The Scathing Atheist - 308: Vitamin Enriched Edition

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

In this week’s episode, we say things that would make Rashida Tlaib blush, Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi yell “Expelliarmus” at each other all weekend, and we’ll learn that we can have Eli’s multivitamins when we pry them from his cold dead hand. To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out out half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ Headlines: No atheists in congress https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/03/theres-officially-not-a-single-open-atheist-in-the-new-congress/ Christian Airline (doodly doo) https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/12/20/an-aviation-ministry-plans-to-launch-the-first-ever-christian-airline/ Republicans and Democrats have prayer duel before shutdown negotiation meetings: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/politics/government-shutdown-meetings-congress.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage Facebook awful sorry Franklin Graham has to follow hate speech rules: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/12/30/facebook-shouldnt-have-apologized-to-franklin-graham-for-his-hate-speech-ban/ Woman Claims in Lawsuit That Former Boss Forced Her to Adopt Scientology https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/12/24/woman-claims-in-lawsuit-that-former-boss-forced-her-to-adopt-scientology/ Televangelist Frank Amedia says the Space Force brings us closer to the return of Jesus: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/04/televangelist-frank-amedia-the-space-force-brings-us-closer-to-jesus-return/ This Week in Misogyny: Med school refuses to teach how to perform safe abortions: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2019/01/04/feature/i-wanted-to-provide-abortions-for-my-patients-my-med-school-wouldnt-teach-me-how/?utm_term=.cbf49e2ffcca Ireland makes psychological and emotional abuse in a relationship a crime: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/07/ireland-makes-psychological-and-emotional-abuse-within-a-relationship-a-crime/

Warning, if you're offended by vulgar language, you might want to lay back on your fainting couch in advance. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Robin Hood. And by America still being mostly stupid. America still mostly stupid. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Justin Murray. I made a human rights complaint against the Australian Department of Defence for not employing chaplains who recognise that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men born from filthy monkey women.

It's Thursday. It's January 10th. And you already fucked up your New Year's resolution, didn't you? Liars. Yes, you did. Don't lie. I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from nice little Saturday, New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and good husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, we roast in the new year. Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi yell expelliarmus at each other all weekend. And Eli continues to be one week behind on the holidays. First, the diatribe. We don't even record that far in advance. Nope. No. There's an ongoing effort among a lot of the world's intellectuals to save religious people the embarrassment of being religious by reclassifying things that rational people believe in as the modern day equivalent of a religion. You'll see psychologists, historians, etc. classifying things like secular humanism as religions or capitalism or faith in human progress. Now, to be clear, sometimes it's really useful for purposes of drawing historical analogies to note the similarities between modern secular worldviews

and historical religious ones. And if an author is doing that as shorthand to make a larger point, I'm not going to quibble with the misclassification. But I also see a far more disingenuous form of this that basically says, look, everybody in society needs a religion. And the people who think they don't have one have been fooled into thinking that this other thing that they do have isn't a religion. And that is nine kinds of bullshit, no matter how you define religion. If you define it in any way that mirrors common usage at all, you cannot make a cogent argument that, like, liberal socialism is a religion. But if you're just trying to make religious people feel better about how dumb their beliefs look when held against the backdrop of modern science, a lot of people seem willing to sacrifice accuracy to get there.

And I can see that, right? Like, sure, you lose a little in intellectual rigor and honesty, but you gain a little in intimidating fewer religious people with all your fancy science words. But before we make that tradeoff, we need to fully acknowledge what we're trading. We're justifying the absolute worst in humanity by pretending it's inevitable even when the evidence doesn't support it. We're propping up Stone Age institutions that still claim authority over morals. And we're perverting the facts and diminishing the respectability of science to get there. We're propping up Stone Age institutions that still claim authority over morals. And we're perverting the facts and diminishing the respectability of science to get there. See, this all comes down to the question of whether or not religion serves a necessary function in society. And it's impossible to argue that it does, given how many non-religious and majority non-religious societies there are.

So if you want to get there, you have to expand the definition of religion so far that it can fit a lot of unrelated shit into it. And look, I'm not going to argue that religion never had any function in human society. That'd be absurd given the universal presence of it in human cultures. At various points in our evolution, it probably helped keep people playing by the rules even when nobody was watching. It helped to homogenize disparate cultures. what he was watching. It helped to homogenize disparate cultures. And I guess you can argue about whether that's a net benefit or not, but I tend to think it is, at least from the perspective of a person growing up way the hell after it happened. Probably would have felt a lot different about it if I were like a Roman Celt or something. But those are all purposes that are in the past.

Either the work of religion has been done or we've come up with a far better secular version. So what purpose does it serve now? And by now, I mean in this instance, any time in the last 400 fucking years. I mean, there are obviously power dynamics that keep it afloat, but if you're arguing in favor of religion, you can't exactly bring those up, right? Our religion serves the purpose

of helping unelected people educated primarily on antiquated modes of thinking to maintain outsized political influence doesn't win you any points in the debate. So you got to come up with something else. Some purpose it serves in the modern day. And that's not as easy as it would seem to most religious people. A lot of people who just glance at the problem assume that the ubiquity defense gets you all the way to the modern day. But that's not how evolution works, right? An organ that was required at some stage of evolution doesn't just go away when you

don't need it anymore. If religion served a purpose at any point in human history, it would likely persist far after that purpose was fulfilled. So the fact that most people are religious today doesn't get you any closer to proving it serves some function in their lives. Of course, a social scientist that wants to sell books has trouble saying religion is a vestigial cultural organ, so they're inclined to make excuses. Hell, you don't even need greed to get there. You'd like to think you're not living in a country where 70 plus percent of the people can't think their way past, look out for the invisible man in the sky that'll punish your ghost when you die if you double cross me. So you come up with some psychological function at serving. But despite decades of concerted

effort, nobody's ever come up with a convincing answer here. Yes, I'm sure some experts would disagree with that assessment, but the ones disagreeing wouldn't agree on what the correct answer was, which really just proves my point. Look, I know it's uncomfortable for a lot of people to admit, but religion was a place to hide our ignorance and our fear of that ignorance. That's all it ever was. And through most of human history, everything around us was a goddamn mystery from the wind to the water to the storms to the trees. We couldn't very well have walked around for thousands of years going,

fuck if I know. So we supplemented our ignorance with stories. And for a long time, that was fine because it's all anybody had. Nobody's stories were inherently better than anybody else's. But then science started and that changed everything. Until then, there was no real way to argue that there was a best way to think.

