LEXLOS

In 2022 we were living on a boat, chasing a dream to sail the world, and we never left the dock. Then God gave us both the same word on the same night: Tennessee. We drove twelve hours that night with four kids in the car, and somebody called to buy the boat while we were still driving. Alexa was pregnant with our fourth and bleeding for reasons no one could explain. New state, no community, misdiagnosed again and again. So we had Indy at home. She came out perfect and she never took a breath. This episode is the whole story, start to finish. It’s also the story behind our book, Joy Isn’t Cancelled, which is out now. Get the book HERE https://link.amazon/B082LsKUv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alexa can smell Halloween. Haunted houses, the pop-up shops, Spencer’s, Hot Topic. Same smell every time, and nobody around her ever smells it. She spent years assuming something was wrong with her. Our pastor Mark Evans names it in about ten seconds. Mark grew up in Australia where Halloween isn’t really a thing, and his wife was the one who liked it. What changed his mind wasn’t an argument, it was watching his own kids get scared before anyone taught them it was supposed to be fun. We get into where trick-or-treating actually came from, why Christians who celebrate it always explain themselves, Alexa admitting she’s been judgy about it, and Mark telling us what it cost him to spend years proving he wasn’t one of those pastors. Our book Joy Isn’t Canceled is out Tuesday, November 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Part two of our Dancing with the Stars season, and it stopped being about dancing. Alexa was given “I’m a Slave for You” and had to choose between owning it and playing it funny. She played it funny, and on this episode she finally says why: she was afraid that being confident would make people doubt her faith. Eleven years later she’s pretty sure nobody would have thought that at all. We also get into Carlos telling his testimony on live TV to an a cappella Amazing Grace, the Magic Mike number the very next week, a live snake named Angie, and the contemporary dance where Alexa shared something she’d kept for six years. If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is 1-866-662-1235. Our book Joy Isn’t Canceled is out November 3. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2015 we became the first married couple in Dancing with the Stars history to compete against each other on the same season. Carlos with Witney Carson, Alexa with Mark Ballas. He finished fourth, she finished sixth. This is part one and it’s the honest version. On this episode Alexa says something we’ve never said out loud: she would have had more fun on that show without her husband. He was competitive. He was jealous. We’d been married six months. And our two pros weren’t speaking to each other, so the plan to go through it together fell apart in week one. We get into how the offer came, why Carlos asked to switch partners before rehearsals started, how the money actually works, what a real DWTS week looks like, and why she needed more time to learn choreography than he did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Evans is a fourth generation pastor who nearly quit. Around two years ago he told his own congregation he’d been drinking almost every night to self-medicate, and that confession is where this conversation starts. We talk about what he calls the guru drug: the pedestal people put pastors and public figures on, and the hypocrisy that grows in the gap between the pedestal and the person. His antidote is honesty. Boast in your weakness and there’s nothing left to protect. Alexa shares what happened the night she told her story on live TV, we talk about what it’s like when people say things about you publicly and you choose not to defend yourself, and Mark lands a line we haven’t stopped thinking about: don’t be the devil’s debt collector. Also: a church that meets around tables, getting zoned out of a backyard, and why every disciple was a misfit. Episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We volunteered at a three day conference at a massive Los Angeles church, working behind the scenes, seating celebrity pastors. We won’t name it. We heard staff yelling at each other through our earpieces during a worship conference. Alexa, eight months pregnant, was sent to move a small church that had shown up on time out of their seats so a bigger church that was late could have them. Carlos offered to walk a well known pastor to her seat and she told him she could read. Over three days, one pastor acknowledged that we were human beings. This is about why we stayed. How to tell the difference between a church that is actually broken and your own hurt looking for somewhere to land. The night Carlos decided he was done with the church we’re at now, and what changed his mind. And the churches that formed us, including one on Maui that fits inside a pickup truck. If someone in a church hurt you, we’re not going to tell you that you caused it. Real abuse is a separate conversation and this isn’t it. But if you gave up on church because of people, come sit with this one. Episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No guest this week. Just us, answering what came in. Alexa talks about the hardest season of our marriage, the year she spent praying over it, and how long it took before she saw anything change. Then she explains something neither of us had ever said out loud: that after a fight her heart and her mind know Carlos is safe, but her body puts a wall up and has to learn to trust him again. We get into why one of us wants to talk it out tonight and the other needs space first. We disagree, on the record, about posting our kids. We agree completely about phones, which is that ours aren’t getting one before 18. Carlos talks about the job he turned down, and whether money changes a person or just reveals them. The last question was what opinion might lose us followers. Alexa answers it. She’s pro-life, and she’s clear that she doesn’t mean pro-birth. She means pro-baby, pro-mama, and taking care of that mama after the baby comes. She also tells the story of a girl who called her, and what came of it. Episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Kramer Glickman played Gustavo Rocque on Big Time Rush. During the pandemic he put a cover of "Crazy" on TikTok, it did 8.8 billion plays, it charted on Billboard above Kendrick Lamar, and almost nobody realized it was him. That's how he ended up on the reunion tour, after a phone call that came through while he was sitting in synagogue with his mom. Carlos has known Stephen longer than he's known Alexa, so nothing in this one is off limits. He crashed a Big Time Rush mall show in full Gustavo costume and got pulled out by security. Fans left CDs on his car because they thought he was a real record producer. At the end of season three he rented a truck, backed it onto the soundstage, and took home everything he could fit, and then the show got picked up for a fourth season and somebody asked for it all back. On the final season, everybody got a raise. Stephen got a few hundred dollars. An executive promised him a real check on the last shooting day. What he actually got was an envelope with a $250 gift card to Red Lobster in it. Carlos has the matching story, which involves Louis Vuitton belts and a beach in New Jersey. Also: the book about the show he wants somebody to let him write, why he will never pay for a sandwich at the Jersey Mike's in LAX, the audition that ended his Broadway dream, the first Gustavo who got replaced days before filming started, and the CIA gift shop. Plus the new record deal, and the My Chemical Romance duet he somehow got Adam Pascal to sing on. Stephen's new single, a full-band rock cover of "Driver's License" with Edwin McCain, is out now: https://stephenglickman.lnk.to/driverslicense Episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disclaimer: This conversation is for general information and encouragement only. It is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold anything. Colby's comments reflect his own views, not advice for your situation. Talk to a licensed professional who knows your actual circumstances before you make any money decision. One of us saves. One of us gives it all away. Thirteen years of marriage and we are still negotiating it. Colby Gilmore is a wealth manager who works mostly with athletes and entertainers, and who emailed Carlos every month for eight months before we finally agreed to meet. He showed up and led with Jesus and family before he said a word about taxes, and that is pretty much how this conversation goes. Alexa tells the story of asking her mom, at seven or eight years old, how much she was making from a movie. Carlos admits that things, not money, were the idol. We have a real disagreement about debt that nobody in the room wins. Colby does the math on what a tithe actually came to in the Old Testament, which is a bigger number than you think, and then argues the ten percent is the wrong thing to be arguing about anyway. Plus the accounting partner who died a month after he retired, why Colby thinks retirement is made up, and the family he told to turn down millions of dollars. Episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Neither of us parents that way now, and we're still figuring out what to do instead. Four kids in, we talk about how we were raised, the things we swore we'd never repeat and caught ourselves repeating anyway, giving our kids a real seat at the table, what we're feeding them, and the hardest two words in parenting. Plus the line that reframed it for us: there's a difference between a kid who's scared of you and a kid who doesn't want to let you down. Not a how-to. Just what we're trying. Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@LexLos lexlos.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Brian Pruett has spent his life in fitness, and he'll be the first to tell you it's temporary. Futile, even. It just opens doors. The former ballplayer and coach talks about what baseball taught him about chasing approval, how his wife Gigi found him because of the fame he was embarrassed by, and why broken isn't an identity. Then our producer Derek drops a reframe near the end that none of us have shaken since: stop trying to be liked, start trying to make people feel loved. Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@LexLos lexlos.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A bonus episode. We went live on Talk Shop Live to talk about our new book, Joy Isn't Canceled, and sign pre-order copies. Why we wrote it, why that title, and what it actually means to say joy isn't canceled when you're in the middle of something you'd never have chosen. Signed pre-orders: https://talkshop.live/shop/-Hjo-JUut665 Joy Isn't Canceled is out November 3. Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@LexLos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She didn't cheat. But for a few days on tour, Los was convinced he'd lost her. We talk about what Hollywood does to a marriage: months apart, kissing scenes, and a job where flirting comes with the territory. The season that hurt the most, the boundaries we set afterward, and why "I'm just a flirty person" isn't a free pass. Not only an actor problem. If you work closely with anyone who isn't your spouse, this one's for you. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Watch on YouTube at youtube.com/LEXLos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your body has been trying to tell you something. Dr. Chris Motley is the guy we text when ours won't stop talking. A self-described skeptic, Chris walks us through what stress does to the body, why sleep carries more weight than we think, and why paying attention to how God built us isn't New Age. A conversation, not medical advice. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Watch the full video on YouTube at youtube.com/@LexLos. lexlos.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We left part one on a cliffhanger, and this is where the story finally comes out straight. The crane accident has been part of Alexa's set of stories for as long as Carlos has known her, and somewhere in the retelling it picked up some flourishes. Thirteen years into this marriage, he gets the actual version, live, on mic. His reaction is the episode. From there it turns into the fun kind of hangout. What growing up on those sets was really like once you strip the polish off, and then the big what-ifs: a Spy Kids musical, where the franchise could go next, and the ideas that come out when two people who did this as kids start dreaming out loud. If you haven't heard part one yet, start there. This picks up right where it left off. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow LEXLOS wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carlos sits down with bandmate and brother-figure Kendall Schmidt while their kids play downstairs. They dig into wild origin lore: the BTR pilot that was shot line-for-line without Kendall, the 'there's no tape — you're the band' reveal, and Kendall crying the night he booked it because of the commitment. Kendall shares his childhood as one of three acting Schmidt brothers, including Steven Spielberg spinning around with a cake for his tenth birthday on the set of A.I. They get honest about the grind — 18-hour days, splitting management, One Direction opening for them before eclipsing them, the show ending sour, and Carlos leaving the band three times — then the healing: choosing each other like a marriage, the comeback nobody at the label believed in, and Kendall's deeply personal new solo music (including songs about balding, which he owns proudly). Subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday + Friday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carlos puts Alexa in the hot seat for a full Spy Kids interrogation, and she actually answers. This is the origin story fans have been asking about for twenty years: what it was really like growing up on those sets as a kid, the behind-the-scenes details that never made it into press, and the Spy Kids secrets she's been sitting on. Carlos brings a list of questions and does not let her off the hook on any of them. Then she mentions having her first kiss on set, and the room stops. Glenn Powell comes up too, though not in the way you'd assume. There was too much to get through in one sitting, so this is part one, and the rest is coming. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Follow LEXLOS wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lex and Los open the podcast with the topic they get asked about most: marriage. They tell their origin story — meeting at a Bible study when both were at their lowest points (Alexa mid-divorce, Carlos smoking weed and reclusive), getting engaged fast, and marrying in three months when US Weekly offered to cover the wedding. They dig into hot-button convictions: merging finances completely, not living together or having sex before marriage (and their own imperfect journey with abstinence), toxic 'girl groups' that bash husbands, and letting go of offense. It ends with practical takeaways: love languages, non-negotiables, and marrying your best friend. Subscribe for new episodes every Tuesday + Friday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carlos and Alexa PenaVega : two people, one marriage, no script. New episodes drop Tuesdays and Thursdays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices