history based Podcasts

[dead0man]

Anybody have any favorites?  I've been falling asleep to Mike Duncan's Revolutions Podcast for about a year now.  I'm up to the Haitian revolution.  It's not going well for anybody.  He's also done the American Revolution, the English Civil War (which he considers a revolution) and the French Revolution.  All very well done and super informative.  Especially the French one as I barely knew anything about it before hand.  Now, every time I see Jacobin American's name I want to ask "which era of Jacobins, 'cause a lot of them sucked ass?", but I don't know enough to know if that question makes any sense.


I also enjoy Dan Carlin's stuff, but he's harder to sleep to because he's much more animated.

[The Mikado]

I love several of these, but it depends what era of history you're interested in.

The British History Podcast, The History of Byzantium Podcast, and The History of China Podcast (in addition to the aforementioned Revolutions) are all things I listen to (I basically use my commutes as podcast time). All of them are podcasts that start from the beginning of their source material and move forward, and all are meticulous and somewhat slow-moving, and by some bizarre coincidence all three of them are currently in the 10th century (well, technically the British History Podcast is in the 890s, but who's counting).

[dead0man]

Duncan has mentioned the Byzantine one a few times as his inspiration to start his first series, the History of Rome, which is awesome too.  I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Are these things you have to pay for? They sound great.

[dead0man]

It's all free.  Or at least it is on the free podcast app I have on my phone.

[The Mikado]

Duncan has mentioned the Byzantine one a few times as his inspiration to start his first series, the History of Rome, which is awesome too.  I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.

The one Duncan mentions is not the one I'm talking about, though that one is supposedly really good. The one I meant is Robin Pierson's History of Byzantium, found here: https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com/

Robin picks up immediately where Mike Duncan's History of Rome left off, with Emperor Zeno dealing with the consequences of the end of the Western half of the empire, and goes on from there. His style is initially pretty closely aping Duncan's style but he develops his own voice as the show goes forward.

Currently, his show is in the middle of the so-called Macedonian Renaissance (the late 9th through early 11th centuries), during which the Byzantines rebound pretty thoroughly from second-rate has-been power to full-on great power status again and regain quite a bit of their former wealth and power...but he's only a few decades removed from that all coming crashing down with the invasion of the Seljuks and Byzantine power reaching its lowest ebb yet.