The Substance

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 made to feel unwelcome in conservative evangelical spaces. Matt positions himself as someone coming to his fellow White conservatives to help inform them of the reality of the situation and we very much hope that his voice will be listened to on this matter!

Buy Reforming Criminal Justice

Follow Matt:

Website

Instagram

Twitter

Follow Us:

⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 913-703-3883

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 a little compromised tech-wise, we thought we'd put this up for everyone to enjoy (and so that we don't blow our streak of never missing a regular episode drop)!

⁠⁠Substantive Cinema Library⁠

⁠Buy Sarah's book, Becoming Alien

Follow Sarah:

⁠Website⁠

⁠Seeing and Believing Substack⁠

⁠Letterboxd⁠

⁠Instagram⁠

Follow Us:

⁠⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠⁠

⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠

⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠

⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠

⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 Press's Fullness of Time series and we couldn't recommend it higher as we approach Christmas.

If you're encouraged, please consider sharing it with a friend and leaving a 5 star review on Apple/Spotify!

Previous Fullness of Time Conversations:

Lent with Esau McCaulley

Pentecost with Emilio Alvarez

Buy Christmas: The Season of Life and Light

And be sure to check the socials for a giveaway!

Shoutouts:

Mission Between The Times

Women and the Gender of God

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins

It's a Wonderful Life

White Christmas

Elf

Follow Emily:

Website

Twitter

Instagram (Threads)

Follow Us:

⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠

⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠

⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠

⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 913-703-3883

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 comes across a dangerous and virtually unstoppable lifeform that no one in the crew is prepared for. As a piece of science-fiction/horror it's extremely effective but like many great works of art, you can also have a rich experience when you come it to with different lenses. The viewer can look at it as a piece of social commentary about the plight of the working class people being ground up by the machinery of Capitalism, a gender study and what the films portrayal of men and women says about our prejudices, a theologically significant tale about the nature of evil, and more!

Luckily, we have a guest with us who is qualified to explore all of those facets of the film. Sarah Welch-Larson is a Chicago based film critic, longtime podcaster, and author of a book on the while Alien franchise! She's been on our radar for a while and we're so happy to have her on for this one. This is a film and series that she has dedicated a lot of time and attention to and it was a pleasure to talk Alien with her (next week Substance patrons will get a bonus episode where we cover her book and the other 5 films in the series!).

Happy Halloween and remember to share the show with a friend who would dig it!

Buy Sarah's book, Becoming Alien

Shoutouts:

The Night of the Hunter

Buck and the Preacher

The Boy and the Heron

Follow Sarah:

Website

Seeing and Believing Substack

Letterboxd

Instagram

Follow Us:

⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠

⁠Instagram⁠

⁠Twitter⁠

⁠Facebook⁠

⁠YouTube Channel⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 913-703-3883

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 right into the transcendentals: Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, and how they lead to a well lived life. We talk about his journey as an illustrator and a writer, our common experience of getting most of an M.Div. at a reformed seminary, the benefit of engaging with material and arguments outside of one's denominational/traditional background, the benefits of a slow life and exercising purposeful boredom, what makes art valuable, and how he met his wife (also an incredible artist)!

Shoutout to listener Lauren Mulford in Michigan for suggesting Josh as a guest more than a year ago! If you have a guest you think would be great for the show, send us an email or DM and we will see what we can do!

Shoutouts:

The Wall (Pink Floyd)

Early Bob Dylan

East of Eden

Song of Myself

The Godfather & Part II

Raiders of the Lost Ark & The Last Crusade

Follow Josh:

Sword and Pencil IG

Substack

Follow Us:

⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. Simone Simon stars as a Serbian émigré in Manhattan who believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves (Kent Smith) will turn her into a feline predator." In its brisk 73-minute runtime, the film is in turn scary, thought-provoking, and incredibly impressive as a artistic work made with such little money and under significant time constraints.

