NSA Students Start Podcast

At New Saint Andrews, we say the primary subjects you take are the professors themselves. So what would it be like to study with Dr. Chris Schlect? What would a class with Mr. Brent Pinkall be like? Two NSA students have taken it upon themselves to create a podcast show that gives access to the teachers at NSA. 

Ian McMillen, a sophomore, and Joel Thiele, a freshman, are the hosts of this new podcast show called, Exploring the Arts. They sit down with various members of the NSA community–faculty, staff, and students–and discuss classes, academic careers, and the liberal arts. 

The podcast show was Joel’s idea. He says, “This has been a project that I was thinking about starting about a year ago.” Joel then reached out to Ian to help: “I approached him about partnering with me on the project.”

“Ideally this would be really helpful for people who are considering coming to NSA or students who just want to get to know their teachers better.”

Ian says that he has a lot of experience in the video world including short films, broadcasts, podcasts, video blogs, and documentaries. He explains the vision for the podcast saying, “Ideally this would be really helpful for people who are considering coming to NSA or students who just want to get to know their teachers better.”

Joel adds, “The podcast is a series of long-form, open conversations with the fascinating people in the NSA community, where we delve into their life and career leading to NSA and their personal walk with Christ.”

In the first show, found on NSA's Podbean podcast website and YouTube channel, Ian and Joel chat with Dr. Chris Schlect, Senior Fellow of History at NSA. In this show, Ian and Joel ask him about his educational career and how he got into history. 

At one point in the interview, Dr. Schlect comments on how he teaches Herodotus every year to his students. It is the same material every year but he adds, “If teaching is simply talking about Herodotus and promulgating Herodotus, it’s not very interesting. What I try to do is see Herodotus through my students. And to the students it’s always fresh, and it becomes fresh to me as it’s fresh to them.”

Schlect also discusses his time in NSA’s early days as the first full-time employee of the college. 

In the next episode of Exploring the Arts, Ian and Joel sit down with Brent Pinkall, lecturer of Rhetoric at NSA. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel and click the bell notification icon to be emailed when each new episode is published.