The Scathing Atheist - 523: Revived Edition

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

In this week’s episode, billionaire JK Rowling dictates who’s a woman from deep within the leathery carapace she uses as a face, Ron DeSantis finally speaks up about the atheist bias of the number system, and we’ll escape the winter blues with some tropical bullshit. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ 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 our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Find out more about Camp Quest Texas for Grown Ups here: https://campquesttexas.org/announcements/xrt5zp8jdk64r8t1pnvsd5bovhhw5l-s4wez --- Headlines: 24 hour revival at Asbury University goes viral: https://religionnews.com/2023/02/20/citing-disruptions-to-school-and-town-asbury-authorities-move-to-end-11-days-of-revival/ Florida education officials discuss SAT alternative focused on Christian western tradition: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article272526392.html Anti-abortion group to pay Planned Parenthood nearly $1m over protest at clinic: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/06/anti-abortion-group-pay-planned-parenthood-nearly-1m Hogwarts Legacy release prompts antisemitism allegations on top of Rowling's transphobia: https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/10/hogwarts-legacy-antisemitism-goblin-artefact/  https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/02/09/hogwarts-legacy-sirona-ryan-included-to-shut-trans-people-up/ https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/02/lgbtq-activist-forced-to-apologize-for-calling-jk-rowling-a-nazi-after-she-threatens-him-with-legal-action/ Democrats pick up House seat because GOP nominates Warlock binding, demon fighting, election denying, religious lunatic: https://www.vpm.org/news/2023-02-20/virginia-4th-district-election-jennifer-mcclellan-leon-benjamin-richmond A guy says he had a heart attack and went to hell where he heard Rihanna singing "Umbrella": https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a42593462/near-death-experience-story-priest-went-to-hell-tiktok/

Warning, this week's episode contains naughty words that rhyme with skit, class troll, and brother fucker. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh, and by my new company that buys boxed food meals you forget to cook back from you at a steep discount, GoodbyeFresh. And now, The Scathing Atheist. I'm now the guy at work who is listening to the last five minutes of bonus content from his favorite podcast in the office parking lot before work on August 25th,

not realizing how much it was broadcasting outside the car for his co-workers to hear. And I'm here to tell you that whether you wipe front to back like a human being, back to front like a coked-up magician who licks strangers, or throw it like you're in a zoo, we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's February 23rd. And it's National Chili Day. Cool, yeah, because sometimes you want a taco that's already digested for you.

No illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Chris Rocks, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia. This is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, billionaire J.K. Rowling dictates who's a woman from deep within their leathery carapace. Ron DeSantis finally speaks up

about the atheist bias in the numbers system. And we'll escape the winter blues with some tropical bullshit. But first, the diatribe. Over on our sister show, Godawful Movies, we record a bonus secular movie episode once a month for our patrons. And with the Razzie nominees out this month, we decided the best way to select the target was to put up a patron poll of all the Razzie nominees and see which one listeners wanted us to lampoon the most minus Morbius because we'd actually already done that one anyway the result of the poll was the new Pinocchio not the stop-motion one that Guillermo del Toro did but the shitty live-action remake Disney did of their original cartoon and it was really fucking bad now if you want a full accounting of how bad it is, you'll have to sign up over at patreon.com slash godawful.

But suffice to say, the whole project was doomed from the start. And one of the main reasons was their inscrutable desire to more or less stay true to the cartoon. It wasn't a shot-for-shot remake exactly, but it was pretty damn close. And here's the thing. I don't know how well you remember that cartoon but let me assure you it's way fucked up the entire last third takes place in a den of childhood debauchery called pleasure island wherein naughty children are tempted to smoke cigars and drink beer and if they succumb to that temptation they're transformed into donkeys and then sold into slavery at a fucking salt mine

and if anything the new one just makes this part worse because they leave out the cigar smoking and the beer drinking, so the kids are being turned into donkeys for no greater trespass than yelling loud and breaking clocks. And of course, the reason the movie doesn't work, you know, other than the remarkable degree to which everyone involved was

clearly phoning it in, is because the whole damn thing is a morality play from 1940 based on a series of books that were 60 years old back then the temptations pinocchio has to overcome on his ethical journey are things like smoking cigars and wanting to be an actor not exactly relevant to the modern generation because surprise surprise the virtues parents are trying to instill in their kids during like the great depression not exactly the same ones as the parents from the TikTok generation. But it occurred to me after we watched it and recorded this episode.

