Putschcast
A global podcast about Riots, Rebellions and Revolutions. Putschcast explores how power changes hands, whether through internal social and political decay, external pressure, popular resistance or a pure stroke of luck.
Featuring experts in their field, every episode explores a unique moment in history that led to profound changes in the lives of the people affected by it.
For the latest coup d'état, follow Putschcast on Youtube, Instagram or www.putschcast.com
Episodes
24 episodes
#23 Soviet Union - How the 1991 August Coup launched modern Russia
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 an...
#22 Argentina - Perón's populist Power, legendary Women and hidden Nazis
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 re...
#21 Australia - Colonial Uprisings, Race Riots and a Military Coup
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 cou...
#20 Greece - Forging a Nation through Revolution and Civil War
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...
#19 Russia - Prigozhin's March on Moscow
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 t...
#18 Mexico - Another Revolution devoures its Children
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 Revolutio...
#17 France - The radical Women of the Paris Commune
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 th...
#16 Vatican - The Cadaver Synod
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<...
#15 Ottoman Empire - 3 Coups and a lost World War
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
#14 Chechnya - Humiliation leads to Assassination
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 Russ...
#13 Lebanon - Food, Shelter and Torture...the Hezbollah System
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....
#12 Galilee - Jesus' Revolutionary Forerunner
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, immora...
#11 Haiti - Successful Revolution & Failed Genocide
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 upheava...
#10 Imperial Germany - A Kaiser prefers Exile over Empire
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...
#9 Southern USA - Violent Prophecy vs Slavery
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 ...
#8 Renaissance Germany - Annihilation of Peasants
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 a...
#7 Venezuela - Local Voices on Trump's latest Gamble
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 i...
#6 2025 Review - Korea, Nepal, Madagascar & Guinea-Bissau
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-host...
#5 Turkey - A Military Coup to save Democracy
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 end...
#4 Syria - Face to Face with Assad
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 Austral...
#3 Ancient Egypt - Moses the first Revolutionary
He was a prince, an outlaw, a prophet. Or was he? He stood before the most powerful ruler on Earth and delivered a single, thunderous demand: "Let my people go!" Long before Spartacus, Moses led a slave revolt that children still le...
#2 East Germany - Palace Coup behind the Berlin Wall
After the gruesome end of World War II and in a city filled with rubble, a disciple of Stalin built a fortress. He was the goateed architect of German Socialism who made it onto the cover of Time magazine and who didn’t shy away from setting up...
#1 Syria - The Rise of al-Sharaa
From most-wanted terrorist and enemy No. 1, with a US$10 million bounty on his head, to a respected statesman giving a historic speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, ha...