But once we started harnessing the power of electricity and shit, it's impossible to convincingly pretend that the spirits of the forest paradigm is equally valid now. You know, not that people would stop pretending that, mind you. It just got way less convincing. And the more scientific advancements our society goes through, the clearer it is that there actually was a right set of stories, and it just took us a long time to hit on it. Of course, along the way, we didn't stop being fearful and ignorant. You know, the science was hard to understand. It didn't have as happy an ending, not to mention that a thousand-year-old plus power structure was kind of banking on the continued fearful ignorance. So religion has limped its way all the way into the 21st century thus

bolstering the specious argument that it's inevitable but it isn't okay the cure for religion and the cure for ignorance are the same thing so when the apologists ask you what you'd have society replace religion with once it was gone feel free to just answer knowledge they're talking about you jesus interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are two men who have been partially shut down before it was all the rage. Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, a little more vulgarity for charity for you. Michael donated to our fundraiser and asked Heath to roast his beagle and Eli to roast his family.

Okay, actually it's better than normal. Michael's beagle is the fattest thing ever glorious she looks like someone went to cold stone creamery and ordered cookies and cream with crumbled beagle and like the kid at the counter was super lazy just smashed it together for like two seconds it's like okay here's your b all I'm done. Now my shift's over. And Michael's parents look like they both agreed to not talk about all the Cubans he killed, but he keeps

breaking his promise. They look like the couple from American Gothic want to swing with you. Yeah, so, I guess while Michael's parents angrily explain to the Cracker Barrel waitress that half-mashed potatoes, half-green beans is one side. We'll pause for a quick word from this week's sponsor, Robin Hood.

Fuck you. It's two things. I have to deal with that. I'm typing it in now. Go fuck yourself. Hi, I'm Heath Enright, competent human being. And I'm Eli Bosnick, also on this podcast. We know that the stock market can be a scary and confusing place. If you're like Eli, fortunately, Robinhood is here to help. Because you can't trade stocks in Sherwood Forest.

Nope, still not a guy. Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission-free. And it's never been more important to reduce your carbon commissions. Also, no, nope. Robinhood lets you learn by doing. You can learn how to invest as you build your portfolio, discover new stocks, and track favorite companies with a personalized news feed. You can even set up custom notifications for price movements so you never miss the right moment to invest. Wow, that sounds so easy. Even I could do it.

Well, let's not go overboard. But here's the best part. Robinhood is giving listeners a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help build your portfolio. Sign up at scathing.robinhood.com that's scathing.robinhood.com oh apple i love those you um you think i mean the fruit again don't you yes okay and now back to the headlines in our lead story tonight there's been a lot of press recently about the historic diversity of the 116th Congress, and rightly so. We did not one but two stories about

another Skeptocrat this week. In addition to a record percentage of women, this Congress also saw a number of other firsts too numerous to fit into this segment. And there's plenty of other news outlets that'd be happy to list them for you exhaustively but i'd rather take time to point out one glaring lack of diversity in said congress namely the fact that not a single goddamn one of them is an atheist or uh more accurately a bunch of them are all liars it will have to be yeah yeah for clarity we mean liars about atheism i mean way more of them are liars because well they have to be about a bunch of other stuff. Well, right. That's a requirement for the job.

Right, right. But about the atheism thing, too. Now, look, even in terms of atheism, we've come a long way, baby. OK, so 14 members of the House declined to state their religious identity in the CQ roll call questionnaire, which is basically like listing your sexual preferences in the closet. But still, not a single goddamn one of them was willing to use the A word or even the H word, despite the fact that California Democratic Congressman Jaron Huffman has previously identified himself as a humanist. And in the Senate, all we have is Kyrsten Sinema.

And that's pretty fucking good. Don't get me wrong but during her campaign she released a neil degrasse tysonian statement saying she thought the term atheist was quote not befitting of her life's work or personal character end quote what fuck you fuck yeah you my parents are both african-amer, but I'm actually a good person. So, yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? It says a lot about how far we have to come as a movement when the lady who stripped down to a tube top to swear on a law book in Mike Pence's face isn't quite ready to admit there's no Santa because Christmas lights are pretty. Yeah.

And look, this is not a small divergence from the national demographics here. There are zero people in the House of Representatives willing to say they're religiously unaffiliated representing the 23% of their constituents that wear that label.

We have a goddamn Palestinian American woman. America has fewer than 40,000 of them total. And nothing against Rashida Tlaib. I'm a huge fan of saying motherfucker. But we're talking about 0.0123% of the population. Even when I get to the thousandth place, it's still a low number. And they're all just afraid to make their fucking grandma mad.

Yes. That's what's happening. Maybe they'll come out as atheists with an Instagram story. I don't know, something that grandmas can't do. Like, I'm 37. I literally learned what that means last week. I just figured out what Instagram story. It's different.

It means you don't believe in God, Heath. All right. So the silver lining here is that the overall religious diversity did tick up by a tiny bit congress went from 91 christian down to 88 and the number of dk slash refused answers nearly doubled the number of muslims nearly doubled to three the jews went from crazy overrepresented to slightly more crazy overrepresented. Disagree. You can never have too many Jews.

Well, I'm not saying there's too many, but there's like 2% of the population and 7% of the Congress. But the Catholics went to slightly less crazy overrepresented. And that's a nice tradeoff. I'll make that tradeoff. One blows the kid. The other makes the kid blow them. Both are bad. One is worse.

