Nate is a creator whose work I've followed for almost 15 years and it was an absolute pleasure to sit down and talk with him about his work and the substance behind it. I first encountered his work in Jeff Lemire's acclaimed Vertigo Comics series Sweet Tooth (still need to check out the Netflix adaptation). His style really spoke to me so I went back and read his debut graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole, which won the Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel, and I was in for pretty much everyt...
Mar 11, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Topic Toss Up shows are not really possibly with our current hosting situation as Philip is not terribly keen to record a solo monologue on various topics but we are excited to welcome Trevor back and jump in! Topics covered include: the "Biblical" in our podcast slogan "Biblical. Thoughtful. Human." What do we mean when we say it and do we want to continue using it? What are folks talking about when they say there is a "masculinity crisis" in Western culture and how can we think about it and ta...
Feb 26, 2024•1 hr 19 min
Here at The Substance we love engaging with thoughtful art and artists as they are able to get at truth in a way other mediums just are not capable, and among the various forms of art, movies are probably our favorite. That is why we are so delighted to share this exciting first with you all: on this episode we have the pleasure of being joined by a well established actor who recently made his directorial debut, John Carroll Lynch ! John's career as an actor spans over three decades and he has w...
Feb 11, 2024•1 hr 24 min
Valentine's Day comes and goes every year and it's easy to either dismiss it as a commercialized event or to get swept up in the sentimentality depending on one's disposition, but we wanted to avoid both extremes and try to focus on true, genuine love. And we do, buuuut take quite an enjoyable detour on to topics of art, commerce, comic books, and more! We are joined by artist, curator, and author Ned Bustard. Ned is a longtime artist and printmaker who has been on a run the last few years with ...
Jan 28, 2024•1 hr 2 min
Welcome to The Substance, a variety podcast aimed at being biblical, thoughtful, and human where we seek to engage the culture without the Culture War™. Previous guests include folks like: Johnna Harris (The Bodies Behind the Bus podcast), Daniel Hill (White Awake & White Lies), Esau McCaulley (Reading While Black), Jemar Tisby (The Color of Compromise & How To Fight Racism), and multi-hyphenate artist Propaganda. Grief is a topic that we have circled on a number of previous episodes and...
Jan 14, 2024•1 hr 14 min
One more show before the year is over! We were really hoping to get this recorded and published before Christmas but scheduling did not allow it. That being said, we are so happy to have artist Stephanie Stalvey back on the show to discuss the follow up to our previous discussion with her in Ep #136 (link below), 1944's The Curse of the Cat People. The previous film, Val Lewton & Jacques Tourneur's Cat People, was an unexpected delight because of how thoughtfully and skillfully it dealt with...
Dec 31, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Merry Christmas, y'all! It's been an eventful year and we hope that you all have a nice time of rest over the holiday season. We're joined here by Tim and Jay Winterstein from the Saints & Cinema podcast. Tim in a Lutheran pastor in Washington State, he writes about movies over at The Jagged Word , and does programming for a couple film festivals in different states. Jay went to film school and is the Senior Programmer for the Newport Beach Film Festival . They love engaging with movies, whe...
Dec 24, 2023•1 hr 25 min
We are joined by Matt Martens to discuss his new book from Crossway Publishing, Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal. Matt is a lawyer who also has degrees in theology and has become passionate about justice and helping folks understand how broken our systems of so called "criminal justice" in America are. This was a particularly encouraging discussion as many of our previous conversations about justice on the podcast have been with folks who have more or less been kicked out of or m...
Dec 11, 2023•1 hr 9 min
Things are a little crazy right now and Editor Dave is in between tech setups so rather than take a week off, we wanted to give you all something new to the main feed that most of you probably haven't heard yet. A few weeks ago we had film critic, podcaster, and author Sarah Welch-Larson on to talk about Ridley Scott's Alien and it was a blast! We also recorded this bonus show for our patrons on her book Becoming Alien that covers the whole franchise. Since our schedule has been hectic and we're...
Nov 27, 2023•43 min
Christmastime is right around the corner and we thought about saving this one for another drop or two but we thought it was great conversation and wanted to encourage you all to check out Emily's new book as you prepare for the season. Emily Hunter McGowin is an author, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College, a priest (she's married to one as well), and canon theologian in the Anglican diocese of Church for the Sake of Others. Her book on Christmas is the latest entry in InterVarsity...