What a perfect microcosm this really is of how fucking useless the Bible is. I mean, the moral dictates from 83 years ago are dated enough to be mostly useless to a modern person. So what happens when we ramp that up by a factor of 24? Which, by the way, only gets you to the most recent book of the Bible. I mean, obviously, this is nothing new, right? Like everybody who's ever read the Bible or even made a serious go of it, for that matter, has been struck by just how much time it spends on shit like how to properly punish a person whose ox wanders onto your property and kills your sheep or whatever. The dictates to avoid shellfish and mixed fibers are constant fodder for atheists who

want to belittle the book's moral authority. But when you zoom in and you see this on the shorter term, it's far more obvious why not only is the Bible ethically useless, but the very concept of a Bible is ethically useless. Worse than ethically useless, right? It's not just that this particular book of morals is bad. It's that the very concept of trying to carve moral dictates into stone is bad. And if you're making any real effort to look for it, you don't have to go all the way back to like 83 year old cartoons to see this shit play out. Just in the past decade, the moral sensibilities of our culture and of me personally have advanced to the point where like if i listen to the earliest episodes of this show i find myself cringing at shit i said fuck i'd imagine

the overwhelming majority of the people listening to the show have had the same experience reading back over facebook memories right morals move not just on the scale of millennia, but on the scale of lifetimes. And sorry if it seems like I'm stating the obvious here, but if you look around at the major problems facing the world right now, you're going to realize that this is not obvious to everybody. So many of our problems are rooted in this idea of static morality, in this idea that if it was okay 50 years ago, it should still be okay now. That singular misconception is the beating heart of bigotry. It's the driving force behind Trumpism. It's the root of the war Republicans have declared on public education. And it's a damn hard misconception to address

when your starting point is that Moses was able to carve the basic rules to live by into stone fucking tablets in the 13th century bce and we should still be using those as the basis of our morality today morality evolves or at least it should evolve it wants to evolve it's a living thing and every effort to roll back progress or make america great again is an attempt to kill it they're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the savory meats and flaky crust of my gooey melted cheese. Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to form the hot pocket of wisdom once again? Okay, sure. I take him fine dining.

He upper deckers the toilet. But when it comes to hot pockets, he turns into James Beard, everybody. I take him fine dining. He upper deckers the toilet. But when it comes to Hot Pockets, he turns into James Beard, everybody. Serve me cucumbers. Okay, but Hot Pockets are cool. That sleeve is magical. Isn't it? I don't know what it does,

but it's magical. And speaking of delicious meals I have in my kitchen right now, I guess it's time to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, HelloFresh. And so I said, well, technically,

you're the one who took the pictures of your feet. Right, but you printed them out and framed them. See, now that's what he said. That's exactly what he said. Hey, fellas, what you guys eating? Oh, let's see. We got easy cheese sandwiches. Yeah, and slesses.

I'm sorry, what's a sless? Oh, it's like a s'more, but you don't cook it. So, yeah. So, marshmallows and chocolate. Marshmallows and chocolate, yeah. Technically, yeah. Guys, I thought you said you were going to eat better this year. I know, but this is what we had in the house.

Well, why don't you guys try HelloFresh? Ooh, what's HelloFresh? With HelloFresh, you get what's HelloFresh? With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. I don't know, Noah. Don't those delivery boxes get kind of samey? Well, HelloFresh now has 40 weekly recipes to choose from, so you can say bye-bye to your recipe rut and treat yourself and your family to exciting new flavors every week. That does sound

good, Noah, but as you would probably put it, do they have anything we can give a resounding Yas queen? They sure do. Fast and fresh recipes, HelloFresh's latest lines of meals featuring robust flavors and filling portions, are ready in less than 15 minutes. Enjoy taste and quality done quickly with recipes like falafel power bowls, seared steak and potatoes with Brene sauce, or Southwest pork and bean burritos. Sounds great, but have you tried it yourself? I sure have. HelloFresh sent us a box to try, and I loved how easy to unpack and cook the meals were. That's why I Know Illusions personally endorse it as a product.

All right, Noah. I'm sold. No cap. How do I sign up? Go to HelloFresh.com slash Scathing65 and use the code Scathing65 for 65% off plus free shipping. That's HelloFresh.com slash Scathing65 and use the code Scathing65 for 65% off plus free shipping.

