Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - The Martian Revolution (featuring Mike Duncan)

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

Daniel and Kelly talk to Mike Duncan, creator of The Martian Revolution, about economics, politics and revolution on Mars.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And it's that planet that is like us, but not. And so it's just there. And so I picked it for that reason. Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space, and, you know, I love science, but I got to be honest, I don't really listen to a lot of science podcasts. History podcasts is my thing, and I am such a huge fan of the revolutions podcast. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm a big fan of science and history, and especially the history of science. I really enjoy trying to get into the minds of people in the past before they understand.

understood something that we now take for granted to try to grok what it was like to learn that or to live in a world when you didn't know that because I feel like there's such a huge intellectual distance between us and people who didn't know that the earth is round or moves around the sun or the universe is so vast. Yeah, I've been reading the Journal of Parasitology starting at 1912, moving to the present. And I feel like every once in a while you'll catch a paper where they'll be explaining like, oh, this is how something works. And you know, as a scientist in the present that they're wrong, but you can totally see their reasoning. And I feel like it helps you remember to be humble because things that can seem right and seem obvious can be wrong

with more information. And so, yeah, I also enjoy the history of science in that regard as well. And I think these two fields are more closely related than people realize because science is also about storytelling. I mean, history obviously is storytelling. We're going back in the past and trying to understand what happened and why and what were the major themes and trends. But science is also storytelling. We're telling a story about how the universe works and how it came to be. And it's, if anything, digging deep into the ancient history of the universe. So I feel like these two fields are more closely connected than a lot of people give them credit for. I totally agree. And you and I have interviewed some really great storytellers in the past.

So we're both pretty big sci-fi geeks. And I often enjoy hearing from a sci-fi writer who's trying to explore how some particular scientific concept might play out, you know, under slightly different conditions or on a different planet or something like that. And so I was really excited when Mike Duncan, who does the revolutions podcast, started writing science fiction. And so instead of trying to test like, what would it be like living in a low gravity environment, he's bringing all of his knowledge about past revolution. So he has a history podcast that he did for a decade going through different historical revolutions. And he's bringing that history and exploring how these history things will play out on the Martian environment. And he's doing something really interesting, which is that he just dropped this into his normal nonfiction podcast. feed about history and just started talking about a future revolution as if it was in the past with all sorts of like references and like comments about this source, which you can't really believe and you should read this other source, all of which is obviously made up, but completely deadpan, right? As if it was real history. It's amazing. I love it so much. And I particularly

love it because I listened to the revolution's podcast. It helped get me through the pandemic. I'm a huge fan. And he did this series where he sort of summarized some of the main points he took away from decade of studying revolutions. And then the Martian revolutions thing dropped. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I get to hear, you know, all of the takeaways from the Russian revolutions on Mars. And I get to put together these two worlds that I love so much, you know, space settlements and the revolutions podcast. And I am having so much fun. And he's really the right person to be writing science fiction if you ask me. And I'm going to say something a little controversial here, which is that we read a lot of science fiction from

scientists, but most science fiction is not about the science. Like, yes, you invent some concept, but really it's about the people and the politics and what life is like. And it's about the sociology and the people who are best informed to write realistic stories about that are people who know the stories from history. So historians and sociologists and political experts are the ones who are going to be able to write effective realistic stories about new situations. And that's what science fiction really is all about. So anybody who's into science fiction, I really encourage you check out the revolutions podcast about the Martian Revolutions. And I've been been waiting every week for a new episode to drop, but you don't have to do that because today

is June 3rd, the series wrapped up on June 1st. So they're all out there and you can start now and you don't have to wait a week to hear the updates. It's all there and you can just listen to it through. But first, listen to our conversation with Mike Duncan, the author and creator of revolutions. Mike Duncan is a history podcaster and author. He's written the New York Times bestsellers, the storm before the storm, the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic, and Hero of Two Worlds, the Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution. His podcasts include the history of Rome, and the podcast we'll be discussing today, Revolutions. Welcome to the show, Mike.

Thank you very much for having me. So, Mike, since you have dipped your toes into science fiction, which I love, we want to start out by asking you the same question we ask every science fiction author we talked to, which is a philosophy question. And that is, when you step into a teleporter on Star Trek, does it actually teleport you or does it disassemble you and rebuild you somewhere else? Is it a murder machine or an actual transportation device? It really strikes me as a murder machine, above all. I mean, if that's how we have to like categorize these things, it does seem to be deconstructing something and then recreating it from the matter on the other side. So, you know, It's definitely like a ship of Theseus situation because there is something about the identity that persists that is clearly like locked inside the physiology of the body.

So like there is a there is a persistence of identity. But yeah, it really seems like whatever got onto the transport pad, that entity doesn't exist anymore. And a new entity has been created down there that is fundamentally different. And you can kind of see this sometimes with like, you know, when there are transport or mishaps, right? and there's like there's so now there's whatever uh so like the thomas riker situation like you've created a whole new thing down there that thinks it was will riker and and but you know the thing didn't get destroyed up on the ship so clearly something new is being made and so if you were given the opportunity to use one of these fantastic devices would you no do you believe that

have never i would never i would never get it on a transporter in my life yeah no same like if i had a shirt that just said like mccoy was right about everything even he's getting off and on it all the time. Right. So you have clearly revealed your like science fiction creds already. Thank you. Thank you. So who are your favorite sci-fi authors and have you always been interested in writing sci-fi? Yeah, yeah. This is, you know, I was, you know, a nerdy teenager once. And so science fiction is, you know, a part of my sort of cultural identity growing up. You know, I was obviously raised on Star Trek and raised on Star Wars. And, you know, got into, you know, when I was a kid, it was like golden age sci-fi stuff, you know, Asimov and

and Clark and Heinlein, and then, you know, you'd progress 10 years down the road. And you're like, you look back on those guys and you're like, a lot of this is actually like very problematic. And maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not so happy that there's so much Heinlein going into my brain. But wait, but we can undo that. But then as, you know, as I got older, it's really like, you know, like Philip K. K. Dick is like a huge is huge for me. He's a huge influence. And Vonnegut was a very big influence for me. And then also, um, There's a more obscure kind of out there dude called Robert Anton Wilson, who I really enjoyed. And so if anybody out there knows Robert Anton Wilson, they're like, oh, shit, Michael, it's Robert Anton Wilson.

