Storming Rome with Mike Duncan
War on the Rocks
War on the Rocks
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2017
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
History podcasting mastermind Mike Duncan joined Ryan for a few drinks in Washington for our latest episode. Rome is what brought them together — more specifically his New York Times best-selling book, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. The book tells the story of Rome from 146 to 78 BC. In this wide-ranging conversation, they cover the challenges of writing ancient vs. modern history, going from fishmongering to podcasting (and making a living at it!), his show Revolutions, and why those of us living at this particular time in history should be eager to understand what happened to the Roman Republic.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to War on the Rocks a podcast on on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. |
| 0:14.2 | My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the editor-in-chief of Warren the Rocks. |
| 0:17.5 | In our latest episode, I spoke with Mike Duncan, the History Podcasting Mastermind behind |
| 0:21.8 | the History of Rome and revolutions. |
| 0:23.3 | I haven't yet tuned into the first I must admit but revolutions has become one of my |
| 0:27.6 | favorite podcasts. But Rome is what brought Mike and I together. More specifically |
| 0:32.4 | his New York Times best-selling book, The Storm before the storm, the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic. Over drinks at Buegert Saloon in Washington, D.C. Mike and I spoke about his new book, Why It's a timely subject, |
| 0:44.1 | Podcasting, Revolutions, Writing History, and more. |
| 0:47.0 | So how did you go from podcasting to book writing? |
| 0:57.0 | I went from podcasting to book writing because my very fine literary agent Rachel Vogel who is now my literary agent |
| 1:05.8 | sent me an email one day and said have you ever thought about writing a book you've |
| 1:10.8 | had this podcast go on for so long and it's been very successful. |
| 1:14.0 | Have you ever thought about making the move to writing a book? |
| 1:17.0 | And I said, yeah, of course, I've thought about wanting to write a book. |
| 1:20.0 | I know I've wanted to write a book my whole life but instead I |
| 1:22.8 | wound up like writing writing all the time but not for a book so it really just |
| 1:28.0 | came out of her saying let's let's kick some ideas around and see if we can't get you get you some kind of |
| 1:34.0 | book deal. And you did one before this that was sort of edited transcripts of the |
| 1:38.3 | podcast is that right? Yeah that was more of a almost a companion piece to the podcast that was just yeah that was |
| 1:46.1 | just taking what I had already written and converting it into into a like the |
| 1:51.6 | written transcripts of the show is really all that it was. |
| 1:54.7 | So this was the first time I took you know from a blank white piece of paper and said like I'm |
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