Putschcast

From the Dutch in the 1600s to Trump and Pauline Hanson in Australia today, what connects them is a backlash against revolutions, one of which is taking place right now. Our special guest, Fareed Zakaria from CNN and the Washington Post, tries to find the answers, including how AI might change the world we live in. Fareed is the author of Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the...

The story of Asma al-Assad is one of the most bizarre and morally corrosive chapters in modern Middle Eastern history. But how did "Emma from West London" end up in the presidential palace in Damascus? It began with a cousin's connection, a mother at the Syrian embassy, and a romance with a shy ophthalmology student who was never supposed to rule. What followed was a Vogue cover, a...

Why did Hamas launch the October 7 attacks, and what did they actually expect to happen? October 7 shattered regional stability and thrust a small, blockaded enclave into a total war that rewrote modern history. But how did Hamas actually seize power in the first place?  Surprisingly, it began through a democratic election in 2006, followed by a violent 2007 self-coup where Hamas used military for...

February 1948. Communist stormtroopers marched through the freezing streets of Prague while regular citizens watched in stunned disbelief. This single week shattered Czechoslovakia’s democracy and forced a young, affluent bourgeois boy named Václav Havel into state-mandated exile from his own country's intellectual elite. What followed across four decades was a surreal, high-stakes battle of...

When corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych turned his back on the European Union to side with Vladimir Putin, he sparked a revolution. What began as peaceful protests on Maidan quickly escalated into a deadly crackdown, leaving scores killed and wounded. But the sudden departure of the 'Kremlin's man in Kyiv' was only the beginning.  In this episode of Putschcast, we trace the direct...

August 1991. Soviet tanks rolled into the centre of Moscow while most people were away on their summer holidays. This included the two most prominent politicians of the world's largest country and nuclear power, arch-rivals Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. What followed was a chaotic, alcohol-fueled gamble by communist hardliners, including KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov. While Gorbachev wa...

Caught between absolute power and violent coups, Juan Perón experienced both sides of political revolutions.  Following a short imprisonment by military rivals, hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets to demand his release, paving his way to the presidency. This was just the beginning of a chaotic legacy, as the women by his side also made history: Evita Perón remains a legend to t...

For a special Aussie edition of Putschcast, all four hosts come together to review some rebellious periods in Australian colonial history, hardly known even to most Aussies. First up, the 1808 Rum Rebellion, Australia's only military coup. When Governor William Bligh (yes, that Bligh from the Mutiny on the Bounty) tried to shut down the New South Wales Corps' booze fuelled monopoly, the...

It wasn't just a war of independence, it was a civil war, a bloodbath, and the blueprint for modern nationalism all rolled into one. The Greek Revolution of the 1820s reshaped Europe, but the real story is darker and more complicated than the heroic tales suggest. We chat with Dr. Michalis Sotiropoulos, historian of modern Europe, author of Liberalism after the Revolution . We ask: was there...

He was a hot-dog seller who became a warlord. A convicted criminal who commanded the world's most feared mercenary army, the Wagner Group. And then he did what no one had dared since the Soviet collapse: he pointed Russian tanks at Moscow and took a swing at the Kremlin. On this episode, we sit down with Mark Galeotti, a leading expert on Russian security and organised crime, and co-author of...

In the early 20th century, Mexico was a playground for a dictator, foreign corporations and a tiny elite while millions of peasants lived in desperate poverty. In this Putschcast episode, we ride into the chaos of the Mexican Revolution . Joining us is Dr Robert Weis , an expert on modern Mexico, who walks us through the long collapse of Porfirio Díaz's regime and the revolutionaries who trie...

How could a city break away from its own country to try and build a radical, democratic utopia from scratch? In the middle of a war with a foreign power. In the spring of 1871, Paris did exactly that. Amidst the chaos and starvation of the Franco-Prussian War, the working class rose up to establish the Paris Commune, a revolutionary experiment that lasted just 72 days before being crushed in a sea...

What happens when a dead Pope is dug up, dressed in vestments, and put on trial by his living successor? A necrophilic coup? Yes, this story is true and Steve Guerra from The History of the Papacy podcast joins Putschcast to unpack the Cadaver Synod of 897 AD, the single most bizarre chapter in Rome's history. Steve walks us through the grisly scene: Pope Stephen VI exhumes his dead predecess...