Okay. But, yeah, those are the guys that sort of like when I was getting into high school and being a teenager and kind of thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. And I knew I had some, like, talent and some passion for writing that if that's the direction, I wanted to go, like, those guys were kind of like my guiding North Stars less than Heinlein. It's always my dream that somebody mentions to me. some science fiction author I've never heard of before, and now a whole new vein of text has opened up for me. So I'm going to go Google Robert Anton Wilson after this is done. Oh, yeah, dude, knock out Aluminatus sometime. Yeah, it's great. So what kind of science fiction do you prefer, though? Are you hardcore about folks following

the rules they set up in their universe, or are you okay with more like a vibes-based science fiction universe? I think, like, you know, I don't want to have to pick one over the other, but if I did, you know, it's more the vibes-based stuff. Because, you know, I fundamentally come out of the humanities department, you know. When I went to college and I had this notion that I wanted to be a writer and specifically, you know, do like science fiction stuff, I didn't enjoy the English department at all. I didn't have any good times deconstructing texts or reading these things or like talking about them. It's like, oh, look, another Christ illusion. Great.

you know like this is kind of this is boring me and also i'm not good at it so maybe i could do something else and when i would think about those guys who i admired they were very literate in like philosophy and they were very literate in you know ray bradbury is another one that i would put on this list this more sort of like philosophical where we are using science fiction as a vehicle for like thought experiments and you know like dick is always constantly you know grappling with identity like what does identity mean and you know like if you wake up tomorrow and all your memories have been implanted. Is that any different than, you know, who you were before? We actually just, you know, touched on this at the beginning.

So, like, I wanted to study that stuff. So this is a vehicle for, like, politics and history and philosophy more than being like I was really into engineering and I want to talk about what it would mean to build a spaceship and what it would mean to live on Mars. That's, that's not really my background. I need you guys, I need you guys doing those things for me. Yeah. For me, it's much more of a it's all it's meta it's metaphorical space for me more than anything else well i love that there are lots of different flavors of nerds and i welcome them all into the community absolutely yeah i still read you know the star trek technical manual you know even even i didn't come up with it and then like sometimes i don't maybe get into this but like you know i get i get dinged by you know the people who

are like only hard sci-fi is sci-fi and everything else is like you know less than and you know like And they point to Star Trek as being like, you know, they're doing a good job. And it's like, they realize one day that the warp drive would kill everybody on the ship in like a nanosecond. They would become splats against the back wall. They're like, what do we do? Oh, we'll invent a thing called inertial dampeners, right? It sounds sciencey, but it's magic, right? And it's like they're not, it's magical thinking no less than somebody like me just being like, yeah, they got grab units.

It makes artificial gravity. Like, just go with it. Who cares? Problem solved. Yeah, problem solved. They're called grav units. And then people will be like, you can't artificially create gravity. He's like, I don't know, man. I just did. So Star Trek does science the way that like

ChachyPT does science. It's like confidently produced nonsense. It sounds about right if you don't know anything. You're like, well, yeah, okay, sure. Tacky on inertial drives or whatever. Yeah, techno babble. Exactly. Technobabble. That's exactly it. So the revolutions podcast ran for a decade. And during the pandemic, the section on the Russian Revolution, like that helped get me through the pandemic. I looked forward to that every week. And then you stopped doing it. And you took like a two-year break. And then you decided to put a sci-fi story in the revolution's feed. So in the feed of your nonfiction history podcast, we now have this fictional story about Mars. What made you decide that that was the right venue for your science fiction?

And how has the audience responded? So I had this notion to do a fictional revolution, to write a fictional revolution and specifically science fiction fictional revolution, at least as far back as the French Revolution is how long this idea has been in my head. This is not something I, like, came up with at the end. Like, I sort of knew this was going to be something I was going to do for a really long time. And a lot of paying attention to, like, the structural beats and archetypes of these various revolutionary cycles, which often mirror each other. I would take notes on these things, knowing that at some point I was going to write what I'm writing, you know, at this moment.

And I wanted to put it in the feed because it's a revolution, right? And it fits as a revolution. And it is a revolution. It's just a fictional revolution. Now, when I dropped this without telling anybody that I was doing it and just loaded it in there, there is a split inside the revolutions community, you know, between people who really do come to me for nonfiction and for history. And now I am sort of not doing that.