And silverest of all the linings, we also had a 23% reduction in Mormons, leaving us only 100% away from the ideal number. And in Holy Spirit Airlines news tonight, the first and only Christian airline is set to take off in the next year in an attempt to finally prove there is nothing that proves religion wrong that Christians won't pretend proves their religion right. Just stick a little angel

decals on the window. See on the clouds just like we said they'd be. See? Yes, the quote non-profit aviation ministry end quote is calling itself Judahah one and will dedicate itself to transporting christians for mission trips making it the second airline in history with more people hoping it will crash than hoping it will land uh the first would be air force one

right yes it is yes it is and if you're asking, is there anything more evil than a tax-free airline dedicated to flying teenagers to places that need help only to bring them books about rape being okay instead? Yes, United Airlines does still exist. That being said, we did manage to sneak a peek at their onboard safety video by sending them a letter from Jesus. Let's check it out. Morgan. Hi, I'm a man who looks like he's made out of wax paper.

And I sang country music once. And we'd like to welcome you to Judah One, the world's first Christian airline. Here at Judah One, the only laws we need are vertical. So you'll notice your seats have no seat belts and you can smoke wherever you want to. If the Lord has decided your time has come, then so be it. So be it indeed. Speaking of which, if you look over the wing of the plane, you'll notice that Judah One is the only airplane in the world that rolls coal. judo one is the only airplane in the world that rolls coal choo-choo which due to pesky epa regulations means your ticket from dallas to austin is 875 take that lib dards for those

flat earthers flying among us please keep your window blinds down trust us it looks just the way you think it does out the window don't't look, honey. You're going to lose yourself. Well, hold on a second there, guys. Christian celebrity Kirk Cameron. Christian celebrity Kirk. Oh, I was too late. Sorry. What are you doing here?

I'm desperate for money. I'm desperate for money. I mean, oh, sorry, sorry. I'm here to tell you the fantastic feature Judawan has to offer. While flying, enjoy our massive collection of family-friendly entertainment. We've got classic films like Fireproof. We've got comedy hits like Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas. Kirk, do we have any movies that don't star you? We also have the Minions movie.

Wait, I'm sorry. Are the Minions Christian? They're a homogenous group of simpletons willing to do whatever an evil leader tells them. Close enough. Feeling hungry? Why not help yourself to our Christian snack bar? We got Jesus, Oreo Fathers, and, of course, the transubstantiated body of Christ. We think you'll find it pretty trans-substantial. Transubstantial. Thanks again

for flying Judah 1, the only airline in the world that knows that bats are birds. Will you call your guy one more time? And in prayer quotes news. Fantastic. As I read the news about members of the Republican Party who aren't the president, I'm noticing myself being way too forgiving recently. Now, like, I'm definitely not happy with these people, but I'm not as mean as I used to be

or as mean as I should be. And that bothered me. But I think I finally realized what's happening. They're all using Donald Trump as their ugly friend at the bar, but for stupidity, you know what I mean? And for ugly, I guess, too. I mean, like, the Republican Party

is working the mascot theory. And now any semblance of functional human stability looks amazing by comparison except mitch mcconnell it doesn't work and uh it's important that we're not fooled by this is my point for example mike pence is capable of using the bathroom without getting toilet paper stuck to himself. And that's great. That's amazing. Just like leaping over the current bar with ease. But we need to remember, he's still an evangelical fucking lunatic who thinks a rapey ghost is controlling the universe.

So instead of actively helping to end a government shutdown, he seems to be a lot more focused on praying and then watching the nothing happen. And that's exactly what happened last weekend, sending the government shutdown into week number three. Yeah. The bright side, though, is that any time Mike Pence spends praying is time he doesn't spend doing all the other stuff Mike Pence does. So, you know, around the clock, Mikey. Prayers are like tweets. Seven minutes or they won't see it. Every seven minutes.

Yeah, so Pence had a series of meetings with congressional leaders last weekend. And when I read that headline, I assumed the purpose was to negotiate the end of the government shutdown. And the mascot thing started to trick me again. I actually thought to myself, oh, wow, look at you doing a job. That's awesome. And you can hear it right now. My inner monologue, the voice got all high pitched like a kindergarten teacher talking to a puppy. I was like, who's a good boy? Who peed on the pee pad? You did, Mike Pence. Good job. But then I kept reading and I found out the meetings went absolutely nowhere

and actually they devolved into a prayer duel between the two sides it's 2019 and our idiot fucking lawmakers still have to say grace before they talk about the government which is their job see this is why we need to elect noah and lucinda just just for the call and response that happens during that grace oh yeah well i'd make rashida play blush that yeah so the duel started with pence who insisted on beginning the first meeting with a prayer asking for god to bring us together and find common ground for a solution. Well, apparently God doesn't want anyone doing the raping besides himself, and he's not going to budge on the wall.

Or maybe a Jewish aide was secretly blocking the prayer with his own anti-prayer. I don't know. Either way, the meeting ended with no progress. Mike Pence gets home. Fuck, must have prayed to the wrong God. Mother, are we sure it's Yahweh? I don't want this to be a spelling thing am i getting the right guy so the next day nancy pelosi staff started meeting number two with their own prayer during which they pointed out that jesus and mary were both refugees again, no progress, which is obviously the main problem here.

But also, these are grown-ups who run the federal government. We shouldn't have to explain everything in terms of fairy tale characters to these people. And regardless, this is one of those times when the New Testament should actually help and put every Christian firmly on the blue side in terms of this issue also a bunch of other issues like income tax and health care and baby cages pro or con just read better or get a new book what the yeah no shit well i'll tell you what if the government can get away with it so can we so we're going to pause for a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. And we're not coming back till I get a wall of child porn.

