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