And so, you know, no hard feelings. They're just like, this isn't for me. This isn't what I'm looking for. I want, you know, I come to you for history. And then lots of other people are like, this is the greatest thing that you could have ever given me. because if you're into science fiction and you're into the revolution's podcast and then I write a fictional account of a revolution on Mars, you know, this is like peanut butter and chocolate. You know, this is the invention of the Reese's peanut butter cup for a lot of people. And then, you know, a chunk of other people are like, no, I'm not following you down this road. And, you know, I got, you know, some upset emails in the early going. They've mostly petered out. And some people were upset literally that I put it into, I a fictional thing into something that was tagged nonfiction and they're like this is a nonfiction podcast i can't fit it in my brain that fiction is now a part of it it's like well go with it

maybe just just kind of maybe just roll with it when you said it in 2247 so it's not like it's ambiguous but i did i mean i get it in the in the first couple weeks because i deadpaned the whole thing i did not signal that i was doing this i did not tell anybody i was doing even though i knew about this for like a decade like I didn't tell anybody I was doing it and then when I dropped the first stuff I wasn't like I'm going to write a fictional account of something I just started talking about the Martian revolution as if it was real I think that's a really important point that you've done it in the same style exactly as if you really were a historian of the future talking about it so it's like this fictional non-fictional style it's incredible yeah that does also like

clearly like there's self-parity that is part of this like a lot of the ticks that I do in the show I'm bringing those back. And, you know, the wording and the phrasing and the style and the cadence, it's all meant to ate myself, but in a fictional setting. And I actually still think this, that as a work of, as a creative work, it's better if I never break character inside the show. Like, I never want to acknowledge inside the series on the Martian Revolution that this is being narrated by anybody, but somebody who lived 250 years after the Martian Revolution and is now writing about it. And that's, I think that's actually important to keeping it, I know, the fidelity to the thing. Is that the word I'm looking for? That's the same reason that like everything Nathan Fielder does works because he never breaks character.

Do you worry that in 250 years or in 400 years somebody's going to unearth this and be confused? Because he never indicate that it's fiction. And our only clue is that obviously it's set in the future. But what if deep into the future somebody under this? I'm not so worried about that because I will be dead. And so like whatever happens after this, I mean, I'm going to try my best to make the world, you know, better than we leave it for our children. But like, you know, I don't mind that much. Like I, and partly, it'll keep historians employed, you know, because like right now I'm writing a book, I'm writing a book about the crisis of the third century, which is, which is a period in Roman history. It is famously very little, it's not well documented because it was so, it was like this 50 year period that was so chaotic that we don't have like good solid sources. But one of the sources that we do, have is called the Historia Augusta, which we still don't know whether this was like a hoax document that was made. It's like it's like a series of biographies of the Caesars, the later

Caesars, where a lot of it just seems to be completely made up. It's a lot of his, it's historical fiction that was maybe done by somebody on purpose to trick people or as some creative exercise and we don't really know whether it was true or not. So yeah, people could come along and be like, you know, there was a revolution on Mars, but I don't remember it going like this. he's like a hundred years off on the dating and none of the names seem to line up but he's very confident he's referencing all these books like we like i don't know and just like chat gpt you're referencing things that don't exist see i'm i'm far more worried about chat gpt leaving a record behind that makes it impossible to know what actually happened than i am uh this little thing that i'm

doing well i was actually going to ask you about that if there are analogs of this in history people writing pseudo fiction of the future, other than the examples you just made? Oh, you know, not in terms of history, because like the thing, like the thing I just referenced with somebody writing, it's a fake history, but it's of the past. And, you know, you do start to get, you know, proto-science fiction being written of people speculating about the future, like the origins of science fiction. There's, you know, several steps along the way. But in terms of like using these kinds of non-fiction accounts to write something about the future seems pretty modern.

And like for me, you know, it's like, you know, like I said Asimov, you know, like Foundation has like, you know, galactic encyclopedia references. And I know that Dune, like the actual text of it, has a lot of like encyclopedic entries. And though I have not read the song of ice and fire, you know, I've watched the show. But I know that's written as a history. And those things, like, were really, those, that using nonfiction sort of tropes to write fiction is a very fun thing for me. It's, for me, it's exactly at the intersection of my brain. Being inspired by those kinds of things, but it's all pretty modern.

I don't remember anything from like history that did this. There's probably somebody out there who will email us and tell us what it is. Let us know. The internet always lets you know. The internet. Yeah, yeah, the internet always lets you know. This is why you should never say always. You should never say never. You should never say never. You should never. Never. You should never. And the thing is, it's like, one time I said that this was the only cavalry encounter and you will be fine. Like a always or never. And I'm like, we haven't read everything, Zach. We don't know that for sure. And the thing is, is like one time I said that this was the only cavalry encounter to ever capture ships, right? Like a cavalry captured boats. Okay. That's, pretty unique. And there was an incident in a Dutch, in a frozen Dutch harbor during the wars of the French Revolution. And I was like, this is the only time that this ever happened because it's so implausible. And then later I was doing Spanish-American independence.

And some of Jose Antonio Paas is cavalry guys, like took some gunboats. It was just, it was a shallow river. And so there's another cavalry, a cavalry attack that captured boats, which you would think would be impossible. Well, at least you were the one who figured out the mistake instead of having someone email you with it. I did find that one out. Yeah. They're not always so nice. when they email you about the mistakes. No, somebody actually emailed me about the Martian Revolution. And the subject line was errors and mistakes in the Martian Revolution. And it was not cheeky.

I've gotten some emails that are very cheeky. And like people are like responding with Deadpan. They're like, you know, you reference this book and I have found him to be like very like sketchy on the sources. And like there's this other book that I think is way better. And those emails like, these people get it and I'm having a really good time with them. But then this guy emails me and he's like errors and mistakes in like your work of fiction. And I'm like, I don't think you can do that.

You can say, like, I wish you hadn't have said that or I wish you had done something different. But I don't think you can tell me that there was an error in it. My favorite email is when someone says they're telling you an error you made, but actually you didn't talk about their favorite pet topics. And that was the error that you made was that you didn't talk about that other thing. And you're like, I could have, this book could have been 5,000 pages long that had to end somewhere, man.

