I had CNN International running on the one and only TV in the building’s exercise room, where I was alone, feebly exercising.

It was a Saturday, because CNN, the U.S.-based news network, which uses a London office for its Europe/Middle East/Africa outlets, was running its “BackStory” feature, which appears on weekends and recaps what CNN feels were the most important stories of the week.

And in span of five minutes, they ran three stories on countries in upheaval. Ukraine, Venezuela, Thailand. May have been back-to-back-to-back, too.

People in the streets. Cops in riot gear. Smoke and flames. Bricks and tear gas canisters flying.

And then it struck me again, anew. We live in the Age of Revolution.

If you take a class in European history, eventually you will come to the revolutionary year of 1848, when major uprisings shook much of the continent, especially France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and the Austrian Empire.

What we have seen the past few years may be even bigger, in terms of depth and breadth and sweep.

First came the Arab Spring, in 2011, which led to governments being overthrown in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and left another polity, Syria, mired in a civil war still going on. Bahrain had serious trouble before the rulers imposed control, and several other countries saw demonstrations.

How those incidents will sort out, we still do not know. Meantime, we have more.

Ukraine is on the verge of economic collapse and torn by regionalism and a deep divide in how the country should be oriented — toward Europe or toward Russia. The president, democratically elected, fled the country over the weekend, and the revolutionaries appear to have won.

Thailand has been unstable — or Bangkok has been, anyway — for much of the year. And now Venezuela has joined the action.

What is going on?

My sense is that people have more information than they ever have had. Even in what many in the First World continue to think of as broken, Third World countries, social media has grown sharply, and people are aware of how others live.

They see and hear media about wealthy and stable and politically open societies. The authorities cannot choke off all information, and even the most basic information from the outside world often leads to dissatisfaction.

The poor and oppressed and disenfranchised are perhaps emboldened by the example of others uprisings. Or perhaps they reach a boiling point all on their own.

Either way, they take to the streets. Increasingly. (And most of us from countries with democratically elected leaders find ourselves instinctively pulling for the revolutionaries.)

Where will the next revolution take place? Pick a place almost anywhere in Asia, Africa or South America, and you may be proved right in the next few months.

This is the Age of Revolution. We may not notice it, on a day-to-day basis, but then CNN runs video on uprisings in three countries separated by chasms of culture and history … and it comes crashing home.