A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. If it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This Week in Massage. Okay, so here's everything you really need to know about the caliber of people we're dealing with in anti-abortion activists. For years, they've been trying to sell us this lie about abortion being unsafe, even though it's significantly safer than, say, having a wisdom tooth taken out. But when the argument failed for a lack of factual basis, they didn't set out to find a better argument. They set out to make abortions more dangerous. I was reminded of this by an article in the Washington Post this week by an Arkansas doctor named Stephanie Ho. She starts off by recounting

all the efforts her clinic underwent to comply with Arkansas's bullshit hospital admittance program. Like the whole idea was to say, okay, you can perform abortions, but you need hospital admitting privileges. You need an OBGYN on staff. Your hallways had to be more than seven feet wide, but not more than seven feet three inches. You had to face east at 321 p.m. on the shortest day of winter and recite the Our Father. Just a ton of shit to make it functionally impossible to provide abortions in the state. Like in her article, she talks about trying to get a hospital administrator to sign off on her clinic, and he literally told her he needed permission from the Pope. Of course, this wasn't the first time she had to run a gauntlet to provide women

with health care. Her story goes on to recount the way she had to basically pull a sword from a stone to even learn how to safely perform the procedure. According to statistics she cites, at the time, a full 17% of medical schools offered no formal abortion education. She ultimately had to go all the way to Colorado to find a school that would teach her what she needed to know. And after that, none of the local clinics or hospitals would hire her. So she had to start her own fucking practice fresh out of med school. It's a great read if you have a few minutes, but the key here is that the zealots are trying their damnedest to make the abortions are unsafe lie into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And if it wasn't for the downright heroic actions of people like Stephanie Hode, they'd get their wish. Anyway, I was pretty inspired by her story and maybe spent a little longer on it than I should have, but I do have one good news story I wanted to share with you before I wrapped up. As of Tuesday, psychological and emotional abuse in intimate relationships is a crime in Ireland, making it, I believe, the fourth country to enact such a law. I mean, I don't want to oversell this, but when I started doing this segment, all the news out of Ireland was stuff like women now allowed to show ankles during warmer months, and all of a sudden, we're just getting one piece of great news at a time out of there. It really warms an American's heart to see how fast a nation can go from theological backwater to progressive juggernaut. I guess I'm naively hoping it scales up. And quick before reality sets back in on me, I'm going to go ahead

and hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in grammin' at home news tonight, Facebook did something socially responsible over the weekend, but don't worry, they apologized. So this story begins three years ago when Franklin Graham, amid his tireless efforts to provide the world an example his dad would look good in comparison to, made some disparaging remarks about trans people in the wake of the HB2 controversy in North Carolina. So Bruce Springsteen had canceled the concert in the state and Graham Cracker took to Facebook to whine about it and amid the whining, he referred to trans women as men who were trying to sneak into women's bathrooms.

What the fuck? Like, what does he think is happening? Trans women just stepping into the ladies room, just like nailed it so good. Just light up a cigarette and walk back out. Alright, please dehumanize me for life. That was totally worth it. That was amazing.

Really? Yeah, because every man's dream is to be in the presence of a difficult three mochaccino shit. Right? It's a bad example. I don't even know what point you're trying to make there. Some people might. It's okay.

We'll leave it in. We'll see if someone gets it. All right. So this past week, if you understood that, that was crazy. Whatever. Somebody came across this old post and said,

hey, you know, this violates Facebook's terms of service. And they flagged it as hate speech. And the way this shit works is that somebody flags that the algorithm does some quick and dirty analysis. And if it seems likely that the post in question is hate speech, the site blocks it automatically.

If you post, for example, about how fucking stupid religion is, you deal with this shit pretty regularly. You get blocked. You appeal to a human. They begrudgingly agree that magical cracker flavored Jew chunks isn't technically hate speech. And they let you back onto Facebook. And this is basically exactly how it played out for Franklin Graham,

except that his thing actually kind of was hate speech, and they let you back onto Facebook. And this is basically exactly how it played out for Franklin Graham, except that his thing actually kind of was hate speech. But regardless, Facebook reversed the ban and reinstated the page. Guys, hear me out. I think this is crazy. I'm starting to think these social media companies might not have our best interests at heart. The hell you say. Just Franklin Graham chasing the CEO of google down the street after

that here and like i got my iphone i got my cd 53 hours of aol you tell me right the fuck now why i can't get on my facebook page with my iphone and my aol cd what the fuck google but okay but apparently completely undoing the consequences and apologizing and explaining in detail that it's impossible to prevent this kind of shit from happening, even when you're not a bigot. It wasn't enough for Graham, who has taken his 24 hour ban upon his back and drug it up to fucking Golgotha, stopping by every conservative news outlet along the way to offer this up as evidence of the internet's bias against christianity in a fox news interview he characterized the ban as a quote personal attack end quote a mischaracterization that i would be happy to demonstrate to mr graham at his earliest convenience two votes and in risky business news tonight receptionist jul A. Rohrbacher is suing her former boss for pressuring her to join Scientology and then firing her when she refused. Risky business.

Tom Cruise, Scientology. Nailed it. Thank you. So good. So according to Rohrbacher, when she asked for a pay raise, her boss told her that she had to take a mandatory code course. Oh, Jesus. Written by L. Ron Hubbard. Not Python.

Nope. Okay. Nope. It's correct. So when she refused, she was denied the raise and as a punishment assigned to a Scientology based management course at Scientology's Flagland Base in Clearwater, Florida. And when she refused that, as well as the instruction to start seeing a Scientology life coach, she was told to quit

or be fired with two weeks severance pay. And the most fucked up part of this story, by the way, is that someone read it on their phone while they were at the checkout line and Hobby Lobby and said, man, that's fucked up. Y'all make somebody go through all that.