Alright. Just circling back. By no cap, you mean like not having a hat? Yep. That's what it means. Nice. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, Christianity has finally joined the hallowed ranks of

eating Tide Pods and falling off of milk crates after a 24 hour worship event at Asperger University in Kentucky went viral and drew in thousands from all over the country and ever so slightly the world. Ultimately, the unplanned prayer-a-thon lasted for nearly two weeks, drew in tens of thousands of attendees and sparked similar events at Samford University in Alabama, Cedarville University in Ohio, Belmont University in Tennessee, and others before being shut down

last Sunday by college administrators who couldn't figure out how to monetize it. Okay, I'll make a pledge on Patreon if they do the milk crates and the Tide Pods for sure. Like a fucking sizable pledge. Heath, what did we just put on the whiteboard? No Jonestowning. No Jonestowning, exactly. So yeah, what the Christians in your life might be saying, it's hard to convey just what a big deal this wasn't. First of all, it's a Christian college, right? So are all the other colleges I just mentioned. It shouldn't really be that big a deal that students at a Christian college got fired up enough about Jesus to stay up all night. I did that over Mario Kart 64 when I was in college. And sure, the event drew in people from all over the country, but the estimated total attendance was about 50,000 people over 11 days.

That's so sad. Right, right. Coachella gets about 250,000 on a good year, so Jesus is about 20% as popular as Bad Bunny? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing to brag about and hang your 2,000-year-old globe spanning religion on. Just Jesus talking to God.

Hey, Dad, I'm an influencer, as it turns out. So that's good. I might get one of those bendy microphone arms if the Patreon money gets a little better. It's not quite there yet. God's like, oh, that's great, son. Did you get the same turnout for prayer

that, say, Duke does for a football game? Oh, fuck no. Not even by percentage of student body, dad. No, not even remotely close. In no way comparable. So, now, the event itself was even more unimpressive. There was no, like, you know, there weren't, like,

headline speakers. There were no celebrities. There were no, like, there weren't even well-known preachers it was just like a student led open mic situation fun those are awesome yeah right think about the guy at the con who refuses to get to the question mark during the q a except he's super duper christian and he goes on for two weeks it's a fortnight of it's like that but with uncushioned wooden seats and air thick with the exhalations of 1500 people far more likely than average to think vaccines are an illuminati ruse in february cool well kind of like the end of inglorious bastards except that the nazis did a voluntary lock-in at the theater of death yes of burn in. But despite the gross admission of cultural irrelevance that dubbing this a revival represents,

Christian media ran with it and even earned a mention on Tucker Carlson's show. And while the term revival implies a revitalized interest in religion by non-believers or non-church goers, literally every person I saw interviewed in any news segment on this story was either a pastor or a student at some other Christian college. But ultimately, citing the strain on the city's infrastructure, the danger inherent in large crowds with no commensurate amount of security and the fact that it literally serves no purpose and kind of gets in the way of their normal grift, the university officially put an end to the event on Sunday. So, consider Christianity revived, I guess.

We're done. Which, can we take a second to acknowledge how funny that moment is, right? Ah, yes, the spirit of the Lord sweeps through our nation and all arise into his name. But y'all got midterms this week. Enough is enough. Come on, kids, cut it the fuck out.

And in Florida pedagogy news. quick matt gates i know you're listening this headline is not about you i know my sound that way words are tricky sometimes they sound like other ones and of course you're the product of the florida education system so i get it and well speaking of which i guess the story kind of is about you a little, Matt. Governor Ron DeSantis is planning to get rid of all the woke, true things that kids might learn and thereby fuck up the GOP's existence. the curriculum of AP classes, getting rid of AP tests and the SAT, administered

by the college board, and switching over to a different education company that's focused on, quote, the great classical and Christian tradition. Yeah, no, his own SAT with fucking hookers and whack check. I have to be honest, though.

I feel like I owe the SAT an apology. Turns out that answering questions like Ron DeSantis is to education as rancid piles of quivering shit are to blank has been a huge part of my career. Never would have thought. Sure. Yeah. The answer is education, by the way. Well, I gave you an easy

one, though. All right. So, big thanks to Chrissy, Justin, and Joshua for sending the story at scathingnews at gmail.com. Very helpful. And a belated thanks to Anthony, who never got the hat tip for sending us the article about the naturopath selling his little nephew's shit as an edible autism cure in British Columbia. Hat tip to Anthony. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Heath, are you telling me that if folks send us the latest news at scathingnews at gmail.com, not only do they get to hear

those stories on the show, but you will personally dress up as the dead parent of their choice and tell them you're proud of them? Nope.

