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. 1d ago

    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

  2. 1d ago

    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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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.

  6. Sep 21

    S03E08: HUM 213 Week 4 (Islam & Timothy): The Patriarch and the Caliph: A Two-Day Debate in Baghdad (AD 781)

    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

  7. Sep 14

    S04E05: HUM 223 Wk 3: Are Kings Gods? (Louis XIV, Lex, Rex, The Enlightenment, John Locke, & More)

    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

  8. Sep 14

    S03E07: HUM 213 Week 3: The Hero Who Learned to Endure

    Title: HUM 213 Week 3: The Hero Who Learned to Endure Description:Achilles has to choose between a long, forgettable life and a glory that never dies. A thousand years later, persecuted early Christians borrow that same Greek vocabulary of the hero’s contest—and aim it somewhere the old heroes never reached. A single thread pulled from the Aegean civilizations unit, traced into the New Testament. Keywords/Tags:Aegean civilizations, Bronze Age Greece, Homer, Iliad, Achilles, Greek hero, kleos, nostos, agōn, hypomonē, pathei mathos, Herakles, Paul, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews 12, Polycarp, early Christianity, humanities podcast, ESV

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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
    31
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Dr. Riste Simnjanovski
  • Show Website
    History Chats with Dr. S.

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