The Plunge with Derek Holser

By derekholserSociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Christianity Arts

The Plunge with Derek Holser episodes

October 30 Petronija Makaveeva | Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty
Welcome to Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty. This is Episode Three of our second season of The Human Series. This series is an attempt to explore the full range, depth, and wonder of this mystery of being human.

Joining me today is Petronija Makaveeva.

Petronja Pavlinka Makaveeva was born in 1976 in the Republic of Macedonia. She is an iconographer and mosaicist. Through her work as a journalist and contributor to various television programs—and later as a creator of documentary projects focused on archaeology and Macedonian cultural heritage—she became drawn to ecclesiastical art, icon painting, and monastic life.

She spent seven years at the Monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene, where she honed her skills in fresco and icon painting. In 2001, she began her first painting workshop at the Bigorski Monastery, later continuing her work at the Monastery of Saint Mary Magdalene in Dojran.

She has held ten art exhibitions across Europe, and her mosaics and frescoes can be found in numerous places of worship and public squares. In 2016, she moved to Italy, where she created a fresco for the baptistery of the Orthodox church in Neive—the town where she still lives and works today. As of 2025, she has embarked on a new chapter, dedicating herself to research and creative endeavors within the realm of iconography and Orthodoxy in the United States.

Till today she has been working as an iconographer for 30 years.

From Petronija: An introduction to my art: following university studies in painting in France, as well as various courses and training in drawing and iconography, I decided to move into the world of icons, frescoes, and mosaics.

The discipline within art history that I focus on is known as iconography. I am a mosaicist and iconographer—or, in Greek, an "hagiographer"—and the works I create are liturgical icons that carry theological significance. The primary technique used in the world of Byzantine iconography involves powdered pigments. Depending on the binding agent used to disperse the color, different decorative techniques can be distinguished: Tempera:
This term refers to any technique that uses organic substances (such as egg yolk, rabbit-skin glue—either in granular or ready-to-use form—or gum arabic) as a binder for pigments. This is the technique I employ in my own work.

Fresco: A technique in which the surface being decorated—freshly applied plaster (such as lime putty)—acts as the binder for the pigments. Just as with my frescoes, I use traditional materials for my mosaics. They are primarily composed of fragments of stone, terracotta, glass paste, and Venetian glass, which are applied to a surface using a binder to form the desired image.

All of my works serve a decorative purpose and are intended to adorn various spaces—most notably sacred, monumental, or private architectural settings. Thanks to their durability and resistance to change, they can be installed on both floors and walls.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 New Book! Lightgliders ➡ Grab it NOW: https://tinyurl.com/yc8zcztc

40 min
October 23 Tony Hale | Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty
Welcome to Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty.

This is Episode Two of our second season of The Human Series. This series is an attempt to explore the full range, depth, and wonder of this mystery of being human.

Joining me today is Tony Hale. Tony Hale is a three time Emmy award winning actor known for such work as ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, VEEP, BEING THE RICARDOS, THE MYSTERIOUS BENEDICT SOCIETY, TOY STORY 4, INSIDE OUT 2, NINE DAYS, LOVE SIMON, WOMAN OF THE HOUR, HOCUS POCUS 2, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, THE DECAMERON, ARCHIBALD’S NEXT BIG THING, OFFICE ROMANCE and TOY STORY 5. Hale recently starred in and produced the critically acclaimed film “SKETCH”, and will next be seen in Nancy Meyers PARIS PARAMOUNT and the indie thriller “PUMPING BLACK” starring Natalie Portman and Jonathan Bailey.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 New Book! Lightgliders ➡ Grab it on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/4ejm5stv

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47 min
October 16 Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty | Ellery Hatfield
Welcome to Artists & Athletes: The Path to Transcendent Beauty. This is Episode One of our second seaons of The Human Series, an attempt to explore the full range, depth, and wonder of this mystery of being human.