Yeah. When I did the American Revolution, I basically got an email about every single local skirmish that ever happened in the entire course of the American War of Independence that I did not cover and therefore have left my audience bereft of the de-information that they need to like, okay, man, there was like 17 guys there. I'm trying to talk about the Declaration of Independence. You know, I got to pick and choose what I talk about here. So when you're doing history, obviously you want to be rooted in the facts and so you're constrained by what actually happened. In this case, you could have chosen any location, any time.

why did you choose Mars in the 2200s? The other thing I'm doing with the show is, you know, I'm taking all of these like historical moments, historical events, historical beats, historical archetypes and creating a mosaic story out of them. But I'm also taking science fiction tropes and using them. I'm like sort of combining both of those at the same time. So there's aspects of the show that's like, oh, this comes from the Mexican Revolution. And then there's a thing from the show like that thing, that came from Ender's game.

So, Mars just is like, it feels like the planet that has most, most captured our imagination. The imagination of the science fiction community, I think, has been most captured in its whatever a couple hundred years run that we're at now. But really, like, in the last century, like, Mars has been the setting for so many different things. And it's that planet that is like us, but not. And so it's just there. And so I picked it for that reason, right?

Like, I wanted to live in the same place that, you know, they were writing about 100 years ago. Well, let's take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk about building a world on Mars. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history. The predictions will we see a first-time winner and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege. you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature

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Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. So when Zach and I were researching a city of on Mars, we were often asked and often thought about what could economically justify settling Mars. And we came up with like nothing. And the proposals that we saw included like you could start a reality TV show on Mars and that would fund it. Even though people like started shutting off the Apollo missions after 12, they tuned back in when the oxygen canister blew up on 13. But after that, they started tuning out again. So I'm not convinced reality TV would fund your space settlement. Unless you're intentionally killing people.

Yeah, which hopefully not. Yeah. So I suspect, yeah, you came to the same conclusion that Mars doesn't have a lot of resources valuable enough to send to Earth. So tell us about the resource you came up with that justify settling Mars and how you picked that resource. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's just that.

Like, I had to have a reason for us to go to Mars. And at the moment, there is literally no reason for us to go to Mars. Like, going to Mars would be a stupid waste of time and money. And I say that even as somebody who is like enchanted by the wonders of space, you know, like I grew up on science fiction just like everybody else. It's not like I want to say, you know, we shouldn't explore and create and like advance our technologies and all that stuff. Like I love, I love NASA. Like I love this stuff. I really do.

But there's nothing on Mars. It's not like people think about Mars sometimes. Like it's just like New Mexico or something and you can just go there and it's like red and deserty. But that's the only difference. And, you know, as like I came up with this and I'll answer your question, but like, yeah, you know, reading City on Mars is just like really drills home that like the future of the species is not building a dome in the in the Mariana trench, you know, because that's an impossible, stupid place to try to like live just like Mars. So I had to invent essentially a new periodic table of elements is what it is basically like inside the periodic table of elements. we discover that there's like some substratum matrices within that that we had we've never discovered before and didn't know about before and it's in there and there's different versions

of things and there's a thing called phosph five which I gave it a very very long scientific name in the first episode and which I could not recreate ever again like I actually had to phonetically spell it out for myself and I just I it was techno babble right I just like jammed together as many prefects and suffixes into a single word as I possibly could and then slapped a five on it, which was a bit of an homage. There's a red rising series about a revolution on Mars and their thing is like they're mining helium three. So my thing is phosphive, which again, like these are meant to be sort of like homages and tips of

the cap to all the people who came before me. So Phosphive is a thing that then powers what is essentially unlimited clean energy. And that is what allows our species on Earth here to. to get out from under the 21st century, which I'm positing to be like insane chaos, anarchy, climate disasters that is going to define the 21st century and pulling out of the 21st century is about the discovery of phosphive, the discovery of these things called flex cells, which allows us to have unlimited clean energy. And then there's only a limited amount of this on Earth, but there's just a ton of it on

Mars, right? The volcanoes of Mars are loaded with phosphous. And so that's what takes us there and gets us there and justifies it. And this is all just complete invention, you know, because there's, like I said, there's nothing in reality, right, that we, as we understand it right now, that would justify the colonization of Mars. And if I could just dig into that a tiny bit, I don't know how hard core you went on the science here.

Were you mentioning something where the atomic number is above the numbers on the current periodic table or somehow like stuck in between? Oh, no. No, I didn't get into that at all. I just gave it, I just gave it a cool sounding name. Because there actually is a really fun concept in science about these super heavy elements, which could maybe have been created in supernova events or neutron star collisions and potentially could be in other places in the universe and could have really weird properties.

So one of the things that I do in the show is, you know, I'm constantly referencing like these fake history books that talk about because the show is set, like the narrator's 250 years after event. So he's always referencing, you know, books that have been written about the Martian Revolution. And in the very first episode, I was like, okay, if you want to learn more about flex cells and FOS 5 and how all this stuff works, you know, the definitive account is by this doctor, I forget what his name is, and his book is called Suspending Disbelief, how to stop caring about it, even though you really want to care about it. And just kind of like, this is my, this is my, right,