We are also excited to have the perfect guest for this tale of sexual repression & religious fundamentalism, artist and author Stephanie Stalvey. Stephanie writes and draws comics and is most widely known for her graphic memoir "Pure," currently being released on her website with a published collection on its way when it's finished. She writes about her own experiences with fundamentalism and purity culture and a few of her short stories were so thematically similar to the story portrayed in the film (links below), that we had to reach out. The result was a fantastic conversation that we hope encourages and edifies you as much as it did us. And who know, we just may have her back for a Curse of the Cat People bonus for Patreon supporters sometime!

If you enjoy the show, please consider messaging it to a friend who would like it and giving us a rating/review on your platform of choice so others can get in on the conversation as well!

Links:

Fear Not! by Josh Larsen (Filmspotting)

Watch Cat People free on the Internet Archive

Substantive Cinema Letterboxd List

Stephanie IG short 1

Stephanie IG short 2

Shoutouts:

Mad Men (series)

Bluey (series)

Fun Home

Are You My Mother?

Follow Stephanie:

IG Art Page

Website

Follow Us:

⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠

⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠

⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠

⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 as the author of Movies Are Prayers and the newly published Fear Not! A Christian Appreciation of Horror Movies.

We discuss the question of why anyone, particularly people of faith, would want to watch horror movies then we dive right in and talk about the unique themes and insights that we can gain from engaging critically with horror subgenres like slashers, monster movies, "sex and death," prophetic horror, and more! His book is an excellent introduction to the topic for the horror newbie as well as a good resource for the horror fan who is interested in thinking more deeply about the genre.

Enjoy and be sure to share the show with a friend!

Buy Fear Not!

2022 Spooky Season Substantive Cinema with Josh on George Romero's Night of the Living Dead

Letterboxd list of the films discussed in Fear Not!

Follow Josh:

Filmspotting podcast

Think Christian podcast

Website

Think Christian

Letterboxd

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

Follow Us:

⁠Instagram⁠

⁠Twitter⁠

⁠Facebook⁠

⁠YouTube Channel⁠

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 his interest in Talladega Nights and what we can learn from Ricky Bobby's radical lack of self-awareness.

If you like this episode, you should share it with a friend! :)

Terraform: The Possibility

Terraform Book

Listen to our previous convo w/Prop!

Get 20% off of your order of Terraform cold brew by using code "SUBPOD" at checkout at https://terraformcoldbrew.com

Follow Prop:

Website

Twitter

IG

Follow Us:

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube Channel

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 find meaning in his small-town life amidst a series of trials both real and imagined. It's a wonderful film but beware that it is a pretty hard watch if you decide to watch it before you listen. Affliction is currently streaming for free on Tubi & Amazon Freevee.

And we are also delighted to welcome Senior Letterboxd Editor, Mitchell Beaupre to join us for this conversation! Mitchell is a longtime Schrader fan and apologist and interviewed him just a few months ago during the release of Master Gardener (link below).

This isn't a film that's necessarily "fun," but we hope you enjoy our conversation and appreciate the movie if you check it out!

Substantive Cinema Library

Mitchell's Paul Schrader interview

Walter Hill Ranked (Paste Magazine)

Shoutouts:

Kingdom of Heaven (Roadshow Edition)

Mamma Mia!

Oppenheimer

Barbie

Aporia

Follow Mitchell:

Letterboxd

The Letterboxd Show

Twitter

Follow Us:

Philip's Letterboxd

Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube Channel

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 913-703-3883

Support Us: NEW OPTION! We have finally joined Patreon!

Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

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 of her second book, The Ballot and the Bible, we are excited to have her return (along with Trevor Akin making his guest host debut)! We talk about the history of the use of Scripture in American politics, the importance of community in biblical interpretation, the price of critical thinking, and more.

Be sure to tag us and Kaitlyn when you share this on social media (and tell her "Happy Birthday!") and look out for a chance to win a copy of TBatB later this week on Instagram & Twitter!

46: Substantive Stories feat. Kaitlyn Schiess | The Liturgy of Politics

Buy The Ballot and the Bible!

Shoutouts:

Self Made by Tara Isabella Burton

Terraform: The Possibility (Propaganda)

Follow Kaitlyn:

The Holy Post podcast

Twitter

Instagram

Follow Us:
Instagram

Twitter

Facebook

YouTube Channel

Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us:
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 913-703-3883
Support Us:
Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly supporter at the Anchor link below!