Showing posts with label Podcasts Youtube Series Radio Shows Etc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Podcasts Youtube Series Radio Shows Etc. Show all posts

Saturday, June 28, 2025

Revolutions Podcast by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started this project: November 9, 2021
Started my final runthrough of this podcast: September 19, 2024

(This is my first time reviewing this podcast on this blog. So, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)




See also:


Notes:
I've gone back and forth on whether or not I was going to do one or two listenings for my final runthrough of the podcast.  But in the end, I decided one final listening was enough.  My listening progress, for anyone who is interested, is chronicled on my started post and also listed below:

Listening Progress
September 19, 2024--1.1- The Kingdoms of Charles Stuart
September 20--1.2- Personal Rule
September 21--1.5- Cavaliers and Roundheads
September 22--1.8- Checkmate
September 23--1.11- The Crowning Mercy
September 24--1.12- In The Name of God Go
September 25--1.15- The Good Old Cause
September 26--2.1- The Thirteen Colonies
September 27--2.2- The Stamp Act
September 29--2.4- The Boston Tea Party
September 30--2.5- The Guns of Ticonderoga
October 1--2.6- Independence
October 2--2.7- Crossing the Delaware
October 3--2.8- Saratoga
October 5--2.12- Yorktown
October 6--2.15- The Rising Sun
October 7--3.1- The Three Estates
October 8--3.4- Necker and the Necklace
October 9--3.7- The Séance Royale
October 10--3.9- What is the Third Estate?
October 11--3.10- The Tennis Court Oath
October 12--3.14- The Women's March on Versailles
October 13--3.17- A Temporary Summit
October 14--3.19- The Massacre of the Champ de Mars
October 15--3.21a Supplemental- Talleyrand
October 16--3.27- Advance and Retreat
October 18--3.29- The Purge of the Girondins
October 20--3.30- The 250th Episode
October 21--3.31- The Man of Blood Part Deux
October 22--3.33- The Geography of Terror
October 23--3.34- Saturn's Children
October 25--3.34a- The Republican Calendar
October 27--3.35- The Law of 14 Frimaire
October 28--3.37- The Republic of Virtue
October 29--3.38- Thermidor
October 31--3.41- Bread and the Constitution of 1793
November 2--3.43- The Conspiracy of Equals
November 5--3.47- The Directorial Terror
November 7--3.50- The Second Coalition
November 8--3.52- There is Your Man
November 9--3.55- The Retrospective
November 10--4.03- Free and Equal
November 11--4.05- The Citizens of April 4
November 13--4.07- The Citizens of June 20
November 14--4.12- Toussaint's Clause
November 15--4.15- The Leclerc Expedition
November 20--4.16- Dying Like Flies
November 21--4.17- Independence
November 23--4.19- The History of Haiti
November 25--5.01- The Conquest
November 26--5.03- The Precursors
November 27--5.06- The Abdications of Bayonne
November 28--5.07- The First Cry For Liberty
November 29--5.08- The Patriotic Society For The Development of Agriculture and Livestock
November 30--5.10- War To The Death
December 1--5.12- The Desired One
December 2--5.13- The Letter From Jamaica
December 3--5.15- The Centaur of the Plains
December 4--5.16- Over The Mountains
December 5--5.17- The Big Rock On The Side Of The Road
December 6--5.17a- Supplemental Gregor MacGregor
December 7--2016 Fundraiser!
December 8--5.18- Liberation
December 11--5.19- The Army of the Andes
December 12--5.22- The Guayaquil Conference
December 13--5.23- Ayacucho
December 14--5.24- The Republic of Bolivar
December 15--5.25- The Tangled Swords
December 16--6.02- Charles The Simple
December 17--6.03- Help Yourself And Heaven Will Help You
December 18--6.05- The Barricades
December 19--6.06- The Duc d'Orleans
December 21--6.07- The Last King of France
December 22--6.8a- The Fait Accompli of 1830
December 23--6.08c- Metternich
December 24--6.08e- The June Rebellion
December 25--The Storm Before The Storm: Chapter 1- The Beasts of Italy
December 26--7.03- The German Confederation
December 27--7.04- The Austrian Empire
December 28--7.06- The Kingdom of Hungary
December 29--7.07- The Hungry Forties
December 30--7.12- The Provisional Government
January 5, 2025--7.13- The Spectre of The French Revolution