And finally tonight, televangelist completed jew and white house christian policy advisor frank amedia buttoned up his favorite leather collared lumberjack shirt last week that he has and delivered a new year's video message to his followers one of whom is the president of the united states just to be clear and that's how we all learned that frankie bag of donuts is very excited about the new direction of the american space program and of course its effect on bringing about the literal apocalypse. And just to be clear, he's not talking about NASA. He's talking about

the Space Force. The Space Force. Yes, because once them stars start falling out of the sky, we'll need to corral them with something. God will never give you more than you can handle. Yeah. So, apparently, Frank Med media was reading about trump's recent

efforts to move forward with his plan for building a space force in case anyone wiped that from their memory as a defense mechanism uh good for you the space force is trump's idea for an entire new branch of the military that operates in outer space. And yes, the Air Force already does that. But I guess Trump realized there's no air up there, so the title was confusing him. That's why he's creating the Space Force.

And if you're curious about the racial segregation angle, I'm sure that's what's on your mind right now, don't worry. The Space Force is going to be separate, but equal. But equal. Exact words from Donald Trump, just to be clear.

Yeah, you guys might remember that moment in the press conference from when Trump took that whistle out of his pocket and then all the dogs in your house started going crazy. Yeah. Or maybe you remember it as number 23 on the year-end list of most racist things Trump accidentally said in 2018. Ooh, we should make that list.

It's depressing. Yeah, so according to Frank Medea, the most important thing about the Space Force is how it's going to cause the second coming of Jesus and help the Messiah fight the end times Krakens that I didn't even slightly make up just now. That is all in the Bible. Book of Revelation, seriously. It doesn't mention any racially segregated spaceship armies, but the Kraken war against Satan is official canon in the book of godly wisdom for the vast majority of american people and that includes a presidential advisor who thinks we need the space force to fight against

demonic beasts during the end times and quote do war from that area end quote using an upgoer five i guess assuming you learn to speak like that when you deal with the president on a regular basis okay just to be clear we went from harvard law professors and leaders in their field to oh no it's jesus in three years yep three years is how long it took yep say what you will still sounds better than the han solo movie but yes it's fair it's fair and it'll have donald glover so everybody wins love donald glover yeah so important takeaway uh other than the terrifying fact that a lunatic has access to the oval office and also frank media has access to the Oval Office and also Frank Amedia has access to the Oval Office.

The important takeaway is no, it's that. It's the fact that people like Frank Amedia and Donald Trump have power in this country. We shouldn't even let them near the kitchen without childproofing the drawers and these people are dictating national policy.

Also, I'm like 90% sure that Frank Amedia is the penguin. I've never heard a word about this, but is he not so clearly the fucking penguin? He's super clearly the penguin. This guy just walks right into the White House and nobody at the Secret Service is ever

like, hold on, that's clearly the fucking penguin. The Batman villain, the penguins. No, watch, watch. Excuse me, sir, Mr. Amedia, don't catch this live mackerel in your mouth. No, watch, watch. Excuse me, sir, Mr. Amedia. Don't catch this live mackerel in your mouth. See? Mouth catch. Penguin.

Is it me? Is it me? Now that Heath has provoked the wrath of Gotham's underworld, I suppose we should wrap this up quick. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Birdbox. And when we come back, you're Dale Bright in just a little bit. If there's one key highlight of 2018, it's that we learned that the generosity of our listeners cannot be contained in any single calendar year. Our Vulgarity for Charity fundraiser generated over $120,000 for people in need last year, which is great. But it means a lot of people still need insulted.

Otherwise, we'll have brought more good into the world than bad, and that fucks up the balance of the force. So with that in mind, let's dive into a little more vulgarity. Eli, Lisa donated $200 for a roast of her stepdad and mother-in-law. Ooh, okay. of her stepdad and mother-in-law. Ooh, okay. Lisa's mother-in-law looks like she'd tell everyone there's no need for that kind of language at the Nuremberg trial.

She looks like a human pitch test. Yeah, absolutely. She has resting pitch face. And as for her stepdad, everything you need to know about this dude is that in the picture Lisa sent, the baby he's holding

looks uncomfortable to be associated with it the baby's so mad about it it's the best this baby's like 0.1 years old max and you can see in her eyes she already wants to topple the uh grand patriarchy she's so fucking pissed about this disgusting grandfather holding her. Yeah. Lisa's stepdad looks like the collective nightmare of every Hooters waitress ever. Like a composite sketch of all the composite sketches for sexual harassment that have ever happened.

So Charles gave us 200 bucks as well to roast his nephew Jeff. Okay, I just want to say this is unfair. Anybody who has a checkerboard tattoo on one side of their body has already done all the roasting that ever needed to be roasted to themselves.

It's just overkill. That is 100% accurate. Alright, so if you want a specific idea, picture the guy from the Aryan Brotherhood in like every jail movie you've ever seen. Got it? Alright, now picture the guy tossing his salad you're picturing jeff you're now picturing jeff you have it all right uh noah

this next one's for you vincent wants a roast of florida representative matt gates go okay yeah um matt gates has been called one of the most pro-gun legislators in Florida's history. And I get it. If my eyes were that close together, I'd want vengeance on somebody. I'd want to go Charles Bronson on a doctor. The motherfucker looks like Michael J. Fox tried to make a Matt Damon fuck doll out of Play-Doh. Yeah, he looks like he's doing a really bad job of covering up the fact that he's wearing somebody else's teeth.

Right. Yeah. Play-Doh indentures. Exactly. It's like Buffalo Bill for teeth, yeah. Alright, so Heath, Kevin has a terrible couple named Heather and Danny that need some roasting. They're the worst. Let's have some hay for

them. Oh my god, it's too fucking easy. They're literally the worst people. They're the worst. You ready? So this roast will be literally nothing but a list of factual information. Oh, good. Ready? Here we go. Danny and Heather sell essential oils via multi-level marketing for a living.