Joining me today is Ellery Hatfield, Hairdresser, Soprano, and Poet.
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Ellery Hatfield now lives and works on Bainbridge Island, just outside of Seattle. She finds deep, profound joy in human connection, unflinching poetry, tenuous harmonies, and the magic of good storytelling. If you manage to find her without her nose in a book, one is likely playing over her headphones. Anything you need can be found in her purse and her kitchen favors art over order.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:

🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser

📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://tinyurl.com/4zdb3dp6
1 hr 16 min
September 11 Tolkien's Greatest Characters, Part Two | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode Six in our Summer Replay Series. Today's conversation features Bradley Birzer, Leah Holser, Turner Burnett, and Sørina Higgins. The discussion covers perspectives on Pippin, Smeagol/Gollum, Sauron, and Tolkien as The Narrator.

To listen to the entire conversation with Bradley, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tolkiens-greatest-characters-pippin-bradley-j-birzer/id1762146345?i=1000731168718

To listen to the entire conversation with Leah, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tolkiens-greatest-characters-smeagol-leah-holser/id1762146345?i=1000748532151

To listen to the entire conversation with Turner, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tolkiens-greatest-characters-sauron-turner-burnett/id1762146345?i=1000747347144

To listen to the entire conversation with Sørina, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tolkiens-greatest-characters-the-narrator-dr-s%C3%B8rina/id1762146345?i=1000726507557

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:

🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser

📚 New Book! Lightgliders: Tambika & The Shield of Wisdom ➡ Grab it on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2xemfzs9

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2 hr 33 min
September 02 Tolkien's Greatest Characters, Part One | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode Five in our Summer Replay Series. Today's conversation features Holly Ordway, Landon Loftin, Alison Milbank, and Michael Ward. The discussion covers perspectives on Éowyn, Faramir, Gandalf, and Cormallen.

To listen to the entire conversation with Holly, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000736742721

To listen to the entire conversation with Landon, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000745422677

To listen to the entire conversation with Alison, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000741001613

To listen to the entire conversation with Michael, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000741990520

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:

🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser

📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/

📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser

📚 New Book! Lightgliders: Tambika & The Shield of Wisdom ➡ Grab it on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/2xemfzs9

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2 hr 25 min
August 26 C.S. Lewis: The Great Divorce | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode Four in our Summer Replay Series. Today's conversation features Jess Lederman, Elizabeth Hardy, David Burnett, and Turner Burnett. The discussion covers perspectives on the C.S. Lewis novel The Great Divorce, with an emphasis on Lewis's relationship with George MacDonald, and Lewis's portrayal of heaven, hell, and the afterlife.

To listen to the entire conversation with Jess, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000684949599

To listen to the entire conversation with Elizabeth, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000683073754

To listen to the entire conversation with David and Turner, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000678319767

There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments...

Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakeable remains...

Everything becomes more and more itself. Here is joy that cannot be shaken. Our light can swallow up your darkness; but your darkness cannot now infect our light...

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://www.amazon.com/Tambika-Shield-Wisdom-Lightglider-Origins/dp/1645075486

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1 hr 24 min
August 18 Human Relationships and the Image of God | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode Three in our Summer Replay Series.

Today's conversation features Dr. Heather Huckett, Dr. Don Lichi, Margaret Fay, and Pastor Justin Bryeans. As psychologists, counselors, and pastors, they work at the intersection of human identity, relationships, and spirituality.

These discussions explore how we think and feel about ourselves, one another, and the divine.

To listen to the entire conversation with Heather, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000718982994

To listen to the entire conversation with Don, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000720219913

To listen to the entire conversation with Margaret, click here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000716833166

To listen to the entire conversation with Justin, click here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-plunge-with-derek-holser/id1762146345?i=1000722091330

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://www.amazon.com/Tambika-Shield-Wisdom-Lightglider-Origins/dp/1645075486

2 hr 7 min
July 10 Owen Barfield: The Evolution of Consciousness | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode Two in our Summer Replay Series. Today's conversation features Laura Van Dyke, Owen A. Barfield, Landon Loftin, and Max Leyf. The discussion covers some biographical elements of Owen Barfield's life, along with his work on the imagination, his "Great War" with C.S. Lewis, and his lifelong pursuit of anthroposophy, as developed by the philosopher Rudolf Steiner.