January 9, 2025--The Calm Before the Storm Before the Storm
January 11--Politics & Prose Oct 28: The Storm Before the Storm Book Event
January 19--7.14- The Fall of Metternich
January 20--7.15- Slaves No More
January 21--7.16- We Crawled On Our Stomachs
January 22--7.17- The Five Days of Milan
January 25--7.18- Democracy In Action
January 26--7.19- The June Days
January 31--7.20- Where Do You Draw The Line?
February 12--7.21- Cracking Down and Backing Down
February 16--7.22- The April Laws
February 22--7.23- The First War of Italian Independence
February 23--7.24- The Turn of The Tide
February 24--7.25- The Parliament of Professors
February 25--7.27- The Flight of the Pope
February 26--7.28- Prince President Bonaparte
February 27--7.29- The New Emperor
February 28--7.30- The Crown From the Gutter
March 1--7.31- The Assembly of the Damned
March 2--7.32- The Bitter End
March 3--7.33- What the Heck Just Happened
March 4--8.2- The Franco-Prussian War
March 5--8.3- The Government of National Defence
March 6--8.5- The Cannons
March 7--8.6- The Commune
March 9--8.7- Year 79
March 10--8.8- The Bloody Week
March 11--9.02- The Cry of Dolores
March 12--9.04- The Porfiriato
March 13--9.06- The Presidential Succession of 1910
March 15--9.09- The Tiger
March 17--9.11- Not Quite President Madero
March 18--9.13- The Plan of Ayala
March 19--9.15- The Constitutionalists
March 20--9.16- The Legend of Pancho Villa
March 21--9.19- The Conventionists
March 24--9.21- Death To The Gringos
March 25--9.24- Swinging From A Tree
March 26--9.26- The Last Caudillo
March 27--9.27- The Institutional Revolution
March 28--10.1- The International Working Men's Association
March 29--10.3- The Three Pillars of Marxism.
March 30--10.4- Historical Materialism
March 31--10.7- Paris Commune Revisited
April 1--10.9- The Third Rome
April 2--10.12- The Decembrists
April 8--10.13- Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality
April 9--10.14- The Tsar Liberator
April 11--10.15- The Tsar Must Die
April 12--10.16- The Russian Colony
April 13--10.17- The Emancipation of Labor Group
April 14--10.20- The Liberal Tradition (Such As It Is)
April 15--10.24- The Union of Struggle for The Emancipation of the Working Class
April 16--10.26- The Far East
April 17--10.28 The Spark
April 18--10.31 A Big Mistake
April 21--10.33- Bloody Sunday
April 22--10.35- Sinking Ships
April 23--10.37 The General Strike
April 24--10.39- The End of Part I
April 25--10.40- Relaunch and Recap
April 28--10.42- The Stolypin Reforms
April 29--10.44- Bolshevik Bank Heist
April 30--10.46- The Permanent Revolution
May 1--10.48- The Death of Reform
May 2--10.52- What You Already Know About The Origins of WWI
May 5--10.54- War or Revolution
May 6--10.55- Whatever Happened To The International?
May 7--10.58- Inflation and Scarcity
May 8--10.60- The Abyss That Lies Ahead
May 9--10.62- International Women's Day
June 3--Appendix 1- Coming Full Circle
June 4--Appendix 3- From Equilibrium to Disequilibrium
June 5--Appendix 7- The Entropy of Victory
June 6--Appendix 9- The Second Wave
June 7--Appendix 10- The Revolution Devours its Children
June 8--Appendix 11- Meet the New Boss
June 9--Appendix 12- Coming Full Circle One Last Time
June 10--11.1- The Colonization of Mars
June 12--11.2- In With the Old
June 15--11.4- The Election of 2244
June 17--11.5- The New Protocols
June 18--11.7- The Annulment of Contracts
June 19--11.10- Red Justice Red Freedom
June 20--11.11-The Three Days of Red
June 23--11.14-The Mutual Blocade
June 24--11.28-Bloody Sunset

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Friday, June 27, 2025

Revolutions Season 11: The Martian Revolution by Mike Duncan: Review (plus other thoughts)

(Podcasts--History) 


(This is my first time reviewing this podcast on this blog. So, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)





Did you enjoy this review? Consider supporting me on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joelswagman

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/JoelSwagman
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Thursday, October 31, 2024

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog: Mini-Review


File this whole thing under "wasting time".