and this is my signal to like the audience. Just sit back and enjoy the story without getting too caught up in like the mechanics of it because I'm not doing that. I want to be Ray Bradbury and Philip K. Dick. I don't want to be Arthur C. Clark. I don't want to be, and I don't even want to be Kim Stanley Robinson, even though I love Ken Stanley Robinson. I can't do what he does. I can't do what I can't do what those guys do. Well, I'll put more tachions into the disbelief dam. Exactly. Exactly. But I want to ask you a history question about that. You're making this argument about the future and resources. And I was wondering if you're making a broader argument about the cycle of civilization about how we discover a new resource, which transforms our society. opens up a new territory and that we then go through this sort of cyclical expansion and collapse or revolution. Is there a broader argument that you're making there about the sort of structure of human civilization? It's mostly a plot device to get us to Mars. But your point is well taken. I mean, like the Dutch were powered by wind. And then when coal supplants wind, then the British are suddenly like doing great because they've got all this coal. And then we

move from coal to oil. And now the United States, now, you know, the Saudis and, you know, the Middle East suddenly becomes like the main center of things. And it's been a minute since we've had a true revolution in terms of our energy usage, like what and how we use energy. And if something comes along, yeah, I think it'll radically change the nature of our civilization and who's on top and who's not. What are some of the other historical points you're trying to get across in this in this podcast. Is it just for fun or are you trying to help people understand revolutions better? The project is yes, to have fun, but also we're going through the process of a revolution. And I am trying to create the structures that I have seen previous revolutions go

through. There is an Ancion regime of some kind that is broken and dysfunctional. There will be resistance to that. It's not, however, just about, you know, oppressed masses rising up and overthrowing something. There is always disaffected elites inside the Ancian regime who either want more power or they're frustrated with the incompetence of the leaders of the Ancian regime who start to turn against it because they would prefer themselves to be in power. There are structures inside of the movements where any revolutionary movement that comes together to overthrow the power that had ruled them previously, there's a thing that I posit, it's called the entropy of victory, that as soon as that group wins, they break into two or even three factions and

then begin fighting amongst themselves. One of those factions wins, and then that group splits into two. And there's this constant sort of like coming together and then breaking apart that I've seen so often to the point where then, you know, you get to the end of the Russian revolution and Stalin is literally purging the old Bolsheviks, right? He's purging the Bolsheviks are the one who, they beat the Mensheviks, they beat the SRs, they beat the anarchists, they beat the royalists, they beat the liberals. And then you say you have this tiny, tiny group of Bolsheviks. And then even inside that Bolshevik click, then Stalin breaks off from them and purges all the old Bolsheviks. So like this is a thing that goes on and that is

something that is happening inside the Martian Revolution for sure. I heard a great history joke the other day, which is when the IRA gets together, the very first thing they do is discuss the split. And anyway, and that's the thing. That's not just the IRA. That is, every single group. I mean, you know, like Monty Python's Life of Brian like had that great bit where they're like sitting around in the stands of the Coliseum. And it's like, you know, the people's party for, I don't, I don't remember what it is and I'm not even going to try because then we're going to get Monty Python people yelling at me. But you know the joke, right? I don't remember that part of the life of Brian. I remember the amazing song at the end, which I played for my daughter the other day. What were you going to ask? Did I hear you say correctly that we're going through a revolution right now? You mean, like, Like us literally at this moment in time? No, no, no, no, no. In the Martian Revolution.

Oh, okay. I mean, there's, there are revolutionary things that are happening right now in current events, but they're not like fun revolutionary things. This is bad revolutionary things. But they're doing revolutionary things that are very similar to sort of year zero Jacobin stuff and like abolish everything Bolshevik stuff. They're just doing it for reactionary reasons, not for progressive reasons. So we talked about how you created FOS five.

to give an excuse to go to Mars. What were some of the other features of life on Mars that you felt like you had to deal with? So I know you didn't constrain yourself to the hard science, but were there things where you were like, oh, I really have to deal with X and Y? Well, it was like, it was sort of in designing what the cities would look like.

It sure felt like they were gonna be living underground as opposed to like, you know, buildings on the surface. It just seemed like that was gonna be a thing. And so there's this thing inside the show called The Martian Way, which is like sort of how the people who lived on Mars wound up living like their cultural attitudes and like how they wind up behaving with each other. And there is something to the fact that they're living in close quarters with each other all the time that there's, you know, it's corridors and rooms rather than like nobody really

has any open or empty space. And so if you're somebody who can't handle being around people all the time, then that you're not going to survive on Mars. And then there's also a whole thing about how, you know, when you're out there and you have to do this stuff, like sort of the individualist settler archetype that we think of, like the rugged individual who goes out and, you know, makes their own farm and they're totally self-sufficient. Number one, that wasn't even true in the Old West, but it's especially impossible in a situation like Mars. So like those kinds of like, but that's mostly about the social stuff.

And so to deal with other things, like what are the gravity differences? I invented grav units and grav units handle that. And there are air scrubbers that make sure that the air is clean and works properly. And they've got ways of generating food. And they've got ways of generating water that are just, it's not about trying to figure out how we would actually live on Mars. And then when it comes to like the ships, like the ships that are going back and forth, I mean, I literally say in the show that like it would usually take six to eight weeks at this

point to get from Earth to Mars, depending on where we are in the orbits, which just by coincidence happens to be the amount of time it took sailing ships to get from Europe to the Americas during the era of classical revolutions, because that's what I'm here to talk about more than anything else. If you created these little science fiction doodads, get around some of these science issues, why not set the revolution in the Marianas Trench or Antarctica or somewhere else more realistic. Oh, because it's fun to be on Mars. I mean, I mean, straight up, man. It's just, it's more, it's more fun. What was cooler? Star Trek or Sequest DSV? You know, it's Star Trek. Jonathan Brandis was pretty awesome though. Yeah. Roy Scheider. He was in Sequest, right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, yeah. He was the, yeah. He was the, he was the, he was the, he was the, he was the, he was the, he was the, he was the, he was the tiger beat heart throb from from Sequest. I did have the tiger beat things pinned to my wall when I was the right age. Who was your, who was your? It was Jonathan Brandis. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great hair. We're learning a lot of history on the pod today. Really great hair. Great. A real loss for everyone. Yeah. He did have great hair. Yeah. All right. Anyway, sorry to get us off track there. When we were writing about a city on Mars, a lot of the arguments that we found for why you should settle space is that it would cause cultural diversity. And a lot of people were arguing that, hey, you know, we're losing a bunch of languages here on Earth. But if you go to Mars, they're going to be so cut off from everything

