Let's draft damaci to do a History of Islam podcast? Gap in the market afaik.

there's a small and growing position that the failure of rome was the debasement of the currency, i.e- they were screwing around with the monetary supply. Case in point, when Augustus became emperor the denarius was around 95% pure silver, by the time of the later emperors like diocletian the denarius was way less than 5% silver. Messing around with the money supply they killed the economy, and were unable to support the over bloated army and thus fell to invasions and other ills related to not having a sustainable government.

This certainly is becoming a leading factor in the interpretation of the crisis of the third century, but it's problematic for the "Fall of Rome" as a whole. For one thing, it largely applies to the Western Empire, where the trade economy collapsed and evolved into a semi-feudal, semi-manorlist economy. The Eastern Empire remained economically strong for quite a long time after. However, various periods of draining the silver out of the Empire (likely bound for China), likely had a dangerous deflationary effect that led to pressures to debase the currency.

If anything, I'd say it was the over-bloated army that led to economic problems, rather than the other way around.

Mike Duncan recently announced that he will be starting a new podcast in the near future. The topic this time around will be the history of political revolutions: the English, American, French, Haitian, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.

The day has arrived.

This is right up your alley right? You're the best person to ask, how is he doing so far? How would you describe the level of analysis and depth? I'm too ignorant to judge, except to say I'm learning a lot; pretty much knew the bare minimum about this period before. Wikipedia + an In Our Time episode on the Putney debates + that Jon Hurt/Richard Harris Cromwell movie is my entire knowledge base, so the early parliament stuff has been especially good for me.

Sort of feeling sorry for Charles so far, sounds like a bunch of Tea Party style nullificationist parliamentarians didn't want to fund the government without extorting concessions.

It is quite good overall so far IMO. Simple enough to appeal to beginners, but with enough nuance that it stays reasonably faithful to a complex picture of events.

Heh, perhaps, but it's worth remembering that the Stuart kings had also attempted to create a formula for the creation of absolute monarchy (or something close to it) in England, which rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It's also worth noting in this case, and in the case of most revolutions, that in part the political struggle was catching up to a shift in economic power. In the English, American, and French Revolutions, a growing professional class of merchants, lawyers, and various petty gentry had seen their economic fortunes increase significantly without a corresponding rise in political power, which was generally held by a small inner circle of well-connected aristocrats or royal agents. That's usually a recipe for disaster, especially because these nouveau riche could actually claim to represent the great mass of the population without the irony we would view it with today, since commoners were commoners and thus all closed off from the privileged world of aristocracy.

This also explains why Charles did so poorly in the cities and ports, where the levers of finance were already beginning to operate and undercut the system of aristocratic privilege that had defined European life for centuries.

In general, I try not to draw too many modern analogies on such things. The Parliamentarians were a complex bunch that included some genuine democratic reformers, a good number of genuine religious fanatics, and lots of combinations in between.

I'm looking forward to him doing something like the Russian Revolution, so I have at least a fighting chance to judge the nuances. But keeping up with the basics is fun enough.

I may have missed a smiley face there, it was mostly a tongue-in-cheek comparison. Funny how the extremes of contemporary representative government arouse sympathy for bygone absolutist style monarchs. I will say that the power/negotiation dynamic seems similar (perhaps trivially so) - you have a ruler/executive who requires appropriations from an increasingly assertive parliamentary body, and this body balks at funding some (rather routine?) things like the king's allowance for life or whatever it was called, and then they wouldn't pay for his wars and such. If the Tea Party impeaches and then executes Susan Rice or something then I'll really have a point.