In addition to being his teaching home, Oxford was an integral part of C.S. Lewis's life. His drafty rooms in The New Building, his pastoral residence at The Kilns, the trees lining Addison's Walk all shaped the life and writings of C.S. Lewis. Join co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill as they go on a tour of C.S. Lewis's Oxford with Dr. Simon Horobin, Professor of English Language & Literature at Magdalen College. Grab a copy of Dr. Horobin's book here ....
Jun 17, 2025•34 min•Season 7Ep. 12
Did C.S. Lewis believe in evolution or not? Join co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill for a bonus episode where we ask this question of Dr. John H. Walton, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. Dr. Walton is widely known for his Lost World Series books as well as his commentaries and teaching on the creation account in Scripture. Make sure to check out our main episode with Dr. Walton where we discuss how Lewis frame creation in his writings, particularly in Perelandra and T...
May 05, 2025•20 min•Season 7Ep. 11
C.S. Lewis fictionalized the creation account in several of his novels, most notably in Perelandra and The Magician's Nephew . Join co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill as they explore Lewis's imaginative and expansive creation narratives with Dr. John H. Walton, Emeritus Professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. Dr. Walton is widely known for his Lost World Series books as well as his own interpretations of the creation account in Scripture. You won't want to miss this week's discussion...
May 05, 2025•41 min•Season 7Ep. 10
“At the end of all our exploring, we will arrive where we began and know the place for the first time.” - “Little Gidding,” T.S. Eliot Listeners shared some amazing "Books Worth (re)Reading" in response to our first installment, so we are back with a sequel! Join co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill as they revisit the books that we (and our listeners) love and continue to reread. If you are a regular listener, please email us your list of books as well as an explanation of how they've shaped...
Apr 14, 2025•39 min•Season 7Ep. 9
Millions know him as a novelist and an Oxford Don, but C.S. Lewis's most lasting impact may be his role model as a Christian witness and evangelist. President of Wheaton College, Dr. Philip Ryken joins co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill to explore C.S. Lewis's views about the witness of Scripture and what he can teach us about our own approach to Christian witness. How did Lewis approach Scripture, doctrine, and evangelism and how might that inform our own efforts to bear witness to the tru...
Mar 04, 2025•30 min•Season 7Ep. 8
If this podcast is bound together by anything, it is a love of books—particularly, a love for books written by the Wade Center authors. Inspired by C.S. Lewis's habit and love of re-reading books, co-hosts Dr. Jim Beitler and Aaron Hill embark this week on an exploration of the books that they love and continue to reread. If you are a regular listener, please email us your list of books as well as an explanation of how they've shaped your mind, imagination, and spirit. Below are the first set of...
Feb 03, 2025•49 min•Season 7Ep. 7
Sometimes the best way to understand an author is by exploring their conversation partners? Who are they responding to? In his recent Hansen lectures—now released in book form through IVP as The Last Romantic— Dr. Jeffrey Barbeau explores the ways in which C.S. Lewis is indebted to, influenced by, and fulfills the aspirations of Romantic authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and even Schleiermacher. Join Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill as they sit ...
Jan 06, 2025•37 min•Season 7Ep. 6
In addition to creating myths themselves, the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is the stuff of myth and legend. Join Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill as they sit down with illustrator and professor John Hendrix to discuss his latest graphic novel, The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien . We discuss the visual language that Hendrix created for The Inklings, his creative process, and the ways in which Lewi...
Dec 09, 2024•42 min•Season 7Ep. 5
In our anxiety-ridden age, we are all seeking a home where we feel safe, loved, and accepted. But what happens if no place on earth and no moment in time satisfies your deepest longings for home and community? Join Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill as they connect with Amy Baik Lee, author of This Homeward Ache . Explore what C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald might teach us about the difference between home-sickness, nostalgia, and "thi...
Nov 11, 2024•35 min•Season 7Ep. 4
We're back! Join Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill as they connect with Jonathan Rodgers, author of The Wilderking Trilogy and host of the celebrated podcast, The Habit . Recently republished by our friends over at The Rabbit Room, Jim and Aaron discuss the first novel in Rodger's Wilderking trilogy, The Bark of the Bog Owl . Learn how to be a writer even if you don't feel like one, how to accept and embrace God's plan (and timing) for your life, and ...