that's happening on Earth that you're going to get all of this diversity in culture and we're going to be able to undo this horrible homogenization that's happening here on Earth. How good do you think that argument is? It's certainly nothing that I thought would happen. And this is a lot, you know, I do in the early episodes, you know, the Martians do develop their own culture because politics is often downstream of culture. And so I wanted to make sure that there was like a, because this is actually one of the things about revolutions is you go 20, 30 years before a revolution and you start getting writers and artists and musicians who are exploring new ideas and putting ideas that are out there that then sort of the generation that grows up with those

sort of cultural outputs in their head, then they go on and they do sort of like the political and economic changes. And so the Martians absolutely have their own culture, but they're They're plugged into the company. They're plugged into Omnacore and the signals that are coming out of Omnacore are, you know, they're watching the same shows. They're seeing the same commentary. They're receiving the same information as Earthlings on Earth who are living under Omnicor's auspices are in the same way that like when I went to, I lived in, I lived in France

for three years. And when I was in France, you know, 30 years ago if I was living in France, I would have just been bathed in French TV, French, you know, magazines, French. newspapers because that was the only thing that would be available. But I could sit in Paris today and just beyond English language Twitter and watch English shows. And I never felt like I was cut off from like American culture when I was living in France. And that's essentially what I'm positing for the Martians is that a lot of what they're getting passively is cultural products from Earth. Also in the way that like, you know, that was true.

of the Americans in, you know, in both Spanish America and Anglo-American and Franco-America, they were engaging with the cultural products of the mother countries, not from themselves. And it was a big deal when Hawthorne comes out and is relevant back in Europe. And so there is a person whose name now escapes me, unfortunately, because I wrote it so long ago. But it was a big deal when there was a musician who made a song that was actually a hit back on Earth. And it was the first, like, Martian, whoever, like, cracked the civilizationalism.

zeitgeist back on Earth because they're all living under that same thing. So they wouldn't be cut off. And at least not in my, at least not in my story. Because like a, I mean, how long does it take to get a signal there? It's just a couple of minutes. It's not like they're living in Lima, Peru in, you know, like the 1500s when it would take literally six to nine months to get a letter back to Spain. And then another six to nine months to get the letter, you know, the response back. Like, how are you? That nine months later, somebody's like, I am fine. Nine months later, it winds up back in Lima.

Like, that's not how it would, I think, be on Mars. So as a reader of science fiction, I'm always using my physics brain to analyze, like, does this make sense? Would that actually work? But there's often social stuff and historical stuff and big themes in these books that I don't feel qualified to, like, you know, understand whether they're realistic. When you read science fiction, like when you read the expanse, which is very political, right? It's got these communities and they separate in these ways.

Does your history brain kick in? And you're like, that's not how it was to work or actually this should go a different way. Basically. What are your thoughts about those things? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that part of this project for me is to, you know, I'm not infallible. I'm not creating like a perfect product here or anything.

But like I'm so steeped in the political history of human civilization that I do feel like I'm uniquely able to write plausible politics for in a science fiction setting. in a way that lots of science fiction books, I have to suspend my disbelief about how this society has been organized. You know, we all have to suspend our disbelief that every planet anyone seems to go to. It's like the planet is like a country or it's a node. Like there's never, there's never internal, you know, conflict on any of these planets. It's always just like one planet equals like one thing. And that's, that's for storytelling reasons and for dramatic reasons because it would get so complex. But yeah, for sure, I think like I do have to

suspend disbelief all the time. And when I read, you know, the Kim Stanley Robinson books, which are fantastic, right? I love those books. And I even wrote, I even wrote into the show that the people who were designing all the stuff that allowed us to live on Mars, you know, the company that was doing it was KSR designs. They're the leaders of Martian technology and spaceship technology because that's, it's King Stanley Robinson, right? That is what that is meant to be. some of the politics in those books, I'm like, ah, okay, that's fine. I'll suspend disbelief. It's fine.

I don't mind. My thing is better on the politics, but, you know, obviously terrible on the science. So you and KSR both leaned into age extension as a way to move forward the plot. I feel like as a biologist, that's the thing that gets me. I'm like, oh, I'm not convinced we're ever going to be able to do that. And so the age extension thing seems to have been dropped now. Does it come back? I guess you don't want to tell me what happens next.

I'm not going to give any spoilers. All right. All right. So the life extension thing opens up like a third thing here, which is like obviously if you know science fiction, you know that science fiction is writing about the future, but what's it really writing about the present, right? Every work of science fiction is ultimately commenting on its own contemporary society. And so there is stuff that is in here, the politics of this thing, even more now than ever,

like freakily so and we don't have to get into it, but like, because a lot of these plot points that I came up with years ago are now like happening in real life and it's really disturbing to me. But the age, like the life extension thing, that's like we live in a gerontocracy. Like we live in a world where there's a generation of people who were the first people to hit sort of real advances in medicine. It's the boomers, right? They hit these real advances in medicine that are keeping us alive longer, that are allowing 80 year olds to continue to like not just be dead, but continue to be a little.

alive. And when you look at who the leadership is of the country, we're living in a gerontocracy, which is the rule of old people. And I think that this is really bad. I don't know how else to say it. Like I will editorialize and say that it is bad to have leaders who are like, I don't use email because I don't understand email. Like it's 2025. We've got real problems, right? And I do not need people whose brains were formed in the 1950s to deal with the issues that are facing. is here in the 2020s. I think they're fundamentally unequipped to do the job at a certain point. I don't want to be ageist, but I just think that's true. So the life extension stuff is meant to be a comment on that. And my life

extension juice is not like Fountain of Youth stuff. It's not you get to continue to be alive and vital when your brain still functions. These people are staying alive, but their bodies are just kind of inert vegetables. Their brains are just kind of inert vegetables. Like they're not at the same level. They're cognitively and physically, all they are is merely alive. And that's the thing that I think is different from previous life extension things, which is definitely a part of the Kim Stanley Robinson books. And, you know, if you read or not read, but like you watch some of the alien prequels like Prometheus, like there's life extension, you know, little subplot in there with that guy. But yeah, that part is almost entirely social commentary.

All right. We're going to take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk about whether or not a revolution on Mars is inevitable. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history. The predictions will we see a first-time winner and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, the whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive for all tennis fans, whether you

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So I've been wondering, whether or not a revolution on Mars is inevitable or how we could avoid it at one point. So the way international law is currently set up is that if you go to space, you remain the responsibility of some nation. But you're not allowed to own your land. It looks like the international community is going to let you extract and sell resources. But it does seem like there could be some fundamental conflicts if you are living very far away, but you're still governed by people on Earth who don't get what your life is like. Do you feel like with our current setup, a revolution on Mars would be inevitable?

Or what could we do to avoid a future Martian revolution? Should we be shorting Martian Stilis? Yeah, big time. You know, nothing is inevitable, right? I have to like, I have to officially declare this as a representative of the history department. Nothing is inevitable. Just because a bunch of stuff happened before. That doesn't mean it's going to happen now. There are lots of times where it seems inevitable that something happens and it doesn't. There are other times where something seems unfathomably impossible and then it just happens. And that's really what history is all about.

It sure does seem like in the history of civilizations and colonizing civilizations that eventually those people who are in the colonized place are going to want, home rule. And that seems to be pretty consistent across time. Not in every time, not in every place. But there's a reason the Americas are a bunch of independent countries and do not continue to be uniformly colonies. There are still a few colonies left. And we've got our own colonies. But yeah, that kind of thing happens all the time. So if you actually, if we do go to Mars and we do have the colonization of Mars, there's definitely going to be. be people who were like, yeah, and we want Mars to be independent. And in the show, there's

a guy, Jose de Petrov, who, this is early going, like before, this is like precursor revolutionary stuff, you know, where he literally produced this like really influential documentary that is that is saying exactly that. It is inevitable that Mars will be free. And so what we need to do as Martians is be the agents of that inevitability. Like, we need to be the soldiers for this force of history that is inevitably going to give Mars its independence, whether it's today, tomorrow, or 500 years from now, it's going to happen. And then I say in the show, of course, he conveniently ignored all the times in history where that didn't happen, but it was a very influential documentary and, you know, it implacted a lot of people. And also just like in terms

of like where people's mentalities are at, because this has happened so often in history, that, you know, our future Martians will know that and they will have it in their heads that, you know, in certain times and places, you know, people that have gone off and done something far away wind up running it themselves. But how do we avoid that? If we don't want the Martians to have their freedom, if we want to continue to have them live under the thumb of the earthlings and the earthworms, how do we do that? That's not necessarily what I want. No, I know. I know. I picked up on the subtext. You hate the Martians and you want them to serve you. They're the worst. They're the worst. They're the absolutely worst, yeah. But when you look at sort of the example of

the United States without like unpacking the sort of the genocidal way that this unfolded. The Northwest Ordinance was a pretty early document in American history that is what lays the foundations for the path from colony to statehood, from debate, not from colony, but from territory to statehood. And then saying once you become a state, you're an equal part of this project that we are doing. And there is something to that. there was an argument at the, do we take it for granted that, like, this path to statehood is a thing. But there were arguments at the time that, like, the 13 original colonies,

they should be the states. And then as the white settlers move into the interior, those should be territories that are primarily serving us here on the coast, like the real thing, like these United States, and then those are going to be the territories. And it was a big argument about whether, you know, Ohio and Kentucky and Wisconsin would eventually be able to become states if enough Anglo settlers move there. And I think that doing that has helped keep the country together. California, which is a really far away from the East Coast, especially, you know, at the time that the settlements of California are getting going, like California just became a state,

even though it was a whole continent away. And California did not ever, there was no plausible independence movement. I mean, I'm from the northwest. I know about all the little subgroups that want independence for Cascades. and Independence for California, but there's never been any need for it. And so I think that having that kind of incorporation, legitimate incorporation into the larger project is how it would work. Yeah, I keep trying to think about the best way to get Mars settlement started, which I don't think is going to happen in the near term. But right now, I worry that we're going to have a

scramble for territory, which is going to lead to conflict down here. So trying to figure out a way where you don't get a scramble, but at the right time without violence, you give the people on Mars, you know, the ability to govern themselves is a, what sounds to me like a complicated question, but I don't deal with the human stuff. I mostly deal with the science stuff. Oh, it's very complicated. Let's trust Elon. I'm sure he'll do it, right? Oh, yeah. Let's trust Elon. Some of the things that he is thrown out there about like, this is what Mars should be like. It should be democratic, but you should be able to rescind any law with one third vote. If one third of the

population opposes a law, they should be able to just like rescind. And it's like, you're just sending people to die. Like, that is the only thing that this organization of society that you are positing will actually accomplish is that everybody dying and you're creating a new Roanoke. So the way I get around that in the show, like the Scramble for Territory on Mars, is it's a monopoly. And there's just one company. And they have secured a monopoly at a certain point in human history.

