New episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.82- The House of Special Purpose: Time to tie up some loose ends. 

The "loose ends" alluded to in the subtitle turn out to be Tsar Nicholas and his family.  As Mike Duncan explains in the opening, they've dropped out of the narrative since the Tsar abdicated in episode 10.63 .  In the beginning of the episode, Mike Duncan defends his decision to drop them from the narrative--they hadn't done anything historically noteworthy since the abdication--but now it's time for them to get killed off, so it's time to tie up loose ends.

This is, needless to say, a pretty depressing episode.  No matter how terribly the Tsar screwed everything up, it's awful what happened to him and his family.  I would editorialize more here about the senselessness of his death, except Mike Duncan spends the last 5 minutes of the episode editorializing about it, and he says it all much better than I could. 

What saves the episode from being a total downer, and makes it interesting to listen to, is of course, all the information.  I mean, everyone knows about the Tsar and his family getting shot.  But all that stuff about how Trotsky had been fantasizing about a big show trial, and the reasons why the show trial never happened--those are the interesting details that keep me hooked on Revolutions Podcast.

Other Notes:

* Hey, my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan is mentioned in the opening advertisement!

* Interesting to hear the Tsar read War and Peace after his abdication.