Mike Duncan applies his real-revolution history format to an invented Martian Revolution.
Revolutions treats the Martian Revolution as a fully archived historical crisis, moving from colonization and independence to occupation, resistance, trials, and civil fracture. Its strength is the slow accumulation of causes, so every bombing campaign, constitutional conflict, and military disaster lands as part of a larger revolutionary pattern.
PRESS PLAY
Revolutions is written and narrated entirely by Mike Duncan, previously the creator of The History of Rome, with no interview segments, co-hosts, or additional voices in the sampled episodes. Each episode is structured like a documentary history — quotations, timelines, and in-universe source references — applied here to an invented conflict rather than a real one. The arc tracks the final year of the fictional Martian Revolution: Omnicorps' nuclear bombing of the city of Elysium, the tiered trials of Earthling detainees and 'earthworm' collaborators, fleet battles at Lunaport and the asteroid belt, and a coup and countercoup within the revolutionary Triumvirate. Recurring figures across episodes include Martian Guard commander José Calderón, his rival Alexandra Clare, naval officer Booth Gonzales, constitutional author Marcus Leopold, and videographer Zhao Lin, whose competing accounts of events drive most of the political conflict. The show repeatedly returns to how revolutionary tribunals weigh evidence versus mob pressure and perjured testimony, how factions turn xenophobia against Earth-born residents into policy, and how a military occupation collapses once its outside support disappears. The presumed audience is listeners already familiar with Duncan's nonfiction seasons on real revolutions, since this arc consciously mirrors that format and pacing while being explicit fiction. It also suits listeners of narrative, analytically-paced alternate-history or science-fiction audio who prefer restrained narration over dramatized dialogue. Production in the sampled episodes is straight narration without dramatized voice acting or music cues, keeping the same measured tone used in the podcast's historical seasons. The season concludes with the Republic of Mars adopting a Second Constitution guaranteeing equality regardless of birthplace, closing the fictional revolution the way Duncan's nonfiction seasons close real ones.
Made for: Listeners of Mike Duncan's earlier nonfiction revolution seasons and fans of slow, documentary-style alternate history or speculative fiction.
What sets it apart: Unlike most speculative-fiction podcasts, it is narrated as straight documentary history rather than dramatized scenes, applying an established real-history format to a fictional revolution.
Season 12 premiered October 20, 2024 – a nonfictional account of The Martian Revolution of 2247. Mike Duncan is taking everything he's learned from 12 seasons of historical revolutions - the repeating arcs, characters, ideas, events, and patterns which all revolutions seem to follow - and created a fictional history of the Martian Revolution of 2247. The series is written from the point of view of a historian working hundreds of years after the Martian Revolution and will be presented in the style and format of previous seasons of Revolutions. It will look, sound, and feel like a Mike Duncan history podcast…but will instead be a fict...
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mike Duncan uses a future Martian revolution to make political fracture, institutional change, and contested memory feel historically consequential.
Revolutions treats a struggle on Mars as settled history, with Mike Duncan narrating from a future that can weigh constitutions, political factions, military campaigns, and reputations after the outcome is known.
Mars becomes a historian's archive when you prefer your revolutions with imaginary footnotes.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A strong finale that turns Martian independence into a reckoning over patriotism, vengeance, and revolutionary justice.
Liberty, Equality, Humanity closes the Martian Revolution with independence finally secured in 2252, after the first declaration in 2247 and another in 2250.
A sharp resistance chapter where Tharsian labor and sabotage make Omnicor's occupation harder to control than to conquer.
Bloody Sunset stays with the Martian Revolution as Tharsis moves from occupied city to organized resistance. Omnicor offers a little freedom and asks the population not to abuse it; the Red Caps and Black Caps do exactly that, in different ways.
A grim Martian endgame of emergency engineering, factional distrust, and invasion pressure.
The Invasion of Mars pushes the Martian Revolution into its bleak emergency phase, where survival depends on people who barely trust one another acting as if unity still exists.
A sharp political-trial episode about Mabel Dor, revolutionary panic, and the line between failure and betrayal.
The Martian revolution turns inward just as its navy departs for Earth, with Mabel Dor pushed into a trial that has the shape of law and the smell of political necessity.
The Martian Navy's voyage to Earth becomes a tense study of politics, personnel, and unfinished danger.
The Martian Navy's departure for Earth is less a clean military transfer than a sorting of usefulness, loyalty, and fear. Booth Gonzales is pulled off his own ship and placed beside Cartwright, Way, and the Admiralty staff, not because he has suddenly become a grand strategist,…
Mars ratifies a constitution, then immediately tests whether rights can survive fear of counterrevolution.
Leopold's Leviathan follows Mars as it tries to turn revolution into government while war spreads from Earth into orbit. The flight from Lunaport gives the episode its pressure: refugees leave one world coming apart for another trying to assemble itself into a state.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
The Martian Revolution ends here.
Revolutions episode 11.28, 'Bloody Sunset,' covers January through May 2252 during the Omnicorps invasion of Mars, opening with Admiral Booth Gonzales executing a two-part trap near the asteroid belt that destroyed 38 Omnicorps warships using reprogrammed drone bombs and self-detonating container ships.
Revolutions episode 11.26 covers the aftermath of the Martian Navy's defeat at Lunaport and the subsequent Omnicorps invasion fleet bearing down on Mars in late 2251 and early 2252.
Revolutions episode 11.24 follows the trial of prominent Martian defendants — dubbed 'earthworms' — including former defense chief Mabel Dorr and her alleged conspirators, whose proceedings were shaped by Kenji Gru's online conspiracy theories and the perjured testimony of Kinder James.
In the fictional Martian Revolution setting of the Revolutions podcast, this episode covers the 'Trial of the Earthlings' — a tiered tribunal system organized by Minister Marcus Leopold in February 2251 to process roughly one thousand Earthling detainees held since the Martian independence struggle.
Mars is saving itself badly.