To view the entire conversation with Laura, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFo74tCJlUg&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7UGQ-LGcMVGDuLj8w1Bx2MM&index=4

To view the entire conversation with Owen, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ66daOsYfg&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7UGQ-LGcMVGDuLj8w1Bx2MM&index=6

To view the entire conversation with Landon, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AhwBKr4OsU&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7UGQ-LGcMVGDuLj8w1Bx2MM&index=1

To view the entire conversation with Max, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJLXVa2fCW0&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7UGQ-LGcMVGDuLj8w1Bx2MM&index=10

Owen Barfield (1898–1997) was an English philosopher, author, poet, critic, and solicitor best known as a foundational member of the Inklings literary circle. Born in London to a solicitor father and suffragette mother, he was educated at Highgate School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he earned a first-class degree in English language and literature in 1920; his subsequent B.Litt. thesis became the basis for his influential early work.

In 1923, he married musician and choreographer Maud Douie; the couple adopted three children, including daughter Lucy, C.S. Lewis’s goddaughter. Barfield met C.S. Lewis at Oxford in 1919 and maintained a close, forty-four-year friendship marked by their famous “Great War” debates over imagination, materialism, and anthroposophy; Lewis repeatedly acknowledged Barfield as one of his most important intellectual companions and dedicated The Allegory of Love to him. Barfield earned the title “first and last Inkling” for the depth of his influence on the group’s thinking about language, myth, and meaning.

After a decade devoted to poetry and writing, Barfield qualified as a solicitor in 1934 and practiced law in London until retiring in 1959 at age sixty, after which he served as a visiting professor at several North American universities.

Barfield’s central philosophical project was tracing The Evolution of Consciousness— the historical transformation of how humans perceive and participate in reality through changes in language and thought. Deeply shaped by Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy (which he helped introduce to English-speaking readers), he contrasted “original participation,” the primordial, intuitive unity with a meaningful cosmos expressed in the living metaphors of early language, with modern “idolatry,” the habit of treating abstract scientific representations as the sole reality while ignoring our participatory role in constituting the phenomenal world.

His landmark Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning (1928) demonstrated how poetry recovers lost semantic vitality and reveals the history of consciousness itself. In the widely admired Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry (1957), he argued that genuine knowledge requires “final participation,” a conscious, redeemed reunion with the world that overcomes the alienation of purely representational thinking.

Other major works— History in English Words (1926), Romanticism Comes of Age (1944), Speaker’s Meaning (1967), and The Rediscovery of Meaning (1977)—extend these themes across linguistics, literary criticism, and cultural history. Barfield’s ideas profoundly shaped Lewis’s and Tolkien’s imaginative worlds and continue to inspire contemporary efforts to re-enchant modern thought by recovering participatory, imaginative ways of knowing.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://www.amazon.com/Tambika-Shield-Wisdom-Lightglider-Origins/dp/1645075486

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1 hr 27 min
July 03 George MacDonald: Community, Death, and Beyond | Summer Replay Series
Welcome to Episode One in our Summer Replay Series. Today's conversation features Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, Kerry Dearborn, Chris Green, and Jordan Daniel Wood.

The discussion ranges from George MacDonald's conception and practice of true community, his theology of aging, suffering, and death, and his portrayal of the afterlife through his great novel Lilith.

To view the entire conversation with Kirstin, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKD1ep1xy14&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7XfqMabMVwCuK3rFTvl3fI_&index=4

To view the entire conversation with Kerry, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0j3FgO-HPU&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7XfqMabMVwCuK3rFTvl3fI_&index=3

To view the entire conversation with Chris and Jordan, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA8twLDcdjg&list=PLyZJdcfxNq7WEFZSiyjx63xoMzJzqSCXU

