History Chats with Dr. S.

California Baptist UniversityBUSA3340 (Week 1)Title: Before You Finish Your Coffee — The World in Your MorningDescription: Before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee, people on four or five continents have already served you. In this episode, Dr. S opens a new series on international business by tracing an ordinary morning across the globe — from a ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal to a pencil that no single person knows how to make. We explore what globalization is (and why it isn’t new), why nations trade at all from Adam Smith to David Ricardo’s idea of comparative advantage, the tools governments use to manage trade, and the institutions born at Bretton Woods. Then we look at the billions of lives touched by global trade, from falling extreme poverty to Kenya’s M-Pesa, and give a fair hearing to the people and communities globalization has left behind. Along the way, Scripture asks a question that has never been more relevant: who is my neighbor?Keywords: globalization, international business, international trade, comparative advantage, absolute advantage, mercantilism, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Suez Canal, Ever Given, I Pencil, Leonard Read, Bretton Woods, World Trade Organization, IMF, World Bank, tariffs, digital divide, M-Pesa, anti-globalization, Trade Adjustment Assistance, faith and business, Christian worldview, Good Samaritan

Title: The Contest of 1401: How Losing Built the RenaissanceDescription:In 1401, plague-weary Florence held a competition for new bronze doors on its baptistery, and every entrant had to depict Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 22. Lorenzo Ghiberti won. Filippo Brunelleschi lost, left for Rome with Donatello, and studied the ancient ruins. That detour embodied the Renaissance call of "ad fontes" (back to the sources) and set up one of history's great comebacks: the dome of Florence Cathedral, dedicated in 1436 to music by Guillaume Dufay. We follow the rivalry from the Bargello panels to the "Gates of Paradise," and reflect on provision, humility, and the God who establishes our steps.Keywords/Tags: Italian Renaissance, Florence, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, 1401 baptistery competition, Sacrifice of Isaac, Florence Cathedral dome, Duomo, Donatello, Gates of Paradise, ad fontes, humanism, Black Death, Medieval to Renaissance, Dufay, art history, humanities, faith and historyScripture (ESV): Genesis 22:8; Jeremiah 6:16; Genesis 22:14; John 1:29; Proverbs 16:9

Title: Lights All Askew: The Eclipse That Unsettled the Modern Mind (Dali, Newton, Einstein & More)Description: On May 29, 1919, a Quaker astronomer stood on a cloudy island off Africa, waiting to see if starlight would bend. When it did, Newton's clockwork universe gave way to Einstein's relativity, and the modern world promptly confused relativity with relativism. In this episode we trace that "no fixed reference point" mood through Cubism, Schoenberg's atonality, stream-of-consciousness novels, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Yeats's "The Second Coming," then follow Salvador Dalí from the melting watches of The Persistence of Memory (1931) to the startling stillness of Christ of St. John of the Cross (1951). Along the way: what Einstein's theory actually held constant, and what Scripture says about the One "in whom all things hold together."Keywords/Tags: Einstein, relativity, 1919 eclipse, Arthur Eddington, modernism, Age of Anxiety, Salvador Dalí, Persistence of Memory, Christ of St. John of the Cross, Surrealism, Cubism, Schoenberg, Yeats, Heisenberg, art history, humanities, faith and historyScripture (ESV): Colossians 1:17; James 1:17; Hebrews 13:8

Title:HUM 213 Week 6 – The Cowherd Who Couldn't Sing: Beowulf, Caedmon, and the Song in the DarkDescription:A shy cowherd slips out of a feast so no one will hand him the harp, and that night a dream turns him into the first named poet in the English language. Dr. S tells the story of Caedmon's Hymn alongside Beowulf: the monster-haunted mead-hall, a hero who believes glory is the only thing that outlasts death, an old king staring down a dragon, and one of the most heartbreaking passages on grief ever written. Along the way: a manuscript that nearly burned, a ship burial full of gold, the word Tolkien borrowed for Middle-earth, and ESV Scripture from Genesis to Absalom to the empty tomb. Two songs from the same dark world—one ends at a funeral pyre, the other at the Creator.KeywordsBeowulf; Caedmon's Hymn; Caedmon; Bede; Whitby; Abbess Hild; Old English poetry; Anglo-Saxon; Seamus Heaney; Grendel; Hrothgar; dragon; Father's Lament; Sutton Hoo; Tolkien; Middle-earth; heroic code; medieval literature; Christian worldview; history podcast

TitleHUM 223 Week 6 – Two Manifestos and a Willing Slave: 1848, Marx, Mill, and the Fight Over Who Gets to Be FreeDescriptionIn 1848, two manifestos appeared in the same year: one in a London print shop, one in a small chapel in Seneca Falls, New York. Dr. S tells the story of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' call for revolution, John Stuart Mill's startling argument that men wanted women not as forced slaves but as willing ones, Leopold von Ranke's quest to write history "as it actually was," Ernest Renan's scandalous Life of Jesus, and the Realist novelists who made readers look at the world as it really was. Along the way, we bring Scripture into the conversation — from Genesis 1 to Nathan's parable — and ask the question the whole century was asking: who gets to be fully human?KeywordsCommunist Manifesto; Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels; 1848; John Stuart Mill; The Subjection of Women; Seneca Falls; Elizabeth Cady Stanton; women's rights; Leopold von Ranke; historicism; Ernest Renan; Life of Jesus; Realism; Charles Dickens; Mark Twain; nineteenth century; humanities; Christian worldview; history podcast