Nov 13, 2023•1 hr 8 min
We hope that you all have had a wonderful Spooky Season and wish you all a Happy Halloween this week! After having Filmspotting's Josh Larsen (no relation to our guest today) on in Episode #135 to talk about a faithful approach to horror and then covering the classic 1942 horror film Cat People, we're closing October out with one of the greatest horror and science fiction films of all time, Ridley Scott's Alien . Alien tells the story of the crew of the Nostromo, a commercial spaceship that come...
Oct 29, 2023•1 hr 12 min
After a few serious health scares and wildfires that caused him and his family to evacuate their home for a while, we are very excited to bring you our first conversation with artist and writer Josh Nadeau! Josh is an artist who runs the Sword and Pencil Instagram account where he regularly shares his drawings, writings, and the things that he's learning as he reads widely through Church History. At the top of the show we get a brief health update (all things are looking good!) and then get righ...
Oct 15, 2023•1 hr 21 min
Happy Spooky Season, y'all! On our previous episode with Josh Larsen we teased that we'd likely be covering one of the films we mentioned in our discussion of the theology of horror movies, and it's that time! We're excited to kick things off this October by covering the underseen horror classic Cat People from 1942 (congrats to the folks who guessed it correctly!). The description on The Criterion Collection's website for the film, in part, reads: "The first of the horror films producer Val Lew...
Oct 01, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Horror movies often engage their audience on a primal level as they delve into some of our deepest fears, so it's understandable why so many people are sensitive to them and have reservations concerning them. This appears to be doubly true (or more) of people of faith. Returning guest Josh Larsen is the perfect person to have join us for this topic! Josh is a Chicago film critic and longtime cohost of the prestigious Filmspotting podcast, an editor & podcast host for Think Christian, as well...
Sep 17, 2023•1 hr 6 min
All 4 Terraform EPs are now out in the world, along with a Nautilus Award winning book, so we figured it was time to have Propaganda back on the show! Prop is a poet, political activist, academic, emcee, podcaster, author, and now a coffee entrepreneur. We're happy to have him back to look back on the whole Terraform project and talk about how it was impacted by Covid, the aspects of it he's most proud of, what he hopes that people get from it and more! It was also great to get to the bottom of ...
Sep 03, 2023•1 hr 13 min
It's Substantive Cinema time again and we're excited to be looking at Affliction , a film that Writer/Director Paul Schrader considers to be a Top 4 project of his (along with Taxi Driver, Mishima, and the topic of our inaugural SC episode, First Reformed). Affliction tells the story of Wade Whitehouse (Nick Nolte in a heartbreaking and Oscar nominated performance), a man deeply broken by his relationship with his abusive father (James Coburn in a brutal, Oscar winning performance) trying to fin...
Aug 20, 2023•1 hr 17 min
In 2020, a very normal and chill time, Kaitlyn Schiess released her first book, The Liturgy of Politics. It was thoughtful and encouraging call to believers to approach their politics, particularly locally, in a way that actively honors God and prioritizes the well-being of our neighbors. We were privileged to have her on the show and talk about that book and those ideas (link below) and we have been waiting for her follow-up book ever since! Now, just a couple weeks away from the wide release o...
Aug 06, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Earlier this year, we were joined by Dr. Esau McCaulley (one of our favorite episodes we've done!) to talk about his new little book on Lent which kicked off InterVarsity Press's The Fullness of Time series. Now we're excited to continue on to the second entry, Pentecost, written by Bishop Emilio Alvarez. In addition to Pentecost, we spend much of our time on a favorite topic of ours here at The Substance- Christian unity. Bishop Alvarez has been engaged in ecumenical ministries for quite a whil...
Jul 23, 2023•1 hr 13 min
When we had Josh Larsen of Filmspotting on in October to talk The Night of the Living Dead we were not planning to kick off a 5 film series on Criterion Collection titles but here we are. We had some fantastic discussions, with a number of excellent guests, but we wanted to zag a little bit and go in a different direction with this one. Of course Raging Bull and Matewan are substantive films, but what can we glean from Liam Neeson fighting wolves in Alaska? To help answer this question, we are j...
Jul 09, 2023•1 hr 11 min
Spiritual abuse is something we have talked about many times on the show, and on this episode we are joined by someone who, after enduring this herself, decided to make it her mission to help others who have as well by giving them a platform to tell their stories. Johnna Harris launched The Bodies Behind The Bus podcast at the end of 2021 and for the last year and a half has helped to share survivor stories in order to fight for goodness and truth in the Church. We talk systems & structures ...