I waste a lot of time online reading Freddie Deboer's Substack.  (Freddie is a very entertaining writer.)

Recently, Freddie posted another subscriber writing, which I always find interesting.  (Turns out, a lot of very good writers are subscribed to Freddie.  You can always find a lot of interesting things in his subscriber writing post.)

On of the entries I happened to click on was called: Dr. Horrible or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Nerd Culture and Myself.

I've never seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, and I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard of it.  (It sounds vaguely familiar, I've probably heard references to it at some point on the Internet.  But I certainly couldn't have told you anything about it.)

The article then included a link to a Youtube video which included the 3 episodes of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog edited together into one video.  


I told myself I shouldn't watch it.  (I'm trying to reduce the amount of time I waste on screens.)  But I was in the mood for some entertainment.  So I clicked it.  And I watched it.  And now, I suppose, I have to review it.  (One of the goals of this blog is, as much as possible, review everything I watch.  I'm counting this as a web series, and filing it under Podcasts, Youtube Series, Radio Shows, Etc)

Given the fact that this was just a web series, it's kind of impressive.  I mean, they don't have great special effects.  But they have some big name actors.  They have several different sets, and even one scene involving a moving car.  It's definitely recognizable as a something professionally done.
I don't know how the economics of web series work, but I'm surprised that they could afford to spend that much money on a web series.  (See more about the production details on the Wikipedia page HERE.)

And yet, if I had to sum this thing up in one word, it would be "forgettable".  I mean, it's okay.  Mildly entertaining.  The jokes are forgettable--they're passable, but not really funny.  Nothing you'd remember after a couple days.
The songs--oh boy, are the songs ever forgettable!  I can't imagine anyone singing any of these songs to themselves in the shower.
And the story is also pretty forgettable.

Now, when it comes to comedy and songs, I think it's hard to dissect it too much.  (Something is either funny, or it's not.  A tune is either catchy, or its not.)
But when it comes to the story, I think there are identifiable structural problems that we can point to in order to explain why the story is not engaging.

There's a couple of well-worn tropes being retread here.  The first is "the supervillain is actually the protagonist" trope.  This has been done a few times before--see, for example, Megamind or Despicable Me.  (Although, to be fair, Dr. Horrible came out in 2008, before Megamind or Despicable Me, so maybe this trope was a bit more fresh back in 2008?  I still feel like it was already an old gag even at the time, but I'm having trouble thinking of an example.  Help me out in the comments if you can think of an example of "the supervillain as a protagonist" before 2008).
Anyway, this story has a certain structure.  The supervillain starts out as evil, but likeable.  By the end of the story, he redeems himself, and are now he is on the side of good.
However, in Joss Whedon's version, there's no redemption.
Dr. Horrible starts out as sympathetic.  (He's an underdog, so we root for him.  Also he's in love, so that's an identifiable characteristic that makes him sympathetic.)  But besides being sympathetic, he has no good characteristics.  (Nothing that we see in the first episode shows him doing anything that is of benefit to society--it's all evil villain stuff.)   So the logical place for this character to go, in order to reward the audience investment in him, is for him to gain some virtue as the story goes on.  But this doesn't happen.

The other trope is "man sacrifices what's most important to him to achieve his dream, and then regrets it".  (I feel like this is also an old trope, but again, I'm having trouble thinking of examples.  Help me out in the comments.)
However, in Dr. Horrible, the story beats are a bit different.  And in a way that doesn't improve the story.

In the normal telling of this story, the protagonist starts out as a good person.  He has a goal he's trying to achieve.  Maybe it's a worthwhile goal in theory, but he becomes obsessed with it in a way that's not healthy.  The irony is, the character doesn't need his goal to be happy.  He already has happiness right in front of him, in the form of his true love, who is absolutely devoted to him at the start of the story.  
Somewhere along the line, he loses his true love.  Either he makes a deliberate choice to sacrifice the relationship for his goal, or else he loses her as a side effect of his devotion to the goal.  In the end, he achieves the goal, but discovers that his goal doesn't actually make him happy.

