episode is a clip from the second movement of Joseph Haydn's Symphony 92 (Oxford).[20]

Mike Duncan is believed to have coined the phrase "the entropy of victory" to describe the recurring division that occurs following a successful revolt, or coup d'état, among the victors.

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)[21]
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 supplementals)[22]
7. Revolutions of 1848, aired July 2017 to April 2018 (33 episodes, 0 supplementals)
8. Paris Commune, aired from May 2018 to June 2018 (8 episodes, 0 supplementals)
9. Mexican Revolution, aired August 2018 to March 2019 (27 episodes, 0 supplementals)[23]
10. Russian Revolution pt 1, aired from May 2019[23] to April 2020 (39 episodes, 0 supplementals)
11. Russian Revolution pt 2, aired from 3 January 2021 to July 2022 (64 episodes, 11 supplementals) [24]

On 24 October 2017, Duncan published The Storm Before The Storm, a non-fiction work which explores Rome between 146–78 BC, the period predating the end of the Roman Republic.[25] It entered the New York Times best seller list Hardcover Non-Fiction on the eighth place during its first week.[26] In an interview with the Washington Post Worldview, Duncan claimed his aim for the book was to "pull back two generations [from the time of Caesar] and ask, 'What was it that opened the cracks in the foundation of the Republic?'"[27]

The book received widespread praise, with many reviewers noting how the events described in the book portend to modern times. Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare Blog wrote, "Never has a book about history that's two millennia old been so timely...You'll learn as much about the problems we face today from this book as from any newspaper",[28] and a review in the Huffington Post praised his "congenial style", claiming that he "zeros in on Rome's polarization between "optimates" (conservatives) and "populares" (populists), the disintegration of participatory democracy, and the concomitant rise in inequality, uncivil discourse, and violence. The parallels with modern times, and particularly contemporary America, leap off the page".[29]

Duncan's second book, Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution, is a biography about the Marquis de Lafayette during the American and French revolutions and their aftermaths. The book was published 24 August 2021 and in September of that same year, it reached number three on the New York Times Bestseller List.[30] The book was received positively by numerous important outlets including The New Yorker,[31] Publishers Weekly[32] and The New Republic.[33] Duncan has also expressed interest in developing a TV series based on the biography, having drafted a pilot script for the proposed show.[34]