Mike Duncan (podcaster)

In July 2022, Duncan released, through his Revolutions podcast, a one-man table read of a script he created for a proposed Marquis de Lafayette TV show. Duncan reported that he hopes to turn this idea into a multi-season series and is currently in early discussions to do so.

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. The book was received positively by numerous important outlets including The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly and The New Republic. Duncan has also expressed interest in developing a TV series based on the biography, having drafted a pilot script for the proposed show.

In 2018 Duncan relocated to Paris, France in order to do research for his 2021 book Hero Of Two Worlds, a biography on the Marquis de Lafayette. In April 2021, with Duncan's work on the book completed, he and his family returned to the United States.

In addition to podcasting, Duncan is the author of two historical books. In 2017, Duncan wrote The Storm Before the Storm, which was well reviewed and appeared on The New York Times Best Seller List. His most recent work, 2021's Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution, received similar praise, earning its own spot on the New York Times Best Seller's.

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. It entered the New York Times best seller list Hardcover Non-Fiction on the eighth place during its first week. 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?'"

Revolutions aired from 15 September 2013 to 3 July 2022. The podcast covered modern political revolutions, beginning with the English Revolution. 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.

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

Michael William Duncan is an American political history podcaster and author. A self-described "complete history geek", his love for history grew from an interest in ancient civilizations as a child, with a particular affinity for Roman history. After not finding any Roman history podcasts in 2007, Duncan began The History of Rome, a narrative podcast chronicling events from the founding of Rome until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The podcast concluded in 2012. A year later he began Revolutions, which ran for ten seasons over the course of nine years, covering the American, French, and Russian revolutions, among others. The series' main narrative ended in July 2022.

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