The problem with Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog is that the protagonist is already starting out as a supervillain, so he's already starting out as corrupted, and we don't get to see him being corrupted by the pursuit of his goal.
Plus, his goal is to get accepted in into the League, but what causes the girl to die is not him trying to get into the League, but him trying to get revenge on Captain Hammer.  So the set-up and the payoff are not aligned.
And, he never really had the girl in the first place.  The girl was in love with his nemesis, not him, so there was no great thing in his life that he had to sacrifice for his goal.

Now, I know it might seem that I'm being overly prescriptive in my analysis of the story.  Surely a great storyteller is allowed to change up the normal storybeats if it can produce a greater story, right?  But in this case, changing the story beats clearly did not improve the story. It's not a great story, is it?  It's a pretty forgettable story that lacks any emotional punch.

But to re-emphasize what I said above, it's not a bad little webseries.  Entertaining enough.  Watchable.  Neil Patrick Harris is good, and he's always fun to watch.
It's just completely forgetable.

...odd, then that this completely forgettable little series seemed to have spawned so much commentary on the Internet.  You don't have to look far to see a lot of opinion pieces on it.  (Again, see the Wikipedia page.) Perhaps a lot of this is because this story is part of the mythology of Joss Whedon.  (Once considered the greatest nerd storyteller ever, now a pariah.)

The article I linked to at the top is one such piece.  I'm not sure I agree with all of it.  For example, this quote:
Dr. Horrible has dated quite badly. Some of the gags are amusing, but the whole thing is smothered by the “well, that just happened” style of millennial/Gen X humor which Whedon helped make ubiquitous and is now treated with derision by zoomers. 
...I don't know, maybe I'm just out of it, but I didn't notice the humorstyle was particularly tied to Gen X/millennial.  I just thought it was a bit flat.  But maybe I'm missing something.
But anyway, I'm not sure I agree with the whole thing, but it's worth reading.

And then, I watched Sarah Z's video essay on it.


...again, I don't agree with all of  it.  But there is some insightful stuff here.
Sarah did a good job of highlighting the theme of male vulnerability that runs all the way through.  I'm ashamed to admit I didn't catch this theme myself on my first viewing of Dr. Horrible, but after Sarah walked me through it, it seems so obvious in retrospect.
Also, I thought Sarah made a good point about how the girl in the story is just purely presented as a plot device, and not as a real character in her own right.  (Sarah says this is typical of Joss Whedon, and I'll take her word for it.)
However, I disagree with Sarah when she claims that the narrative is trying to make the viewer feel that the girl should have ended up with Dr. Horrible, and that it is the girl's fault for choosing the wrong guy.  I think the narrative was making it pretty clear that Dr. Horrible was the one who was sabotaging his own romantic prospects, and I think that is what the viewer is intended to take away.
So, agree with some of it, disagree with some of it.

There's a lot more Internet commentary out there, but I'm stopping here.  I've wasted enough time on this already.
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Thursday, September 19, 2024

Revolutions Season 10: The Russian Revolution by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 


(This is my first time reviewing this podcast on this blog--or at least, reviewing it as a whole. So, according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



Sorry, I know this video wasn't very good.  File this under:
1) The dangers of doing unscripted videos, and
2) I'm always sleepy when I film videos, because I have to wait for the kids to go to bed before I can film.
There were several things I had planned to talk about that I just forgot to mention.  And there were a few thins I mentioned that I wish I hadn't.  (e.g. My mentioning of Mike Duncan's mixing up of some of the names in the last few episodes--mentioning that was a pedantic nit-pick.)

Links to stuff mentioned:
* My review of Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore

As I mentioned in my started post, half of this series I had already reviewed on my blog.
For my thoughts on the first 8 episodes (the prologue about Marx and Bakunin), see HERE.

I also started reviewing this podcast episode by episode from episode 63 (partly as a way to alleviate boredom during the Covid lockdown).  The links to those min-reviews below

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Sunday, April 07, 2024

Revolutions Season 9: The Mexican Revolution by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Finished: 1st Listening: March 2, 2024
2nd Listening: March 23, 2024
3rd Listening: April 07, 2024

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



Links to stuff mentioned:
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Friday, February 23, 2024

Revolutions Season 8: The Paris Commune by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started: January 20, 2024
Finished: 1st Listening: January 25, 2024
2nd Listening: February 1, 2024
3rd Listening: February 18, 2024
4th Listening: February 23, 2024

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



The other books I've read on the Paris Commune is below:

History Books that are Partially about the Paris Commune (but are also about other things as well):