It's just the first thing you said. So, here's what happened with the Florida man. We learned about the new plan from Ronnie Two Boots during a press conference last week when he announced that he's working on a plan to get rid of the

college board AP curriculum, especially anything with, you know, white people whiting throughout history because it makes us look bad. And he also wants to replace the SAT with something called the Classic Learning Test or CLT. The CLT was created in 2015 by a guy named Jeremy Tate. Side note, when I searched for Jeremy Tate on Google, Google just said, people also search for Andrew Tate. Not a good start. Well, according to Jeremy Tate, start well according to jeremy tate the sat has become quote increasingly ideological and it censored the entire christian catholic intellectual tradition and other thinkers in the history of western thought oh dude sat you you named your fucking test for high schoolers the clit i am not taking any advice from you about thinking or thought, okay? Okay, nope.

Look, I don't want to blame the victims here, but people who currently live in Florida are like if Jews had gotten a tour of Auschwitz in 1933 and thought to themselves, well, it's a good thing I haven't committed any crimes. It looks terrible here. I sure hope

we won't be doing any jaywalking. Okay, I'm just going to segue back out of the Holocaust for a second. We need to address a very important conceptual hole in the GOP plan here, but I will start by saying that AP exams and the SAT are not perfect. Professionals who study the usefulness of standardized exams have pointed out several problems with the current system. But none of those problems are what Ronnie D and Florida Republicans are focused on. Right. It's like woke anti-white math.

That's not a thing. That's what they're focused on. So here's the conceptual abyss. They seem to be very confused about the difference between the content of AP curriculum and the content of the SAT. AP tests are based on knowledge of a particular subject area, but the SAT is just about language comprehension and math comprehension. It doesn't involve showing up for the test with any specific knowledge of like history or politics, but nonetheless, DeSantis is talking with a guy who thinks the very concepts of math and language are an ideological attack against the white Christian tradition. And yes, they are, but like not the way he thinks.

He's got that wrong. Jeremy Tate seems to be under the impression that like trigonometry can be uppity somehow and that means we need to listen to literally nothing he ever says about anything ever ever ever but he's meeting with like florida officials about this she said how dare pi not equal three in defiance of god right also to be clear the sane parts of the country don't have to just accept the fucking jerk off accredited exam or whatever it's called. Like, so what Ron DeSantis is actually proposing is the elimination of higher education for everyone who lives in his state. That's his platform at this point. Yes, that's platform.

So apparently the wheels are already in motion. This is really scary. Apparently the wheels are already in motion. This is really scary. Jeremy Tate of the fucking SSAT has been meeting with people in the Florida Department of Education. He's had meetings set up probably by DeSantis, which is terrifying and literally a constitutional violation. And even worse, a bunch of those education officials agree with him. According to Florida's senior chancellor of education, Henry Mack, quote, not only do we need to build anew by returning to the foundations of our democracy,

but the classic learning test also offers the opportunity for all our colleges and universities to right size their priorities. Okay. All right. So to be clear though the foundations of our democracy are white supremacy yeah right and what's more that's what he meant to like whether he meant to mean that or not sure is yeah i just love the idea that colleges get to be like oh this is this is a chance for us to learn from you the the state of florida thank you for the offer yeah noted also small thing but no idea what the fuck he meant by right size there he tried to use a fancy word like he wants to fix the size of their priorities as a whole the size of them all together girthy yeah not clear if the priorities are too big or too small, but they're the wrong size. You gotta find that

Goldilocks zone of priority girth in education. What the fuck that means. But just to be clear, they're nonsense word salads like the ones you just heard, made of words they don't understand because again, they're probably the product of Florida schools that they're now

making worse. Those word salads are really just trying to get universities to accept the white Christian SAT in order to encourage more homeschooling by evangelical idiots who aren't qualified to teach anything and also encourage more private Christian charter schools, both of which fuck up the public education system and also fuck up the pursuit of knowledge as a concept in the world. Yeah, right. Public education as well as the system. Yeah. And in the tides, they are a changing news.

