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Matt and Sam welcome their intrepid producer and great friend Jesse Brenneman back to the third mic to talk about HBO's The Righteous Gemstones. In addition to being a wildly entertaining entry to the Danny McBride cinematic and television universe, the show perceptively explores the culture of American megachurch, evangelical Christianity—and offers your hosts plenty of fodder to discuss where faith ends and cynicism begins, the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer capitalism, cheap grace vs. real grace, whether or not people can change, the pathologies of evangelical purity culture, and much more. Plus: Jesse takes us behind the scenes of his brilliant, very funny podcast Tech Talk and its surprising connections to Elon Musk, Eli Gemstone, and others.

Sources:

John Jeremiah Sullivan, "Upon This Rock," GQ, January 24, 2004

Austin Considine, "mcbride-the-righteous-gemstones.html">Danny McBride Keeps It Righteous," New York Times, June 14, 2023

Doreen St. Félix, "The Lost Sheep of Danny McBride's The Righteous Gemstones," New Yorker, January 17, 2022

Matthew Sitman, "Speaking of New York: An Interview with Fran Lebowitz," Commonweal, February 7, 2019