111 years after the Armenian Genocide, we provide context around the turbulent years that lead up to the massacres and the subsuquent fall of the Ottoman Empire.  In this episode, historian Professor Adrian Jones and political scientist Dr Tezcan Gümüş dismantle the narrative of the "Sick Man of Europe" to explore the empire's desperate gamble on the world stage at the start of the...

Exactly thirty years ago, a single Russian missile strike, guided by his satellite phone, ended the life of former Soviet General turned rebel leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev. For five years, he had been in charge of a tiny speck of land in Russia's deep south called Chechnya. His fellow Caucasian mountain rebels put up a fight against the once-mighty Red Army that humiliated Boris Yeltsin in the Kr...

Western media calls Hezbollah a terrorist group and leaves it at that. This Putschcast episode does something more: it shows how the organisation governs; terrorising its own people while supporting others. Journalist Dr Rami Aycha offers an inside look at Hassan Nasrallah – his rise, 30-year reign, and brutal death by Israeli forces. Aycha's connection is deeply personal: his father was Nasr...

John the Baptist was not just a prophet and religious firebrand; he was also a political revolutionary, according to the Bible. He took on the Roman client King Herod Antipas and called for more equality while challenging the status quo, immoral behaviour, and hypocritical religious leaders. However, what was his relationship and connection to Jesus Christ? Was he merely the forerunner, or was he...

The Haitian Revolution is the only successful slave revolt that birthed a free republic. Professor Nicolai von Eggers brings a crucial perspective to understanding the revolution not just as a military event, but as a profound political upheaval in the colony of Saint-Domingue, which at the time, was the world's most profitable colony. We unpack the radical ideas of former slave and revolutio...

He was once hailed as the "Kaiser of Peace." By 1918, his empire lay in ruins, and millions had died in vain. To avert a "Russian scenario" like the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Germany's military dictatorship under Hindenburg and Ludendorff made a desperate, calculated move: they handed power to civilians to seek peace. We trace the sailors' mutiny in Kiel and the Kais...

In August 1831, Nat Turner , an enslaved preacher, acted on visions he believed were divine. The uprising he led in Virginia, is often remembered in stark terms: a bloody slave rebellion that hardened the South’s defenses of slavery. But the true story of how his story was told during the past two centuries, is far more complex. Was Nat Turner's faith a source of personal liberation, a strate...

Five hundred years ago, a radical firebrand emerged to take Martin Luther's Reformation in a far more dangerous direction. While Luther preached spiritual reform, Thomas Müntzer demanded a heaven on earth, fusing scripture with revolution and arming the peasantry against the feudal lords. On Putschcast , we trace this rivalry from the theological schism to the bloody Peasants' War of 152...

The Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been captured, not while on a state visit abroad, but at his own stronghold in Caracas. While the US President opted for a sudden military operation, regime change was not the ultimate goal. So, was it a putsch from abroad and how did people on the streets respond? After years of economic strife, international sanctions, and a divided opposition, the cou...

At Putschcast, we can’t cover all the riots, rebellions, and revolutions that occurred over the past 12 months, plus we have only launched this global podcast in the second half of 2025. Accordingly, in a special episode, all four co-hosts gather in the Putschcast interrogation room to share a coup that, they insist, people need to know about.  Dave: South Korea - President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted...

In 1980, Türkiye was teetering on the brink of civil war amid relentless political violence and economic decline. To end the chaos, the military, led by General Kenan Evren, seized power in a coup that surprised no one. The move was swiftly endorsed by Washington, preoccupied with Cold War priorities. But was this a necessary reset or a disaster for Turkish democracy, and why did the U.S. greenlig...

Initially predicted to fall during the 2011 Arab Spring, Bashar al-Assad clung to power through a devastating civil war, surviving only after critical military intervention from Russia and Iran. It was in the midst of this conflict that Australian journalist Luke Waters secured a rare one-on-one interview with the President in Damascus. On this episode of Putschcast, Luke reflects on that historic...