Historical Fiction Dealing with the Paris Commune:


Other books mentioned in the video:
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Saturday, January 20, 2024

Revolutions Season 7: The Revolutions of 1848 by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started: August 17, 2023
Finished: 1st Listening: September 9, 2023
2nd Listening: October 25, 2023
3rd Listening: December 30, 2023
4th Listening: January 19, 2024

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)




My reviews of other Mike Duncan content:

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Saturday, December 02, 2023

Discourse of the Three Kingdoms Podcast: Mini-Review


Started: November 01, 2023
Finished: first listening on November 15, 2023
Finished second listening on November 24, 2023
Finished 3rd listening on December 2, 2023

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



Listen to this podcast:




I briefly interacted with the podcast creators on Twitter here.
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Thursday, August 17, 2023

Revolutions Season 6: Revolution of 1830 (July Revolution) by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started: July 26, 2023
Finished: 1st Listening: August 2, 2023
2nd Listening: August 6, 2023
3rd Listening: August 17, 2023

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)



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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Revolutions Season 5: Spanish American Wars of Independence by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started: May 20, 2023
Finished: 1st Listening: June 3, 2023
2nd Listening: July 6, 2023
3rd Listening: July 25, 2023

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)




For more information on the Revolutions of the 1820s, see HERE.
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Saturday, May 20, 2023

Revolutions Season 4: The Haitian Revolution by Mike Duncan: Review

(Podcasts--History) 

Started: October 14, 2022
Finished: 1st Listening: October 31, 2022
2nd Listening: March 12, 2023
3rd Listening: April 13, 2023
4th Listening: May 20, 2023

(This is my first time listening through to this podcast, so according to my new rules, I'm doing this as a video only review.)


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Friday, October 14, 2022

Revolutions Season 3: The French Revolution by Mike Duncan

(Podcasts--History)

Started: December 19, 2021
Finished: 1st listening: January 6, 2022
               2nd listening: March 7, 2022
               3rd listening: October 8, 2022
(This is part of my journey through Revolutions Podcast, which I talked about HERE.  As I said in that post, I'm only going to do video reviews for the individual seasons, and then will put together a written review once I've worked my way through the whole podcast.)



I had already posted about this podcast back in April 2020.  But at that time I was skipping around a bit in the podcast to listen to the episodes that sounded most interesting to me.  This time around, I listened to the whole thing systematically, from start to finish, 3 times over.

The other stuff I've read/watched/listened to on the French Revolution is below.

History Books:

Historical Fiction

Movies/TV shows

Tangentially Related:
* The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine wrote this during the French Revolution)
* War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Mike Duncan covers the Napoleonic Wars briefly as an epilogue)
Also.... Mike Duncan talks about the history of the Bourbon dynasty and Louis XIV's reign as background to explaining the circumstances of French politics in the 18th century.  For a fictionalized account of all this, see the Three Musketeers series:

See also:
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Sunday, December 19, 2021

Revolutions Season 2: The American Revolution by Mike Duncan

(Podcasts--History)

Started: November 23, 2021
Finished: 1st listening: December 2, 2021
                2nd listening: December 13, 2021
                3rd listening: December 19, 2021
(This is part of my journey through Revolutions Podcast, which I talked about HERE.  As I said in that post, I'm only going to do video reviews for the individual seasons, and then will put together a written review once I've worked my way through the whole podcast.)



The other stuff I've read/watched/listened to on the American Revolution is below.

Books:
Youtube Videos

(I also saw the HBO John Adams mini-series (W) around 2011, but didn't review it on this blog because it was before I had started reviewing all the TV shows I watched.)
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Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Revolutions Season 1: The English Revolution by Mike Duncan

 (Podcasts--History)

Started: November 9, 2021
Finished: 1st Listening: November 12, 2021
                2nd Listening: November 15, 2021
                3rd Listening: November 21, 2021
(This is part of my journey through Revolutions Podcast, which I talked about HERE.  As I said in that post, I'm only going to do video reviews for the individual seasons, and then will put together a written review once I've worked my way through the whole podcast.)