Jun 25, 2023•1 hr 5 min
Hey everyone! We thought it would be nice to take an episode and do a check in with ourselves and you all. Philip and Dave are hard at work putting things together for first few months of our 3.0 era and we wanted to let you all in on the conversation. They go a little into the history of our first two incarnations but the bulk of the time is spent talking vision and goals for the podcast, our commitment to telling compelling, God-honoring stories, and the growth of local communities that are fo...
Jun 11, 2023•1 hr 1 min
If you're in Kansas City and listening to this when it drops, we hope you can join us for a Substantive Cinema screening of Raging Bull at Screenland Armour at 3:45pm! How have we gotten this far without covering a Martin Scorsese film?! It's wild. Today we break the Scorsese seal with perhaps his deepest dive into the human condition with his Oscar-winning 1980 masterpiece Raging Bull. The film is famous for many things, it's Oscar wins (and even more, its losses), the launching of Joe Pesci as...
May 28, 2023•1 hr 8 min
We're still here! Our 2.0 era has come to a close but I'm very grateful to bring you all the next episode without interruptions! Today I'm joined by the Rural Church Voices team which consists of returning guest Olivia Meade, Will Basham, and Jason Cook. All three of them have released books individually (check out Ep #117 to hear us talk Ordinary Faithfulness with Olivia), and now they have gotten together to edit Church Out Here. Church Out Here is a great little resource for both pastors and ...
May 14, 2023•1 hr 1 min
It's the end of an era (but not the end of the podcast)! We all loved being a part of The Substance 2.0 and are extremely grateful for everything we were able to accomplish in it. From talking with authors, artists, and public figures that we admire, to watching and reading things together that stretch and challenge us, but most of all we are to happy to have played a small role in encouraging folks to think and live well. Thank you for listening and engaging with us over the last 3 years. You h...
Apr 30, 2023•1 hr 6 min
Happy Easter, everyone! We hope you have had a refreshing Lenten season and that your Easter celebrations today were encouraging and soul-stirring. On this episode we welcome back longtime friend of the show, Brett McCracken (who was our first guest), back for his fifth appearance on The Substance. Brett is a writer, a film critic of 15+ years, and he's currently a Senior Editor at The Gospel Coalition where he covers culture and the arts. Previously, we've looked at three other Malick films (li...
Apr 09, 2023•1 hr 3 min
It's topic toss up time again, and Trevor & Philip are back with one topic suggested by an audience member and one of their own! The Super Bowl was a great time this year. It was great to see the Chiefs win again, especially so due to a bet with the TGAT podcast. One of the "hot topics" that folks were talking about in the aftermath was the commercials that ran a few times during the game...for Jesus? The "He Gets Us" ads got a wide variety of responses and since a listener here in KC asked,...
Mar 26, 2023•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 122
"Politics" is something that many people like to shy away from engaging directly in their public platforms and personas, and some elect to abstain from even discussing it with their friends and family. It's also something that churches often like to refrain from addressing in their preaching and ministries. Yet, it's in inescapable reality of living in a time and place. Furthermore, it's something that churches are necessarily affecting. In White Evangelical American churches there is a reliable...
Mar 12, 2023•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 121
It's always fun to have a returning guest back with us and today we are pleased to welcome friend of the show Jesse Eubanks back for his fourth full episode with us! Jesse is the Founder & Executive Director of Love Thy Neighborhood, host of the Love Thy Neighborhood & The EnneaCast podcasts, and now he's the author of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram ( pub. Zondervan). Since we've already done an episode on the enneagram itself (also with Jess...
Feb 26, 2023•1 hr 4 min
It is such a pleasure to share our conversation with Dr. Esau McCaulley with you all this week! Reading While Black was a huge book for us and we have been trying to get him on the show for a little over two years so this was a real joy for us and we hope it is for you too. Dr. McCaulley is currently a Theologian in residence at Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times whose work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Washington Post, and Christiani...
Feb 12, 2023•1 hr 12 min
On this episode of "The Substance," Trevor and Philip dive into the highly anticipated and box office-breaking (already the 4th highest grossing film of all time!) sequel to James Cameron's blockbuster hit Avatar, "Avatar 2: The Way of Water." We discuss the advancements in technology and filmmaking as well as the deeply human themes that have made it so resonant with audiences around the world. Next, the conversation shifts to the topic of nepotism in Hollywood and sports. The hosts touch on so...
Jan 29, 2023•59 min