Danny has a giant braid at the bottom of his man beard. It's technically a fire hazard in most states. If I ever see him, I will climb it like I'm in gym class. I will fail, but I will try to climb it like I'm in gym class. And Heather's face was created with Mr. Potato Head parts from different size sets. There is no other way to describe what's happened there. Her enormous mouth literally

hangs over the side of her face like a fucking mustache. It's impossible. And this is my favorite part. According to Heather's bio page on the website for her nonsense pyramid scheme, she has

a quote, pension for learning retirement plan for learning it's a good thing she doesn't have a pension or else she might lose that pension pension for learning according to her own website that she wrote oh yeah no sticking with the factual information nothing will ever roast these people harder than their own most recent Facebook post, which reads, quote, had some oats left over after making oat milk.

Super easy and tasty, by the way. That's a parenthetical. So we added some almonds, dates, coconut flakes, coconut nibs, bananas, and cinnamon to make badass little batch of breakfast cookies. What what?

Emoji banana. Emoji coconut. Emoji cookie. Emoji smiley face who has just eaten a nice meal. Emoji hard rock hand. Emoji Andrew Wakefield trying to give you a roofie

and quote what what is a hate crime yes thank you alright Eli Laura would like you to insult Minnie Mouse ah Minnie how do you insult a

generational symbol of the beaten housewife she's the Phyllis Schlafly of cartoon characters How do you insult a generational symbol of the beaten housewife? She's the Phyllis Schlafly of cartoon characters. By which I mean she's an outdated corpse that was cringy when it was alive, but people won't stop digging it up and throwing it in your face. Pretty sure that's just you, Eli. I am people, Noah.

Okay. All right. Time for a challenge. Your turn. The Godless Revolution podcast would like you to insult them and i challenge you to do it in the style of their podcast okay but if i did that nobody would hear it i kid i kid about some stuff not necessarily about that but some stuff but seriously face yeah i know but they're doing yeoman's work out there in utah by which i mean plowing through bullshit very slowly. Also, I would rank them

an importance somewhere between a squire and a page. Anyway, sorry if that insult went on a little too long, but you did say to do it in the style of Godless Revolution, so, you know. Fair. Alright, while we're giving out challenges, Eli, I got one for you. Bar Weinig would like you to roast him as a child for wearing blackface as Black Pete. And I'm going to add a twist. I want to hear you roast him as a child, as a child. Oh, okay.

Hey there, Mr. Bauer, sir. I know these pigtails are of you as a kid, but I'm pretty sure we all knew blackface wasn't cool in 1992. On the plus side, it is cool to see the childhood pictos of Megyn Kelly. Also, I have terrible mental illness. Please medicate me before high school. Because it's Eli as a kid. I get it. I get it.

It was his catchphrase back then. All right, Heath. I've got a challenge for you as well. Go four days without drinking. Okay, I'm kidding. Or you could just insult Tom Hale's dog, Stella. It's not particularly funny. Raise the pillow, man.

All right, Tom's dog stella uh stella looks like the taco bell dog got shipwrecked and had a stroke during the shipwreck and now she's trying to bark wilson but it sounds really stupid because it's a stroke yeah so like a few clicks above madge in terms of health hurtful i didn't I didn't do it. Noah, see, this is the thing. Lashes out. All right. Noah, got another special request for you to roast Carl Sagan from Jason.

Oh, nice. You, Jason. Okay. Yeah. So Carl's self-stated goal was to help inspire a generation of love, appreciation, and respect for science. So nailed it, bro. Oh, by the way, in that pale blue dot, that's not a planet, Carl.

That's a graph of your actual scientific accomplishments. I mean, don't get me wrong. You were really good at talking about the smart stuff other smart people did, and you did it smartly. And without you, we'd have been months behind the Russians in analyzing the Venusian atmosphere. But come on, man. And without you, we'd have been months behind the Russians in analyzing the Venusian atmosphere. But come on, man.

Trim the foreskin back from your sweater and get over yourself a bit. Also, he hit his wife. No. No, no, he did not. I know, but I've been working that lie into our show for a couple of years whenever we mention him, and I enjoy it. Yeah, I just, I try and say it very quietly. Hashtag Carl Sagan hit his wife. Veto. Overruled veto. I wouldag Carl Sagan hit his wife. Veto.

Overruled. I would take a two-thirds majority. Okay. Heath, I got another request for you. Sean would like you to roast his ex-wife whose hobbies include, these are his words, drinking wine and spending money she didn't earn. Okay.

All right. Well, I mean, it sounds like his ex-wife needs to learn how to find a husband who isn't a judgy asshole weird way to ask for a roast bonus roast there for you Sean doesn't even make sense Sean whatever this is for charity so here we go Sean's ex-wife looks like an expert on the wines of Pittsburgh

she looks like she'd think Ben Roethlisberger was innocent because look at what he's wearing. Hoots. She looks like every vineyard she's ever been to has a wet dream of walling her up

inside a barrel of Boonskill Strawberry Farms and making her drink herself out. All right. And Eli, your last special request is from Thomas who would like you to roast Gavin McInnes and the Proud Boys.

Oh, oh, thank you, Thomas. Thank you for this. Hey, Gavin, sorry, the task of staying a millionaire for the rest of your life and not being a giant racist was too much for you. And look, I think it's great you managed to set up a club just for failed rapists. Good.

Get them all in one place. So as a way to say thank you to you, I'm going to give you a clue about what comes next in your terrible, sad life. Do you remember that time you put a dildo up your ass to prove you weren't homophobic on your show? Yeah. So that actually turns out is going to be the second most fucked

you are when the New York D.A. brings Rico charges against you and your boys for your little brawl from last year. At least you know what gang you want to join in prison, right? That's already done. All right. Well, that was a lot of vulgarity, but it still

wasn't an eighth of a million dollars worth. So we're going to be back soon with more. And to be clear, I fucking love Carl Sagan. This is for charity. He and his wife are in my face. You know, in this line of work, certain questions come up over and over again. Why do smart people believe dumb shit? Why are lies so much more compelling than the truth?

