History Chats with Dr. S.

Dr. Riste Simnjanovski
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Content for university level students seeking information about specific undergraduate and graduate level topics.

  1. 2h ago

    S05E01: (BUSA3340, Wk1): Before You Finish Your Coffee — The World in Your Morning (Globalization Intro)

    California Baptist University BUSA3340 (Week 1) Title: Before You Finish Your Coffee — The World in Your Morning Description: 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

  2. Oct 12

    S03E11: HUM213 Wk7: The Contest of 1401: How Losing Built the Renaissance (Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, & Black Death)

    Title: The Contest of 1401: How Losing Built the Renaissance Description: 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 history Scripture (ESV): Genesis 22:8; Jeremiah 6:16; Genesis 22:14; John 1:29; Proverbs 16:9

  3. Oct 12

    S04E09: HUM223 Wk7: Lights All Askew: The Eclipse That Unsettled the Modern Mind (Dali, Newton, Einstein & More)

    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 history Scripture (ESV): Colossians 1:17; James 1:17; Hebrews 13:8

  4. Oct 5

    S03E10: HUM213 Wk 6 The Cowherd Who Couldn't Sing: Beowulf, Caedmon, and the Song in the Dark

    Title: HUM 213 Week 6 – The Cowherd Who Couldn't Sing: Beowulf, Caedmon, and the Song in the Dark Description: 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. Keywords Beowulf; 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

  5. Oct 5

    S04E08: HUM 223 Week 6 – Two Manifestos and a Willing Slave: 1848, Marx, Mill, and the Fight Over Who Gets to Be Free

    Title HUM 223 Week 6 – Two Manifestos and a Willing Slave: 1848, Marx, Mill, and the Fight Over Who Gets to Be Free Description In 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? Keywords Communist 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

  6. Sep 28

    S04E07: HUM223 Wk5: Did He Who Made the Lamb Make Thee? William Blake vs. the Clockwork Universe

    Episode Title HUM 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

  7. Sep 28

    S03E09: HUM213 Wk 5: Why Do We Call It July and August? Caesar, Christ, and the Rise of Rome

    Title:HUM213 Week 5 – Why Do We Call It July and August? Caesar, Christ, and the Rise of Rome Description: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

  8. Sep 21

    S04E06: HUM 223 Wk4: The Man in the Bathtub: David, Marat, and the Revolution's Search for a Savior

    EPISODE TITLEThe Man in the Bathtub: David, Marat, and the Revolution's Search for a Savior DESCRIPTION July 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. S I 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.

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About

Content for university level students seeking information about specific undergraduate and graduate level topics.

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Riste Simnjanovski
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. Riste Simnjanovski
  • Show Website
    History Chats with Dr. S.

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