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 Downfall: Putin, Prigozhin, and the Fight for the Future of Russia.

Galeotti, a former academic banned from Russia, takes Putschcast listeners inside Yevgeny Prigozhin's criminal origins, his rise as "Putin's Chef," and the surreal day his Wagner forces seized a city, shot down military aircraft, and drove to within 200 km of Moscow.

Then, out of nowhere, the tanks stopped. The march ground to a halt. And Prigozhin called of his mutiny and just walked away.

Weeks later, his plane dropped out of the sky in a mystery that still has the Kremlin sweating. Galeotti unpacks what really happened, why the rebellion stalled, and whether it could all kick off again.

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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 tried to seize the future.

Díaz was no simple brute. He ruled through cooperation and selective repression, bringing stability and modernisation at a terrible cost. Land was stripped from Indigenous villages, foreign investors grew wealthy while most Mexicans stayed impoverished, and dissent was crushed by the Rurales. For more than 30 years he balanced order with exploitation.

From Pancho Villa's daring cavalry in the north to Emiliano Zapata's fiery land rebellion in the south, we track how peasants, workers and renegades turned a fight against a dictator into a brutal war for the soul of a nation. Was the revolution a betrayed dream, or did it reshape Mexico forever?

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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 of blood.

In this Putschcast episode, we explore the rise and fall of the Commune with a special focus on the revolutionary vanguard often left out of the history books: the women of Paris. Joining us is historian and modern France expert Dr. Carolyn J. Eichner, author of The Paris Commune: A Brief History. Together, we unpack how these women took up arms, demanded radical labour and social reforms, and fought on the barricades for a new world.

Was the Commune a desperate, doomed fantasy, or the ultimate blueprint for modern resistance?

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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 predecessor Formosus, appoints a deacon to speak for the rotting corpse, finds him guilty, cuts off his blessing fingers, and tosses him in the Tiber. It's horror, absurdist theatre, and political thriller rolled into one.

Beyond the freakshow, the Cadaver Synod reveals what happens when institutions eat themselves alive and that there has been some darkness at the heart of the Catholic Church from the very early days. Yet the questions it raises about revenge, legitimacy, and show trials echo into modern politics. 

Tune in for a darkly funny and disturbing conversation about the time the Vatican put a corpse on trial.

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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 20th Century.

We trace the three pivotal coups that shifted its destiny and examine why a triumvirate of military leaders sided with Imperial Germany in World War One, a decision leading to the empire’s dramatic downfall and the Armenian Genocide, an event deeply contested in Turkey today.

We analyse why the Battle of Gallipoli became a defining moment in modern Turkish history and explore the internal transformations that reshaped Ottoman society from within. Along the way, we meet the key protagonists, including an autocratic, anti-reform Sultan and the visionary Pashas who called themselves the Young Turks.

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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 Kremlin. Moscow responded with aerial bombardments and ruthless urban warfare. Yet unexpectedly, and at least in the interim, the Caucasian David won against the Russian Goliath.

To unpack this chaos, Putschcast is joined by Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert who was there during the First Chechen War and met Dudayev face-to-face multiple times. He experienced the rebel leader's defiance and unpredictability firsthand, as well as the atrocities that gained only limited Western media interest at the time.

Eventually banned from doing journalistic work in Russia, Tom takes listeners back to the chaotic days of the early 90s in post-Soviet Russia, when rubble littered the streets of Grozny and fierce nationalism turned into radical Islamist insurgency.

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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 Nasrallah's school principal. His uncle is a Hezbollah member. His mother remains a devoted follower.

Yet none of that protected him. Hezbollah thugs abducted and tortured Aycha for covering a secret arms deal between the "Party of God" and Syrian forces – supposed enemies turned quiet partners.

As Aycha explains, Hezbollah never needed to formally seize power – after assassinating Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 and staging a brief coup in May 2008, they already controlled Lebanon from the shadows.

If you think you understand Lebanese politics, Hezbollah, or the line between resistance and repression – think again.

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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 a direct competitor who had to die, with his severed head served on a silver platter, in preparation for the imminent Kingdom of God?

Returning Putschcast guest Garry Stevens from the History in the Bible podcast explains why John the Baptist is such a divisive figure. As always, he explains what the Bible actually says and whether there is any non-spiritual evidence for the "Dippers'" end-of-the-world preachings.

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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 revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture that fueled the fight for freedom that sent shockwaves through slaveholding global powers, including France, England and Spain.

We confront the harrowing French response, initiated by Napoleon, intended to reconquer the fledgling nation via a brutal campaign that historians increasingly examine for its genocidal dimensions. We also learn why the small island nation that we know now as Haiti never really had a chance to become a propserous society.

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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 Kaiser's sudden flight into exile, events that ignited the November Revolution. But on Putschcast we also ask, was this a true revolution? And why did the old elites remain so firmly in power?

Joined by historian Andrew Bonnell, we explore why many Germans were unaware of defeat until the Treaty of Versailles was signed, and how the generals' "Stab-in-the-Back Myth" cynically transferred blame, poisoning the new Weimar democracy from the very start.

Find the book discussed on the podcast here.

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