The Subtext

Is a $4,500 networking trip to Mar-a-Lago okay if it's for the kingdom? This week on The Subtext, Lee and Savannah unpack problematic Christian wealth seminars promising financial success for “kingdom impact." They explore the power of proximity, the dangers of “kingdom washing,” and what the early church might have to say about business, debt, and the pursuit of influence. Is Christian language t...

This week on The Subtext: Macklemore, Ed Sheeran, free speech, and the billionaire power behind the music business. Lee and Savannah unpack the controversy, looking to Dolly Parton as a guide. What happens when public outrage becomes a purity test? Is it all just “vanity politics,” or what are we actually doing about the things we say we care about? Things we mentioned in this episode: M*A*S*H* Al...

It’s the first birthday of The Subtext! Savannah and Lee celebrate with an “Ask Us Anything” episode, answering listener questions about Bible translations, music, patriotism, how to leave your church community, and more. Thank you to everyone who made year one of The Subtext special. We love you! Send your AMA questions anytime to us @thesubtextshow on Instagram or to info@nosmallendeavor.com Thi...

Turns out, Gen Z is talking less, scrolling more, and forgetting how to be human. This week, Savannah and Lee unpack the surprising decline in everyday conversation and why talking to strangers actually matters. Then a listener’s question prompts them to revisit Nate Bargatze drama. Does calling in vs. calling out work with public figures?  And things get spicy when they dive into Meta’s $17...

Six 'English' strangers try to go Amish for a month, surfacing big questions about autonomy, conformity, vanity, and discernment. This week we're talking about TLC's Suddenly Amish, a (very scripted) reality show where six outsiders spend a month living in an Amish community to see if they could actually join the church. Lee and Savannah use Suddenly Amish as a foundation for conversations around...

In this episode, Lee and Savannah talk about the ways Lindsay Clancy’s trial is sparking conversations around mental health, justice, and culpability.  This week, we tackle a story listeners have been asking us to cover: the case of Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts mother who killed her three children in 2023 after months of worsening psychiatric symptoms and a cocktail of nine prescribed medi...

This week, we look at AI purity tests and mass surveillance, then circle back to an ongoing conversation: should social media commentary on people's bodies be off-limits? We're digging into the Hank Green AI backlash and how AI use has become a sort of cultural purity test that nobody can actually pass. Then we break down Flock’s license-plate cameras and whether safety and privacy can coexist at...

Lee and Savannah discuss Christopher Nolan's Odyssey – both the social media storms that started before it hit theaters, and lessons inside the film itself. Christopher Nolan's Odyssey is a blockbuster hit, and has caused a few waves in culture. Elon Musk wants his own "historically accurate" AI version, translator Emily Wilson says the film loses the "wily" Odysseus that exist...

What does our fascination with true crime say about us? This week, Lee and Savannah tackle listener questions. First up, they talk about the upcoming JonBenét Ramsey Netflix series, the line between justice and entertainment, and whether stories about evil can actually shape us for good.  Speaking of shaping us, how does city planning around data centers form our community and character? What...

Can I just say something? No, really! What are the boundaries of free speech these days? The conversation continues between Lee, Savannah, and Jacob Mchangama, Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. Whether you're a free speech absolutist, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, this episode will challenge your assumptions about the topic. Stay tuned for Lee and Savannah's debrie...

Nikki Minaj thanked Elon Musk for saving free speech, so naturally, Lee and Savannah had to phone a friend to learn more about what is going on. Jacob Mchangama, Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech sat down with The Subtext to discuss everything from social media and censorship to hate speech, political polarization, and the First Amendment. They examine the real costs of p...

What happens when a retired theology professor walks into a party full of deconstructing twenty-somethings? It sounds like the start of a joke. But really. How do we show up for ourselves and the people we love when doubt and deconstruction enter the chat? This week on The Subtext, Lee and Savannah discuss one of the more defining conversations of modern faith: deconstruction. Whether you're askin...

What do capitalism and hookup culture have in common? This week, Lee and Savannah unpack the viral Empire State Building skywalker stunt, exploring whether power is inherently corrupting. Lord of the Rings has finally entered the chat!  They break down a fascinating view on hookup culture, exploring how capitalism, attachment, purity culture, and our understanding of freedom all shape the way...

Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire! If that doesn’t make you want to talk about money, nothing will. The world just got its first trillionaire in Elon Musk. While Lee and Savannah aren’t trillionaires, they’ve got their own stories to tell about money. This episode is an open conversation about what we’ve learned about money, what we’d do differently, and how Christians can think abou...

What does it mean when a “clean” and “family friendly” comedian supports the UFC Freedom 250 fight, rubbing shoulders with unethical and greedy billionaires?  This isn’t really about Nate Bargatze. It's about all of us and the selective moral lines we draw. This week on The Subtext, Lee and Savannah wrestle with questions of public witness, private relationships, power, and consistency, looki...

The paperback edition of Lee's book just dropped, and Savannah's got questions! Savannah and Lee are celebrating the paperback release of Scandalous Witness by working through the book’s big ideas: why Christianity is not a religion but a politic, liberalism, Romans 13, the dream of a Christian America, and, perhaps most important, why Lee can’t stand the word "countercultural.” Use code WITNESS40...

We’re doing a temperature check of different cultural artifacts, including the UFC Freedom 250 fight, open theism, the gift of anger, and skinny culture. This week on The Subtext, Savannah and Lee do a full cultural temperature check. They react to the UFC Freedom 250 chaos (yes, including that post-fight interview), dig into a listener’s question about Open Theism and whether God actually knows h...

When the world feels like it's ending, some people buy bunkers, some people move to Argentina, some people stop reading the news entirely. How should Christians behave in the face of existential dread? Paradise got renewed for a third season, and we're using it as an excuse to ask a question we've all been quietly avoiding: how do you cope when the threat is real? In this episode, Savannah and Lee...

When a cage fight lands on the White House lawn, it's worth asking… what exactly are we celebrating? On June 14, 2026 (Flag Day, Trump's 80th birthday, and the eve of America's 250th anniversary) the White House South Lawn will host something it never has before: a UFC cage fight. We're going beneath the spectacle to ask what it actually means when the symbols we use to celebrate a nation reveal s...

We have a substitute teacher on today's episode! Lee is out of town, so Savannah called upon All the Buried Women co-host Beth Allison Barr to step in. The trad wife dream might look beautiful on camera, but what if you actually have to live it? What happens when a woman who sells the fantasy of "traditional" womanhood wakes up and has to actually live it? Using Yesteryear as a jumping-off point,...

You asked, we answered. From how Savannah and Lee became friends to whether Jesus is God (no big deal), this episode covers the questions YOU asked. We get into faith and doubt, how to stay hopeful when the world feels chaotic, what it looks like to do ministry well right now, and the books that have shaped us most spiritually.  Things we mentioned in this episode: Mere Christianity by CS Lewis Ne...

Dr. Erin Calipari thinks we're getting a lot wrong about addiction, so she and her lab are working to change that by conducting research that could save lives and destigmatize unhelpful narratives. In this episode, we dig into The Pitt's portrayal of high-functioning addiction and what it gets right that most TV gets wrong.  We sit down with Dr. Erin Calipari to unpack what addiction actually is a...

What happens when the Bible becomes a stage prop for national identity instead of a text that interrogates it? This episode explores “America Reads the Bible,” a high-profile event where political leaders, actors, and influencers recited Scripture from the nation’s capital, and, drawing on Bonhoeffer’s warning about reading the Bible for ourselves instead of against ourselves, Savannah and Lee exa...

Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide is a brutally honest soundtrack to growing up, drifting away, and figuring out how to make peace with the place you come from. This episode dives into The Great Divide, the latest record from Noah Kahan, and unpacks its themes of home, relationships, love, and friendship. In it, they explore their own connections to their hometowns, Wendell Berry’s hot take about auto...

Are our shrinking attention spans rewriting the rules of storytelling? This week on The Subtext, we dig into the claim that streaming platforms like Netflix are deliberately dumbing down storytelling to accommodate distracted viewers. What is being lost when stories are engineered for half-watching? Are we shaping content around distraction, or training ourselves to expect it? And in a world where...