How much evil must the Catholic Church do before society stops treating its leader as a moral icon? But the question that we find ourselves asking most often here at Puzzle in a Thunderstorm is, what's that smell? Which brings us to yet another edition of How Bullshit Is It? So tell us, Heath, what nugget of nuttery have you brought for us today?

Alright, today we're going to be talking about vitamin supplements. And I feel attacked. Vito. Yeah, right. I'm going to get a lot of tweets this week, huh? Yeah, but to be fair, I mean, for all we know, I'll get a lot of them too. Yeah, no, a lot of... Spread it out.

Could be a lot of trees falling in that forest. Okay, so what are vitamin supplements? All right, so a vitamin is any of a group of substances that are essential in small quantities for the normal metabolic functions of the human body that can't be synthesized internally luckily they occur naturally in certain foods but if food is a little intimidating for you you can also take supplements that allow you to skip over all the calories and sustenance and joy and just get straight to the... Thank you. See? See? Permission. I am scared of most foods at this point. Right.

Okay. So I'm detecting a little skepticism here on half of your parts to the idea of taking vitamin supplements. Yeah. But important note, some people do need them, but most people absolutely do not. Unlike a lot of the stuff we talk about on this segment, there actually are legitimate uses for vitamin supplements. Some people do need them, but most people absolutely do not. Unlike a lot of the stuff we talk about on this segment, there actually are legitimate uses for vitamin supplements.

So if a doctor told you to do something, if the doctor told you to have vitamin supplements, go ahead and do that. Don't let anything in this segment sway you one way or the other from what the doctor told you. Yeah, right. Yeah, don't take medical advice from a podcast. Check. Okay. Question.

What if your doctor said, for the last time, I'm an ophthalmologist. Put your dick away. You should put your dick away. See, that's what he said. Well, I mean, unless you have an eye dick. Right. No, that's true. Or a dick eye.

I mean, but then you just need to calmly explain what the fuck is happening and they'll figure it out eventually. But all that being said, the overwhelming majority of vitamin supplements consumed in the US are completely useless and stupid. There's no reason to believe that preemptively taking a daily multivitamin to ward off some undefined future health problem is going to produce any positive effect. And despite this being well known in the medical world, as many as two thirds of Americans regularly take some sort of multivitamin. 47% eligible voter turnout last year, 67% eating sugarless sugar pills on a regular basis in this country. And when you add in all the herbal supplements,

America is estimated to waste well over $30 billion a year on this stuff. We could build five Mexico walls out of fucking zinc. And then fucking eat them and accomplish way more. Okay. I mean, one third of this podcast takes a daily multivitamin, and three thirds know it's probably bullshit. Probably. All right.

So if this stuff is medically useless, why did we start doing it in the first place? Because mom keeps buying me the bottles, you know what? And she comes over, and she's like, you taking them? All right, question. What happens if you don't eat everything mom buys you? Oh, I would get. Please don't answer.

Please don't answer. Moving on. Okay, so vitamins were first discovered around the turn of the 20th century. And at that point, they were seen as downright miraculous. And they actually were for certain diseases. Back then, a lot of people had vitamin deficiency diseases. And all of a sudden,

doctors could say, eat more of this, and those people recovered. And like any major medical breakthrough, the public didn't take long to overestimate its potential. By the late 1930s, it became possible to put them into pills.

But it wasn't until we figured out how to turn them into the shapes of Flintstone characters that the craze really took off. Oh, guys, million dollar idea. Flintstone's birth control. We solve overpopulation in a month. No, actually, I think that might be

a million dollar idea. Now, you said two-thirds of Americans regularly take these things? Well, I mean, the numbers are hard to pin down, but the lowest estimate is over half and the highest estimates are around three-quarters. It depends on how you define regular and also depends whether or not you're

trying to sell them to people highly susceptible to peer pressure. Okay, I wouldn't say everyone who takes vitamins is highly... All the cool kids are wearing a microphone right up their ass, Eli. Okay, I wouldn't say everyone who takes vitamins is highly... All the cool kids are wearing a microphone right up their ass, Eli. Oh! Oh! And now they're taking it out.

All the cool kids are taking it right out. Putting it right back in. They're putting it right back in. Now, but not everybody taking these things is taking them for no reason, right? Like you said, some people are prescribed vitamin supplements by their doctors. And at best, these represent less than a quarter of the people regularly taking them. Okay, so how did it get this bad?

I forgot to take the pop filter off first. I meant the vitamin thing. Oh, okay. Okay, so one of the big culprits here is the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act that passed in 1994. Before that, there was a legal requirement that companies had to submit supplements to the FDA, along with evidence that those supplements were safe and effective. Boo, nerds. Yep.

I used a past tense verb just now. Yup. We used to have rules about things you put in your stupid fucking face being safe and effective. But then, uh, I don't know. Pure sodium lollipop guy was getting detained for exploding kids' faces and it felt unfair to libertarians. I don't know. Those kids, they chose to add water. He told them not to.

So Congress did away with that totalitarian regime and made it so you could just say your product supports good health, thus making it perfectly legal to sell pretty much anything that doesn't definitely kill people right away. Okay, so what all falls under the purview of this law? Okay, well, according to the DSHEA, a dietary supplement is defined as any product except tobacco that contains at least one of the following. One, a vitamin.

Two, a mineral. Three, an herb or botanical. Four, an amino acid, five, a dietary substance, quote, for use to supplement the diet by increasing total dietary intake, or six. There's a six? There's a six. Any concentrate, metabolite, constituent, extract, or combination of any of the aforementioned ingredients. So, any physical thing? Things in the universe.

Yes. Except tobacco. Well, right. Yeah, exactly. So, if we want to beat this thing, we just got to throw a cigarette into a vat somewhere. We can wreck the whole industry. Okay.

