Though I’ve been alluding to it for awhile, I think it’s
about time to formally announce that The History of Rome is getting married on
September 23rd.* What I have not alluded to is that, after a brief honeymoon,
we are throwing The History of Rome’s Research Assistant in the backseat and
moving to Austin, TX. What’s that you say? You couldn’t be happier for
us? Well, don’t get too excited, because this does have ramifications for
the show schedule.
*By an eerie
coincidence this happens to be Augustus’s birthday. The sacred chickens appear
to be gorging themselves.
The long and short of it is that The History of Rome is
going to be off the air for about a month. The last show before the wedding will
post Sept 13 and the first show back after the break will be Oct 18. Between
the wedding, the honeymoon and the move, I just don’t think I’ll have the time
to focus enough on the show to make it any good so I’m not even going to try
(and I think the Really-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. History of Rome would have justifiable grounds for an
annulment if she caught me working on the podcast during our honeymoon).
When it comes to the long term future of the show I want to
address the growing number of calls in the comments for me to press on past 476 and cover the Byzantine
Empire in full. I don’t want to shut the door on the idea
completely (because who knows how I’ll feel when it actually comes time to fish
or cut bait), but to be clear: this is probably not going to happen. Not only
is the Byzantine Empire outside my comfort zone academically, but I plan on
heading back to school after establishing residency in Texas and am skeptical
of my ability to keep up the pace of a weekly podcast and knock out a Master’s
Degree at the same time. So, like it says it right there in the header: A weekly podcast tracing the history of the
Roman Empire, beginning with Aeneas's arrival in Italy and ending (someday)
with the exile of Romulus Augustulus, last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
In the long long term, I have enjoyed this all so much that I
would definitely want to return to podcasting when life/school/career permit,
but now we’re talking 2 ½ - 3 years out and in technological terms that’s an
eternity. By that point, to be blunt, podcasting might be obsolete. So while I
have been fiddling off an on with an American History project (that has grown
from a simple, biography driven show on the Presidents to an overarching economic-political
history of the United States*)
and often get lost in Wikipedia pages on Ancient Mesopotamia (Ur! Woooo!), whether or not podcasting per se turns out to be the platform for
those projects remains to be seen.
*Dear International
Listeners: this will be cool, I promise.
So to sum up: Episodes for the next four weeks? Yes!
Episodes for the four weeks after that? No. Episodes for another year (or more)
until we get to the fall of the Western Roman Empire?
Yes! Episodes after that covering the Byzantine Empire?
Probably not. Some future Mike Duncan history project covering a yet-to-be-determined topic on a yet-to-be-invented
New Media platform? Boy I hope so; I'm having a ball.
Mike
[Update]: For those of you who are curious, our wedding page is located here. The picture is from New Year's 07, which we spent at the Kennedy School (and had such a good time that we decided to throw the wedding there).