They've secured a monopoly to all resources and territory beyond the line of lunar orbit, which, you know, gets me to once, you know, for one thing, being able to make social commentary about life under a monopoly corporation, but is also sort of like tipping cap to, you know, the line that the Pope drew that gave the Spanish everything on one side and the Portuguese, everything on the other. Like the Spanish just, for a while, the Spanish were literally claiming all of the Americas as their own territory because the Pope said that it was theirs. And that was a real thing that happened. And so that's how I kind of wrote it into the show. And, you know, I even said that like a couple of the corporations, the rival corporations to Omnicor that initially agreed to giving Omnacor

this monopoly. They were just like, this is great. Let them claim that monopoly because they're going to go try to colonize it and they're going to bankrupt themselves and they're not going to get anything out of it. It's just going to be a huge debacle. And so like letting them go off and try to do this, we're actually securing their collapse here on Earth and that's going to allow us to become more powerful, you know, in relation to them. And of course, they were unfortunately dead wrong and Omnicor became very, very powerful because they did it. And that short didn't pay off. It did not. Now they tried. I keep hearing people say, let must do it. He'll just go out there and die. And well, I think that's high probability. I also worry about what would happen if he was

successful. There's no chance he gets on one of those ships, none whatsoever. Wow. Elon Musk is not getting on a ship to go to Mars. Never. He would never do that. He would send people to do it. He would have other people die for sure. But he would be like, that's too risky for me. Would you get on a ship to Mars? Absolutely not. How about New Mexico? Would you visit New Mexico? Mexico is great. Yeah. I love New Mexico. Lovely place. I grew up in New Mexico and couldn't get out of there fast enough, but it is a beautiful place. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's the outdoorsy stuff. You know, it's a good, good place for hiking and stuff. So tell us about what's next for you. You're planning to write more fiction? Is there going to be a Jovian revolution inspired by

Biova Space Tyrant? What are you planning on next? At the moment, I am finishing my third book, which is, you know, nonfiction about a certain period in Roman history where it seemed like their civilization was collapsing and that would be irreversible and irretrievable. And then instead they pulled themselves out of it and put themselves back together and went on for another couple of centuries, which I feel like is a pretty pertinent story that deserves a that deserves to be shoved into people's brains as we all doom scroll our lives away. A hopeful message. Yeah, yeah, honest to God, like a hopeful message. And then And then, you know, there's eight episodes left on the Martian Revolution.

And then when that's done, I'm going to restart sort of like the traditional series of revolutions. And I'll sort of pick it up where I left off with Russia at the end of World War I-ish. And so like the Irish, I'll do the Irish Revolution. You know, Cuba will be done. Maybe the Spanish Civil War. I haven't quite, I'm going to be calling it as I see it and as I go. But there's basically the 20th century revolutions are left to be covered. And then, you know, is there future fiction?

Yeah, I would sure love to do more stuff like this. Basically, the way I put it is the people who like it, love it. And I've gotten a lot of positive feedback about it and people saying that they really, really enjoy it. And so if I can do this kind of thing again, that would be fantastic. Is there going to be a sequel to the Martian Revolution? If there is, it's already been coded into the show. And you would just have to know what you were looking for to be like, oh, that's what

he's doing because, yeah, the sequel is known if it happens and it should already be something that if you were really paying attention or if you just happened to accidentally have a realization in your head one day, oh, that's why he keeps saying that. Then you know what the sequel will be. Listen carefully, folks. Listen carefully and it's there. It's there. This is something we should have asked earlier, but have you written science fiction that is publicly available yet? Or was this your first science fiction. No, this is my first work of science fiction. This is my first work of like published fiction. I have stuff that I did like independently, like little short story things. And I did the three day novel contest a couple times. And I did record an audio book of one

of those. But that's like a, that's like a detective story that's using all the tropes from like Raymond Chandler and stuff. But no, this is this is the first science fiction. Got it. So in the next eight weeks when the Martian Revolution is over, there's nothing for us to fall. back on. Not fictionally. No, no, no, you can't be like, oh, I love this new stuff and he's got this old stuff. I mean, you know, maybe I'll resurrect some of those stories. They're all science fiction-e. All right. Well, I love the Martian Revolution. I'm looking forward to what comes next. And I'm looking forward to the history revolutions coming back to. It's all wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the show. I had a really great time. Thank you so much for

having me. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by IHeart Radio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it.

We answer every message. Email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those. platforms you can find us at D and K Universe. Don't be shy. Write to us. Betrayal Weekly is back for season two with brand new stories.

The detective comes driving up fast and just like screeches right in the parking lot. I swear I'm not crazy, but I think he poisoned me. I feel trapped. My breathing changes. I realize, wow, like he is not a mentor. He's pretty much a monster. But these aren't just stories. of destruction. They're stories of survival. I'm going to tell my story and I'm going to

hold my head up. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Dr. Angela Nealbarnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were meant to do. Listen to therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues through in-depth conversations

with experts from across the health care community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy, it's just that people don't know why it's healthy, and we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other. Listen to WebMD Health Discovered

on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance brof trying to tell us how to spend our own money? No, thank you. Instead, check out Brown Ambition. Each week, I, your host, Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice with a heavy dose of I-feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA.

Whether you're trying to invest for your future, navigate a toxic workplace, I got you. Listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.