The other stuff I've read/watched/listened to on the English Revolution (aka The English Civil War) is below:

Going through my booklist, it looks like I've only ever read one nonfiction book solely on the English Revolution: Free-Born John by Pauline Gregg  
Most of my information about this period comes from broader histories:

Much of the knowledge I've gleaned over the years actually comes from historical fiction:
And, The Three Musketeers series is also a fictionalization of this period.
* The original The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas deals with George Villiers, The Duke of Buckingham (who Mike Duncan talks about in episode 1)
* The sequel, Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas, deals with the Civil War itself
* And the third book, The Vicomte De Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, deals with Monk and the restoration of the monarchy (which Mike Duncan talks about in his final episode)

And last, in terms of mini-series:
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Tuesday, November 09, 2021

King of Kings by Dan Carlin: Review of a Podcast

 (Podcasts--History)

Started: September 26, 2021
Finished: Finished the first listening on October 4, 2021
Finished the second listening on October 18, 2021
Finished the third listening on November 1, 2021
Finished the fourth listening on November 8, 2021
(This review is written using my new format for reviews.)

Background Information

I'm counting this as its own series, but this is actually just episodes 56, 57 and 58 of Dan Carlin's ongoing Hardcore History podcast (W).  (Also, Dan Carlin labels each episode separately as "King of Kings", "King of Kings II" and King of Kings  III", but I'm referring to the whole thing as just "King of Kings").  This came out on 2015.  It's a history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, from its founding by Cyrus the Great to its destruction by Alexander the Great.  As is usual for Dan Carlin, the episodes are very long--3 hrs 33 min for the first episode, 4 hrs 16 min for the second episode, and a whopping 5hrs for the final episode.  So there's close to 13 hours of content here in total.   
Much of Hardcore History is behind a paywall, but some of it is freely available, and these episodes are part of the free stuff.  You can go listen to it right now on Youtube, or just search "Dan Carlin's Hardcore History 56 Kings of Kings" to start episode one on your favorite podcast player.

Why I'm Listening to This

Back in 2015, when this first came out, a friend and co-worker of mine was listening to this, and telling me how fascinating it was.  I had never heard of Dan Carlin before then, but I was vaguely intrigued by the idea of a history of the Persian Empire.  I learned about the Persian Empire in my youth when studying the Old Testament, and its always seemed  mysterious and exotic, and I was interested to learn more about it.
This same friend gave me a copy of Death Throes of the Republic by Dan Carlin.  I listened to it, and found it absolutely fascinating.  (I reviewed it positively on this blog.)
I listened to the first bit of King of Kings, but it didn't really grab me.  I suspected that that was because I wasn't allowing myself to immerse myself in it, and that if I might enjoy it more if I made it a dedicated listening project.
However, just from dipping into the King of Kings, I realized that Dan Carlin was referencing Herodotus a lot.  It turns out that the Persians didn't leave us a lot of their own histories, so we're reliant on Greek historian Herodotus for much of the history of the early Persian Empire.  Dan Carlin was talking about not only what was in Herodotus, but also speculating on why Herodotus's histories had the style and format it did.  I thought to myself, "If I ever get around to reading Herodotus, then this would make the perfect podcast to listen to alongside Herodotus."
Well, I've started Herodotus now.  And I also finally finished (and reviewed) The History of Rome podcast, which opened up a slot for something new to listen to.  So I started King of Kings.

Summary of Content

We start (after some digressions on the character of the Spartans) with the Assyrian Empire, and then move quickly through the Empire of the Medes, and then to Cyrus the Great and the founding of the Persian Empire.  And then we run into the Greco-Persian wars.  All of this is based mostly on Herodotus, but Dan Carlin tries to bring in other materials as well when he can.
In addition to the narrative, Dan Carlin is fascinated by the psychology of the ancients and the psychology of ancient battle.  He spends about an hour at the end of episode 2 pondering how it was that men back in that era could face the horror of hand to hand combat without psychological damage.
After this long digression, we get back to the narrative and continue with the Greco-Persian Wars in episode 3.  Then, the primary source for all of this, Herodotus, comes to an end, and Dan Carlin admits there aren't much surviving sources left to cover the rest of the Persian Kings.  So we go quickly through the rest of them, until we get to the story of Alexander the Great, and the destruction of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.
Dan Carlin knows the conflict between the Persians and the Greeks is always told from the Greek side, and he wants to try to tell the story from the Persian side, but he's hampered by the fact that most of the sources are Greek.  He does his best to try to balance things, but  his "History of the Persian Empire" feels at times like a history of Greece