George MacDonald (1824–1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Congregational minister whose life embodied the tensions and creative ferment of the Victorian era. Born on December 10, 1824, in Huntly, Aberdeenshire, to a middle-class farming family, he studied chemistry and natural philosophy at King’s College, Aberdeen, before training for the ministry at Highbury College in London. Ordained in 1851, he served briefly as pastor of a Congregational church in Arundel, England. Still, he resigned amid controversy over his unorthodox theological views—particularly his emphasis on God’s boundless love and rejection of strict Calvinist doctrines of limited atonement and eternal punishment. He married Louisa Powell in 1851; the couple raised eleven children amid chronic financial hardship and repeated bouts of tuberculosis that claimed the lives of several family members. After leaving the pulpit, MacDonald supported his household through writing, public lecturing (including a successful American tour), and occasional teaching, eventually settling in England, where he died on September 18, 1905, three years after his wife. MacDonald’s literary output, comprising more than fifty volumes, spanned realistic Scottish novels, children’s fairy tales, adult fantasy, poetry, and theological essays that together helped lay the foundations of modern fantasy literature.

Early successes such as the dreamlike Phantastes (1858) and the later Lilith (1895) explored spiritual pilgrimage through mythic landscapes, while beloved children’s works, including At the Back of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin (1872), wove Christian themes of trust, courage, and divine care into enchanting narratives. His “realistic” novels - David Elginbrod, Alec Forbes of Howglen, and Robert Falconer - depicted Scottish life with moral seriousness and psychological insight, and collections such as Unspoken Sermons articulated a warm, imaginative Christianity centered on the Fatherhood of God and the transformative power of love.

Though his popularity declined after his death, MacDonald’s vision profoundly shaped later writers: C.S. Lewis called him his “master” and edited an influential anthology of his writings; J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, W.H. Auden, and Madeleine L’Engle all acknowledged his impact. Today, he is recognized as a pioneering bridge between Victorian faith and the imaginative theology that would animate twentieth-century fantasy.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://www.amazon.com/Tambika-Shield-Wisdom-Lightglider-Origins/dp/1645075486
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1 hr 10 min
June 26 William Blake: Mystic for Modernity, Episode 6 | Valentin Gerlier
Welcome to Episode 6, our final installment in our series William Blake: Mystic for Modernity.

Today's guest is Valentin Gerlier. Valentin is a scholar, songwriter, and musician, and our conversation is a poetic and lyrical gem. Full of light and wisdom, like William Blake himself!

Valentin is Head of Creative Cultures Pathway at Schumacher College, where he teaches the Poetics of Imagination programme, a course in myth, poetry and story. He is also a Fellow and Tutor at the Temenos Academy, a Research Associate in Philosophy at the UC-CERES/Institut Catholique Toulouse.

He is also a visiting lecturer and tutor at numerous other institutions, including The University of Notre Dame (London Gateway) and the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Grace of Words (Routledge, 2022), and his forthcoming book is entitled Heaven’s Wildflowers: A Blakean Theory of Nature, Culture and Imagination (Routledge, 2027). Valentin also runs a hybrid online wisdom school, School of Sophia, dedicated to truth, goodness, and beauty.

For more on the Poetics of Imagination at Schumacher College -
https://www.schumachercollege.org/poeticsofimagination-1-1

To learn more and join School of Sophia –
https://www.schoolofsophia.com

Largely unrecognized and dismissed as eccentric during his lifetime, William Blake is now celebrated for his fiercely imaginative, spiritually profound works and his radical opposition to institutional religion and rationalism. From an early age, Blake claimed to have had mystical visions, which profoundly influenced his creative and spiritual philosophy.

Blake was a radical thinker who sympathized with the American and French Revolutions. He abhorred slavery and the oppressive impacts of the Industrial Revolution. He rejected rationalism in favor of unbridled human imagination. His philosophical and prophetic works, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Milton, feature his own complex mythology and criticize both societal and religious repression.

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📲 Connect with Derek Holser:
🐦 Twitter / X: https://X.com/derekholser
📱 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@derekholser
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theplungewithderekholser/
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/derekholser
📚 Latest Book! Lightgliders ➡ https://www.amazon.com/Tambika-Shield-Wisdom-Lightglider-Origins/dp/1645075486

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59 min