Oct 07, 2024•40 min•Season 7Ep. 3
We're back! Join Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill as they sit down with Dr. Kristen L. Page to discuss everything from how C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien portrayed ecosystems and environmentalism in The Chronicles of Narnia to The Lord of the Rings , to how studying ecology can help us understand our place in the order of Creation, to Dr. Page's recent Hansen lectures published as the book, The Wonders of Creation . Don't forget to check out Dr. Page'...
Oct 07, 2024•44 min•Season 7Ep. 2
We're back! In our first new episode of Season 7, Dr. Jim Beitler, Director of the Marion E. Wade Center, and co-host Aaron Hill sit down for a jovial and wide-ranging discussion with Dr. Matthew J. Milliner. Topics ranges from one of Charles William's most praised works, The Descent of the Dove, to Dr. Milliner's recent book The Everlasting People : G.K. Chesterton and the First Nations , and the dangers of experimenting and re-inventing Christianity as a spiritual explorer....
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 5 min•Season 7Ep. 1
To celebrate the start of the Wade Center's new Director, Dr. Jim Beitler (Professor of English) we decided to re-release an archival episode recorded and released back in July 2019. 'Rhetoric’ is often a byword for hollow or negative speech. In truth, rhetoric is the art of persuasion. This week, Dr. Jim Beitler discusses his new book, Seasoned Speech: Rhetoric in the Life of the Church . Of the five figures featured in Beitler’s book, we discuss the rhetoric of C.S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers...
Jun 28, 2024•47 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Our dear friends and co-hosts of the podcast, Drs. Crystal & David C. Downing, are retiring as co-directors of the Wade Center in June. Professor of English, Dr. Jim Beitler will serve as the Wade Center's new director starting in July. To bid the Downings a fond farewell and pass the baton to our new director, we decided to share some of our favorite Wade author quotes. If you would like to tell the Downings how much the podcast has meant to you, send them an email at wade@wheaton.edu and w...
May 31, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Through his writings, C.S. Lewis emphasized the importance of travel and learning for through these two activities we gain the needed perspective to see life through the lens of "many places" and "many times." In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with author's Dr. Alan Snyder and Jamin Metcalf to discuss their recently published book on C.S. Lewis and history, Many Times & Many Places (2023). Does history have a plot or a coherent storyline? Can we read and inte...
Apr 26, 2024•43 min•Season 6Ep. 4
In the first half of the 20th century, England elites like T.S. Eliot were trying to devalue John Milton and elevate John Donne—exchanging one 17th-century English poet for another. At the height of World War II, C.S. Lewis took up arms against these oppressors and defended Milton in a series of lectures that would later be published as A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942). Since then, every aspiring scholar has had to grapple with Lewis, the lion in the path of Milton studies. In this week's episo...
Mar 29, 2024•57 min•Season 6Ep. 3
While he never visited America, C.S. Lewis and his works have greatly impacted the American religious landscape. While many general readers associate Lewis primarily with The Chronicles of Narnia (1950) , before his appearance on the cover of Time in 1947 Americans viewed C.S. Lewis quite differently. In this week's episode Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down to interview Dr. Mark A. Noll about his new book C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Reception, 1935–1947 (2024). Stay tuned until ...
Feb 29, 2024•49 min•Season 6Ep. 2
In many ways, C.S. Lewis was both a man ahead of and behind the times. His approach to science and theology was based upon his professorial comprehension of the Medieval world and what he called "The Model." In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss Lewis's last non-fiction book, The Discarded Image (1964). Based on a series of lectures and published posthumously, David, Crystal, and Aaron discuss how the treasures and insights contain...
Jan 26, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 1
From C.S. Lewis's childhood wardrobe, to Tolkien's desk, to countless unpublished letters and manuscripts, The Marion E. Wade Center is full of many wonderful things. To celebrate the January 2024 launch of our new "Wonders of the Wade" video series on YouTube , Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing, along with Producer Aaron Hill, sit down with Chloe DuBois and Elise Peterson, two student workers at the Wade, to discuss some of our most amazing finds and wonderful discoveries....