All right. So, I know in advance this isn't really a valid argument, to throw a cigarette into a vat somewhere we can wreck we'll do the whole industry okay all right so i know in advance this isn't really a valid argument but it's one that probably persuades a lot of people so i want to throw it out there the people i know that take daily multivitamins tend to be way healthier than the people i know who don't right and anecdotal or not the statistics actually do back me up on that people who take multivitamins are generally healthier, right? Counterpoint, me. No, good point. Yeah, no, great point.

But what Noah said, it does make it hard to argue against a little bit. But yes, statistically speaking, people who take supplements are healthier. But that's because taking vitamins is seen as a healthy thing to do. So health nuts do it. People who take a daily multivitamin are far more likely to be non-smokers and drink moderately or not at all and exercise regularly and eat well. Counterpoint, all of those are also literally me. That's true. But, you know, on the average, people wearing, say, kinetic tape, they're faster and stronger than people who aren't wearing kinetic tape.

But that's not because kinetic tape works. It's because the people wearing it are athletes and most of the people not wearing it are not athletes. Right. Oh, I'm going to wrap myself in kinetic tape, throw off their average. There you go. Eli just puts one little strip on his leg he tumbles through a portal into the end zone of his high school football field like fucking being John Malkovich his dad uses the word proud

do not narrate my inner monologue that was inside my head thank you you. All right. So, okay, maybe they're largely unnecessary, but still, I mean, some people could have vitamin deficiencies they didn't know about, right? So what would you say to the better safe than sorry argument? Well, I'd probably say that $30 billion number again with a big emphasis on the B, billion dollars. $30 billion a year people spend on this just in America. But our vitamin obsession leads to other problems too. I mean, there's obviously a risk to unjustified nutritional confidence, but these things also have side effects. In 2012, which is the most recent year I could find data for, there were 23,000 emergency room visits in the U.S. that were caused by supplements.

Really? 23,000. And because the FDA regulations are so lax, there's a huge problem with supplements not containing what they say they contain or not containing any active ingredient at all. And occasionally, having real FDA-regulated drugs actually snuck into them

so they seem like they work. What a weird plan. Guys, guys, we say this Vicodin is vitamin E so people will buy it. It's the only way people will buy Vicodin. Yeah. It's like the idiot who thinks

his bullshit brick weed got laced with pure colombian cocaine except not raw yeah uh-huh and instead of brick weed it's just brick dust of brick and by the way in addition to all the stuff i just mentioned a lot of supplements have been shown to have negative health effects. You bought nothing and you got less than you paid for. And somehow that doesn't slow down sales.

And antioxidants, they're a GNC favorite, but according to Steve Novella on Science Based Medicine, quote, the evidence shows that not only are they of no routine benefit they may cause harm by disrupting the natural mechanisms of internal homeostasis end quote so the better safe than sorry actually fails before you get to then okay well with with

scientific results like that then how is it that anyone's still taking them? She sends the bottle and it's there. You don't throw away gifts from your mother. Well, the actual answer is advertising. The vitamin and supplement industry spends about a third of a billion dollars a year on it. And it's apparently damn effective because, again, they sell $30 billion worth of stuff every year. And according to a recent survey, 90% of the population thinks taking a vitamin supplement is a good idea.

90%. And they're definitely not getting that impression from doctors or science people. Right. All right. Well, I guess the only question left, well, from me anyway, left to ask is, How bullshit is it? Well, compared to most of the stuff we talk about on this segment,

it's medium bullshit, I guess. Okay. But it's also literally shit a lot of the time and urine. People are paying about $30 billion a year to excrete this stuff and nothing else that's all that happens and that's best case scenario you cross your fingers for nothing else besides nothing all right well uh we're running out of alphabet on this and i'm looking forward to forcing you to come up with something for x so i'm sure we'll be back with more bullshit soon. X-rays. No.

Those are real. Okay. Hold a rock near you and I can see your bones. Before we pack it up and head to Dallas to see Morgan this weekend, I wanted to remind you that I'll be on The Atheist Experience on Sunday. Check the show notes for this episode for links to watch it live. And please, please get your shitty brother-in-law to call in. I so want your shitty brother-in-law to call in, at least as much as you want it.

Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, and an even new episode of our sister show's hot friend Godawful Movies debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday and an even new episode of our half-sister show Citation Union debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously this wouldn't count as a show if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for his Ellie Sadler-like

willingness to dig through giant amounts of shit to find out what's wrong. I need to thank Lucinda Lusions for her Grant Sadler-like willingness to guide us through dangerous trails we'd rather not be on. And I need to thank Eli Posnick for his Dennis Nedry-like determination to eventually get us all killed by dinosaurs. I also want to thank Eli Posnick for his Dennis Nedry-like determination to eventually get us all killed by dinosaurs. I also want to thank Justin for providing this week's Farnsworth quote and for holding

the Australian military to task. Good on you, mate. I'm allowed to say that, by the way. I have a lot of Australian friends. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most magnificent mortals, J. Mike Herb, Mr. Hagloff Bicycler, First Atheist President Rob David, and I can't go when you're watching. J. Mike and Herb, whose erections are lucky Edmund Hillary is dead, Mr. Hagloff Bicycler, First Atheist President Rob David, and I Can't Go When You're Watching. Jay, Mike, and Herb, whose erections are Lucky Edmund, Hillary is Dead.

Mr. Hagloff Bicycler and First Atheist President, who are so bright eclipses wear glasses to look at them. And Rob David and I Can't Go When You're Watching, whose IQs have more digits than their extremities. Together, these nine gnarly non-believers nutted us a nice nugget of nutrition to nurture our negations and nonsense this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the keen intuition and marvelous taste in hats it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadius, whereby you'll earn early access

to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingadius.com. And if you'd like to help, but not in a giving us money kind of way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review on iTunes,

liking our Facebook page, or telling a friend about the show. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact

page at skatingatheist.com. Eli, do you put a different number than two spaces every time, just like for spite? Nope, definitely not. There's nothing purposeful about anything I do. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.