The Substance

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...

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...

"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...

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 th...

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...

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. N...

We didn't plan to have back to back episodes on West Virginia but here we are. Substantive Cinema is back and this may be our most obscure film pick yet, but it's a great one! Matewan (1987 Dir. John Sayles) is a historical drama about the labor strikes in a WV coal mining town that lead to a bloody shootout in the streets. Not only is it an excellent film (with an Oscar nomination for Haskell Wex...

Happy New Year, everyone! We hope you all had a nice holiday season and that you had, or are planning to make, some time set aside for reflecting on what you went through in 2022 and to plan for what you would like to focus on in 2023. It's been a while since we have had back to back episodes in the same format (if you're new to The Substance, we're a variety show with 4 formats that we try to hav...

Happy Holidays, Substance fam! We hope you are all enjoying the holiday season and carving out time for joy and contemplation along with all the festivities that go along with it. For our last show of 2022 we wanted to take an episode and devote it to the Advent & Christmas season and to do so, we invited a guest! Bette Dickinson is an artist and author from Traverse City, Michigan and she jus...

Since our first episode, we've been focusing on being faithful in the political sphere without becoming partisan or falling into political idolatry. It's something we have come back to many times and it's where we find ourselves again at #115. Recently, National Conservatism had one of their national conferences in Miami and more than a few aspects of it were troublesome and alarming. From pastors...

Happy Noirvember, Substance fam! We've got a special bonus Substantive Cinema episode for you all here and it's another classic (that happens to also be in the Criterion Collection). Double Indemnity is widely considered the first "real" noir film made in the studio system. It's also a stark cinematic portrayal of the principle in Proverbs 1:10-18.  Double Indemnity tells the story of an insu...

Vincent was off on a tropical vacation when we recorded this, so it's The Substance 1.0 team on this Topic Toss Up! This time around we're considering "family worship" and taking a listener question about Fundamentalism.  All of our lives are worship and much of family life is discipleship but is there something more specific and structured that we should all be striving for? Fundamentalism h...

It won't take you long listening to this one to realize that something's a little different. All three hosts have been busy recently and Trevor & Vincent were unable to make this recording so Philip is hosting solo here. Thankfully we have a wonderful guest so he won't be monologuing. Philip is joined here by Myles Werntz (Peacemonger). Myles is Associate Professor of Theology and Director of Bapt...

It's October 2022 and Spooky Season is upon us once again! Horror films consistently deal with substantive themes but it can be easy to overlook them if it's not a genre one naturally gravitates to. This year we are excited to visit a classic film that is responsible for the modern conception of the zombie, George Romero's The Night of the Living Dead (1968).  We are also happy to be joined b...

There's a lot we want to avoid as we wade into the topic of sexual ethics but we figured that it was probably time to start. It's an important and inescapable part of living in society, especially if we are seeking to live in a manner that pleases God and honors our fellow man. Bear with us but please feel free to reach out with any suggestions or feedback after you've listened! Shoutouts: Philip:...

We're back tossing it up with some new topics! This episode we talk about Matt Chandler's announcement about stepping back from ministry because of a (allegedly non-sexual, non-romantic) relationship with a woman and what that says about the state of many modern American churches. We also look toward the future and how augmented reality may affect how we relate with one another and even how we do...

Homelessness is a serious and complex problem around the world and at home. It's also a problem that we have some powerful solutions available to us. This week we reflect on the topic with seminary graduate, homelessness advocate, and recently published author Kevin M. Nye. His new book Grace Can Lead Us Home: A Christian Call To End Homelessness is now available to buy and read and the final sent...

We've covered a lot of great movies on the podcast before (see list below), but we may have never been more on the same page as this one. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a funny, action-packed, mind-bending film that deals with multiverse theory and features several alternate universe versions of its protagonists, but at its heart it's ultimately a story about a multigenerational family learn...

Yes, it's been since early April since we've put out a TTU episode, but we've got a great one for you here! Topics covered on this episode include: the importance of thankfulness in the Christian life, the recent development in some church circles to proudly embrace the label "Christian Nationalist" along with its tenets, and how Proverbs 26:4-5 (4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or y...

Overturning the United States Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade has been something that anti-abortion folks have had their sights set on for years and recently, they seem to have got their way. On a previous Reflects show on abortion, we discussed aspects of why this was a goal and some potential issues with it but now it's a reality and the conversation is a lot more sobering. We know that this...

We realize it's been since April that we did our last Substantive Cinema (a great show with Tyler Huckabee that you should all listen to and share with others if you haven't yet!), the perils of pivoting release schedules but we're back on track with an excellent one! Jordan Peele's 2017 directorial debut Get Out was a smash commercial and critical success (and we had Eugene Park on to discuss tha...

We've been talking about doing this for a while now and a number of listeners have suggested it previously so we are very excited to bring you the first Substance Wives Takeover show! Sadly, we only have two thirds of our wives on this one but we think you're going to enjoy it! This week Anna Marinello & Christina Akin are joined by their friend and local Kansas City artist Crissi Curly to tal...

We're back with the core Substance Team doing a Reflects episode but sadly we are back talking about abuse and how it is mishandled in the Church. Some have already moved on as the Guidepost Solutions Report was released a whole month ago but we wanted to take some time to read it (though not in its 288 page entirety), digest it, and see what others were saying instead of just adding to the pile o...

We are excited to welcome back Kyle Strobel to The Substance! Kyle is a preacher, the Associate Professor of Spiritual Theology and Formation at Biola's Talbot School of Theology, and the author (and co-author) of several excellent books. You may remember Kyle from when we had him on back on Episode 66 ( Listen here! ) and talked about our relationships with power. We highly recommend checking tha...

Hey everyone! It's a little different this week. Last week we announced that, for now, The Substance will be transitioning to a biweekly release schedule. We love doing the podcast and putting it out for free but we all have a lot more responsibilities than we did when we relaunched and in order to continue to put out biblical, thoughtful, human, and substantive content on a regular basis we neede...