Dec 29, 2023•48 min•Season 5Ep. 12
J.R.R. Tolkien loved Beowulf, as evidenced by his landmark lecture, “The Monsters and the Critics,” his posthumously published prose translation (released in 2014), and his inclusion of Anglo-Saxon themes and words throughout The Lord of the Rings . In this week’s episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Dr. Ben Weber, Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College and specialist in Medieval literature to discuss the significance of Beowulf itself as literature, Tolkien’s fasc...
Nov 30, 2023•52 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Archived at the Wade Center are a set of letters between Warren Lewis and a missionary named Blanche Biggs. After the death of his brother, C.S. Lewis, Warren received a letter out of the blue from Blanche, who was serving as a missionary in Papua New Guinea. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Diana Glyer to discuss her new book The Major and the Missionary , which collects and examines this set of letters that reveal not only a new side of Warren but the dee...
Oct 27, 2023•37 min•Season 5Ep. 10
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted lives, industries, and even spirituality across the globe. In this week's episode, critically acclaimed author Philip Yancey sits down with Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing to discuss his new book called "Undone." Published by our close friends over at The Rabbit Room , Yancey's book "renders 17th century poet John Donne's meditations on suffering into modern English, revealing that Donne's world of the plague was not so very different from our own." Donne was a ...
Sep 29, 2023•46 min•Season 5Ep. 9
In Orthodoxy (1908), G.K. Chesterton shares his idea to write a romance in which an Englishman travels around the world and sets foot on a foreign land only to discover that he returned home. "How can we contrive to be astonished at the world and yet at home in it?" Published only four years later in 1912, Manalive is that story. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss Chesterton's novel about Innocence Smith, the man who breaks all ...
Aug 31, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Only G.K. Chesterton could write a detective novel about undercover poet cops bravely battling anarchists as a way of explaining the problem of evil and the revelation of God in nature. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to unpack all the twists and turns in The Man Who Was Thursday —a book that is equal parts profound, existential, exhilarating, and perplexing.
Jul 28, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Today's culture favors convenience and speed. Even finding the time to slow down and read a physical book feels impossible. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Dr. Corey Olsen, the Founder and President of Signum University, to discuss his long-running podcast on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, specifically his close reading of The Lord of the Rings . What can we learn about Tolkien, his writing, and our favorite characters by intentionally slowing down to analyz...
Jun 30, 2023•32 min•Season 5Ep. 6
How should we read, interpret, and apply history? How can historical misconceptions doom us to repeat the mistakes of the past? Is everything always getting better, or is it possible for new inventions and new ideas to be retrogressive--to take us a step backward? In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss C.S. Lewis's inaugural lecture at Cambridge University for The Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance, Literature entitled, "De Descript...
May 26, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 5
These days everyone is a critic. The internet is filled with—some might say "fueled" by—criticism of movies, books, art, society, everything. Over six decades ago, C.S. Lewis recognized and warned us that the wrong kind of critical posture can turn us not only into cynics but into cultural and ideological puritans. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss Lewis's book on this very topic titled, An Experiment in Criticism (1961). How d...
Apr 28, 2023•44 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Long before the internet was invented people wrote letters to C.S. Lewis and he wrote back, sending them meaningful, insightful, and compassionate letters. In this week's episode Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Marjorie Mead, Co-Director of the Wade Center to discuss a book of Letters to Children (1985). Marjorie reveals how the book was conceived, how some of the letters were found, and how Lewis's letters to children can still minister to us today--especially if we've grow up t...
Mar 31, 2023•36 min•Season 5Ep. 3
The works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are filled with magical lands, walking trees, and talking animals. They elicit wonder in our hearts not just for fictional places but for the real world around us. In this week's episode Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down to interview Dr. Kristen Page about her recent book The Wonder of Creation: Learning Stewardship from Narnia and Middle-Earth (2023). Stay tuned until the end to learn how you can get a discounted (and signed) copy of Dr. Page'...
Feb 24, 2023•47 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Even though he constantly reminded readers that he wasn't a theologian or a biblical scholar, C.S. Lewis wrote an entire book on how to read and reflect on the Psalms. In this week's episode, Drs. Crystal and David C. Downing sit down with Producer Aaron Hill to discuss Lewis's often overlooked and under-read book, Reflections on the Psalms (1958). Lewis deftly covers many of the problems that faithful Christians throughout the ages encounter in the Psalter. Why are so many Psalms violent and vi...
Jan 27, 2023•57 min•Season 5Ep. 1