Evaluation

Perhaps it's fitting that Herodotus is being used as a basis for much of this series, because Herodotus is famous for his many digressions and taking forever to get to the point.  And Dan Carlin is taking a similar tack , and going off on all sorts of tangents, and taking forever to get to the point.
But, then for readers of Herodotus, all the wonderful digressions are supposed to be part of the enjoyment.  And I suppose the same must be true for loyal Dan Carlin listeners.  Or at least the ideal listener.  (He does, after all, have a big fan base.)  But if you're not ready for a lot of digressions, better pass this one by.
I'd previously classified Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic as a narrative history, but King of Kings has so much digression and so much pondering that I can't really call it narrative history.
In particular, there's a very long digression at the end of episode 2 that goes on for about an hour in which Dan Carlin talks about what it must have been like to fight hand-to-hand in ancient warfare, and notes that this is so completely foreign to anything in modern experience, and questions how human nature could deal with the horrors of up-close hand-to-hand fighting.  He talks about it for an hour.  He just goes on and on and on, and I kept wanting him to get back to the narrative.
I don't know.  On the one hand, Dan Carlin is correct in that this is the big question of history.  These kinds of questions are why people read history in the first place--what is the difference between the ancient and modern psychology, and what is human nature anyway?
But on the other hand, I feel like every 10 year old boy reading about ancient battles is already thinking about these questions anyway, so it's a question that is already being pondered.  Dan Carlin, to his credit, is well read on the issue and brings in the opinions of a lot of learned historians, but after talking in circles around the issue, he doesn't really come to a firm conclusion about anything.  (It seems like the learned historians themselves can only speculate about what ancient battle must have been like for the human psyche.)

The Listening Experience

I found my enjoyment of this podcast depended on my mood.  There were times when I was in the mood to just get the information, and was frustrated by Dan Carlin's roundabout style of storytelling.  But then there were times when I was in a more relaxed mood, and was happy just to listen to Dan Carlin ramble, and follow his train of thought wherever it wandered.
The episodes were so long (5 hours for the last one!) that I had issues with losing my place sometimes, especially when I was playing them on my phone.  Sometimes I would resort to writing down the time markers when I would know where to start up again.
As for Dan Carlin's style itself, well, I feel like I gave my thoughts on this the last time I reviewed Dan Carlin.  So I'll just repeat myself from before:
He's not a professional historian--he's a broadcaster by trade.  But he's obviously a huge history nerd (You can really hear his love for the subject material come through in the podcasts) and he and his team do their research.
He's got an A.M. radio type voice.  His voice, tone, and cadence all remind me of Rush Limbaugh.  (I'm speaking only of his voice here.  None of his politics resemble Rush's).
He's primarily a narrative history story teller, which I like, but his podcasts aren't always exactly like a novel.  Rather, here again is more of the style and format of an A.M. radio DJ. He sounds like a talk show radio host who is giving out the daily news.  He tells a bit of the story, then he stops to comment on its importance, or to say why he thinks it's remarkable.

Connections With Other Things I've Read or Listened To

* Obviously this overlaps heavily with Introduction to Ancient Greek History by Donald Kagan.

* Also, the last hour of the podcast is all about Alexander the Great, so see all the books I've reviewed on Alexander the Great: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

* A point that Dan Carlin makes is that in the history of Western Civilization, the Greeks are usually portrayed as the saviors of Western Civilization, and the Persian Empire is usually portrayed as the evil empire.  Dan Carlin contrasts this with the positive write-up that the Persians get in the Old Testament.  The Old Testament prophets were overjoyed that the Persians allowed them to rebuild the Temple, and so they praise the King of Persia very highly.  (I think Donald Kagan also makes this point in his lectures.)
Some of the praise in the Old Testament that Christians would later interpret as being about Jesus was actually in the original context meant to be about the King of Persia.  Robin Lane Fox and Christine Hayes both make this same point.   (The title of this podcast, King of Kings, is itself a reference to how some of the appellations for the Persian King in the Old Testament ended up getting transferred to Jesus, although Dan Carlin never explicitly makes the connection.)

* And, of course, this overlaps heavily with Herodotus, which I haven't finished yet, but which I'm currently reading.  
I found it interesting to read Herodotus while listening to this podcast.  It was interesting to hear Dan Carlin talk about the stories in Herodotus, and then read those stories myself.

Video Review (Playlist HERE)


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