You know, it's not often we here at the Scathing Atheist get to report on good news. So it is with absolute relish. It is with absolute relish. I tell you, podcast listener, that the church at Planned Parenthood and outgrowth of Washington State's Covenant Church was ordered by a judge to pay approximately nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars in fees for their illegal protests outside of a Spokane, Washington Planned Parenthood this week. Woo to the motherfucking who. It's amazing. I never thought we would live to see

Greg Locke unseated as Planned Parenthood's top involuntary donor, but there you go. We found it. Yeah. Now, you might be wondering just how those numbers shake out. Well, I'm glad you asked. See, in addition to paying the $850,000 in Planned Parenthood's attorney's fees. They also incurred $110,000 in civil damages. And see, Planned Parenthood is a charity. And as Noah hinted, I kind of couldn't help myself. So I looked up their latest filings of how much they take in donations a year. And it looks like they owe the Covenant Church a big old thank you because that 110K will add an extra 2% to their donations for 2023 alone. Amazing.

I feel like we should send them a thank you card, right? Right. So like, you know, when you get a really nice gift, like somebody gets you a dinner out and you send a picture of the great food to say thanks, I feel like we should send them a picture of the approximately 1,900 abortions that they just paid for. Oh, my God.

Yes. Yes. Right. Because that's how it works. We have to. That's how it works. We take your money and we actively kill babies for spite. It's a great gift.

We'll send you a thank you. Oh, and we could just pretend to be from Planned Parenthood. We could show up with a big card and ask to take pictures. No, we're from the Spokane. Wanted to thank you oh my god it's so worth it we're gonna be in the state even if we ended up having to also pay them 850 000 this would be worth it yeah it's still worthy yeah singing telegram maybe yeah oh my god we can hire these things this is this is all within our grasp people patreon now of course,

the church in question is gravely upset that their religious right to harass people on their way to getting medical care has been violated with Pastor Ken Peters writing on Facebook, quote, Planned Parenthood sues our little church for peaceful assembly, and it costs Christians $8 850 000 for mostly corrupt lawyers fees the only difference we have to do 7 p.m instead of 6 p.m and go across the street 850 000 over one hour and across the street wow wow yeah that's pretty dumb you could have avoided that really easily apparently it's so easy that's a lot of money they stole from the kingdom over one hour we're restarting again on the 14th of march at 7 p.m see you there

pacific northwest it ain't over end quote it ain't over yes what fucking next time gadget next time i'm a pastor. Seriously? Right. I'm sure nobody was happier to hear that it ain't over than Planned Parenthood's corrupt lawyers. But I love the way that he's downplaying the one hour thing. Right. Like that's the difference between when they're open and when they aren't. Dude, that hour. Only one second separates the lights being on and the lights being off but it's still quite a difference dude exactly liminality is confusing and look you all heard the pastor it ain't over so if you're in or around spokane on the 14th of march why don't you head on across the street

from planned parenthood when it's closed and practice your tuba or whatever legal thing you want to do to make Pastor Ken mad. Next up in headlines, in the Goblins started all the wars news. A new game called Hogwarts Legacy got released this month, and it's not going well for them. And it's not going well for them. It's an adventure story set in the Harry Potter universe. And it comes packed in with a system of two very prominent forms of bigotry. So that's fun. Transphobia and anti-Semitism.

No, you don't even have to order those separately at this point. No, it's great. The transphobia, of course, comes from the ignorant remarks of J.K. Rowling. And the anti-mitism comes from the entire goal of the game which to be clear is to put down an uprising by the enslaved race of goblins and those goblins get depicted by the game like a fucking joseph gerbil's propaganda poster okay sorting hat not hate heath okay sorting hat not hate oh no and also i have to be clear that it's not going great for them unless you're just measuring this in dollars, in which case this game is doing extremely and extremely depressingly well.

Yeah. Yikes. All right, well, big thanks to Anne for the link. Scathingnews at gmail.com. Parent to your choice. So, quick side note, Rowling recently got into a Twitter fight with a London-based trans activist named J. JJ Wells, who compared Rowling to a Nazi. And instead of Rowling

shutting the fuck up or, you know, learning something, she took advantage of the absurd libel laws in the UK and sicked her team of lawyers on the person who argued with her on the internet. I can't believe that shit. Ridiculous. Just for context, Wells has about 9,000 followers on Twitter and Rowling has about 14 million. And we know about the lawyer sickening because Wells recently tweeted this absurd apology that was so very clearly written by a legal team that was forcing Wells to post the apology that they wrote while dangling a libel lawsuit. Yeah. Hi, Joe. You don't know me, but used to be a huge fan. Now I hope you get eaten by wolverines. You get it. Same old story. Please, please, pretty, pretty, please sue us.