Episode TitleHUM 223: Week 5Did He Who Made the Lamb Make Thee? William Blake vs. the Clockwork UniverseEpisode DescriptionAs a boy, William Blake swore he saw a tree full of angels, and his father nearly punished him for lying. He grew up to be an engraver, poet, and self-styled prophet who went to war against a world that trusted only what it could measure. In ten minutes, Dr. S traces Blake's revolt against Enlightenment reason: the paired poems "The Lamb" and "The Tyger," the compass-wielding figure of Urizen, and the preface to Milton that became England's beloved hymn "Jerusalem." Along the way, discover how deeply Blake drew on Scripture, from Job's whirlwind to the Lamb of God, and why a man buried in an unmarked grave is still sung by thousands today.KeywordsWilliam Blake; The Tyger; The Lamb; Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Jerusalem hymn; And did those feet in ancient time; Dark Satanic Mills; Chariots of Fire; Urizen; The Ancient of Days; Romanticism; Romantic poetry; the sublime; Edmund Burke; Enlightenment; Isaac Newton; Deism; Hubert Parry; Book of Job; Lamb of God; Bible and literature; faith and imagination; English poetry; art history; humanities; history podcast

Title:HUM213 Week 5 – Why Do We Call It July and August? Caesar, Christ, and the Rise of RomeDescription:Why do we call it July and August? The answer takes us back to Rome, where one man turned a republic into an empire and got a month named after him, just like his adoptive father. In this episode, Dr. S follows Rome from a people who borrowed brilliantly to an empire that built for crowds. He also traces the titles Rome gave Caesar: son of god, savior, and good news. The early Christians took those same words and gave them to someone else, starting with a Roman soldier at the cross. The episode ends beneath the Pantheon's dome of heaven, with a question: what does a nation hope to be when it tells its founding story?Keywords:Ancient Rome; July and August; Roman calendar; month names; Julius Caesar; Caesar Augustus; Octavian; Roman Republic; Roman Empire; Etruscans; Hannibal; Pax Romana; paterfamilias; divi filius; Son of God; savior; gospel; euangelion; ichthys; Christ and Caesar; early Christianity; New Testament; Roman concrete; Colosseum; Pantheon; Virgil; Aeneid; ESV; humanities; history podcast

EPISODE TITLEThe Man in the Bathtub: David, Marat, and the Revolution's Search for a SaviorDESCRIPTIONJuly 13, 1793. A young woman with a kitchen knife walks into a Paris apartment where a sick revolutionary is working from his bathtub. What happens next inspired one of the most famous paintings in the world, and a strange new kind of faith. In this episode of History Chats with Dr. S, we follow the painter Jacques-Louis David from the pastel world of the Rococo to the marble-hard ideals of Neoclassicism, through the French Revolution and into the court of Napoleon, and we ask why a revolution that closed churches ended up painting a martyr in the pose of Christ. Told from a Christian perspective, with respect for listeners of every background. Perfect for students, art lovers, and anyone curious about what people trust when they stop trusting God. No background needed.KEYWORDS / TAGSJacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, Jean-Paul Marat, Charlotte Corday, French Revolution, Reign of Terror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, Coronation of Napoleon, Oath of the Horatii, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Fragonard, The Swing, Pietà, Robespierre, Cult of the Supreme Being, Temple of Reason, art history podcast, Enlightenment, 18th century history, Christian history podcast, Christian worldview, faith and art, church history, Romans 5:8, Psalm 146, Ecclesiastes 3:11, history podcast for students, History Chats with Dr. SI swapped the curly apostrophe in "Revolution's" for a straight one, which is the only character change. The accent in "Pietà" is kept, since most feeds handle it fine. If your host is picky about non-ASCII characters, "Pieta" is the safe alternative.

Episode Title: HUM 213 Week 4 (Islam & Timothy): The Patriarch and the Caliph: A Two-Day Debate in Baghdad (AD 781)Episode Description:It’s about the year 781. A Christian church leader is invited to the court of the caliph in Baghdad, one of the most powerful rulers on earth, for two days of hard questions about the Trinity, the cross, the Gospels, and the prophet Muhammad. The caliph won’t be persuaded, and neither will Timothy. But the conversation, which Timothy wrote down himself, is one of the earliest Christian and Muslim exchanges on record, and it is remarkably respectful. In this episode of History Chats with Dr. S, we sit in the room, follow the argument, and uncover a forgotten world: a Syriac-speaking church that stretched from Baghdad to China, translated Aristotle for the caliph, and raised a stone monument in Xi’an. Told from a Christian perspective, with respect for listeners of every background. Perfect for students, history lovers, and anyone curious about how people of different faiths can disagree without contempt. No background needed.Keywords/Tags:Timothy I, Patriarch Timothy, Caliph al-Mahdi, Christian Muslim dialogue, Church of the East, Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad, early Islam, Islamic history, medieval history, world history podcast, church history, Christian history podcast, Syriac Christianity, Xi’an Stele, Nestorian Stele, Christians under Muslim rule, dhimmi, Christianity in Asia, Christian apologetics, 1 Peter 3:15, the cross, Trinity, Harun al-Rashid, Arabian Nights, Christian and Muslim conversation, history podcast for students, History Chats with Dr. S

Title:S04E05: HUM 223 Wk 3: Are Kings Gods? (Louis XIV, Lex, Rex, The Enlightenment, John Locke, & More)Description:A French bishop tells Louis XIV he’s a god, Bible in hand. A dying Scottish minister, his own book already burned by the public hangman, answers with the opposite argument from the same Scripture. Trace the line from Samuel Rutherford’s Lex, Rex through John Locke to the Declaration of Independence—and the New Testament verse that quietly corrects them both.Keywords/Tags:Enlightenment, divine right of kings, Bossuet, Louis XIV, Versailles, Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex, social contract, John Locke, natural rights, Declaration of Independence, consent of the governed, Romans 13, 1 Peter 2, humanities podcast, ESV