I will dress up as the sorting hat for the trial and have to be physically restrained from wrapping myself around your forehead and yelling bigot every 26 seconds. I promise you. I promise you, Joe. Incidentally, the only time I've ever wished that I had read the Harry Potter books is just now when I was trying to think of apropos puns to make to make fun of her

with, but I can't. I don't know those fucking stories. Yeah, it's ridiculous, this whole thing. Also worth noting, Avalanche Software, the developers, tried to throw in a trans-friendly detail fucking stories yeah it's ridiculous this whole thing also worth noting avalanche software the developers tried to throw in a trans friendly detail into the game but it went terribly because they're fucking idiots they literally did the we have a trans friend thing their attempt at trans representation was one single side character and they they named that character Serona Ryan with a sir

but also a lady name ending. So, nailed it. Trans representation. You're welcome. Quick reminder, the books already had a character of Asian descent named Cho Chang

and a black character named Kingsley Shacklebolt. Okay, Keith, we are only talking about the problematic aspects of Harry Potter after I liked it. Get with the program, okay? I don't know what you're doing. Then I sure hope the rest of the story isn't about how anti-Semitic the portrayal of the goblins always was.

And that brings us to exactly what Noah just said. The plot of the game. The main antagonist is a goblin, read Jewish banker, literally, who's leading an uprising to free his race from enslavement. And of course, that would make you the player in charge of maintaining your heroic Holocaust thing of goblins. And look, I'm not saying it makes you a literal nazi when you turn on the game but it does make you a literal nazi when you turn on the game come at us jk rowling's lawyer please please joe yeah and by the way i was not editorializing when i said jewish banker for anyone who's not familiar with the source material,

the goblin race in the Harry Potter universe is in charge of running the entire wizarding banking system. And the physical depiction of these goblins in the game is rough. So, okay, Eli, if I remember correctly, your little sister once said that you look like the rabbi for a coal mining town. Is that right? She did, yes. She did. Okay. It's like the rabbi for a coal mining town. She did. Yes, she did. Okay. It's like the game listened to Eli's sister roasting him and just sent that whole conversation to the art department. They're like, use this. Right.

And to be clear, we were all willing to ignore the goblin thing until Rowling opened her fucking maw to bitch about trans people. We were like, yeah, no, that's fair. We're a little gobbledy. We came to a gimme no, that's fair. We're a little gobliny. We came to a gimme and you blew it, Joe. You blew it. Seven books. We were like, no, we get it. One other insane

detail in the Jewish goblin depiction was a mystical item in the game. There's a goblin artifact that's very clearly a shofar, which is a traditional Jewish instrument made of a curved ram's horn. The item in the game is nearly identical. And just in case you thought they were just including, you know, something positive about the culture of the enslaved race

of antagonists. Here's the, don't do that. Don't do that. But just in case you were, here's the description of the item in the game exact words horns like this were used by goblins during the 1612 goblin rebellion to rally troops and generally annoy witches and wizards wow oh and hey you know what this is so crazy 1612 just happens to be the date of the fettmilch uprising one of the deadliest pogroms of jews in german history what a weird coincidence that that number's in there that's so crazy it's like they were trying to distract from the transphobia with the anti-semitism at a certain point right okay in fairness though like you could find a pretty bad case of anti-semitism in like any

year that they threw out there right there's a lot so if anyone wanted to boycott this piece of shit game do that you have two different angles to work with and that actually means the boycott even includes some very specific bigots like normally you wouldn't have jewish transphobes and trans anti-sememites on board with an ethical boycott. But Hogwarts Legacy managed to pull it off. It's almost impressive if you think about it. No, it's not. Bottom line, fuck J.K. Rowling and fuck that game.

Yeah. And look, if I can be serious for a moment, there are a lot of people who think they mean well, who have tried to say stuff like, I'm an ally, but these books meant so much to me or the reaction to some of this stuff is worse than the crime. And I got to tell you, jokes aside, I love these books, right? My mom's quote is still on the back of the second book. I read these books the second they came out. I waited till midnight in lines at Barnes and Noble, way after being legally able to

drive and vote. These books got me through some of the most difficult parts of my life, and they will always have a special place in my heart. But bigotry is not always hating someone. Sometimes bigotry is just valuing your own comfort and taste over the safety of others. And as the books taught us, Baltimore doesn't need you to be a death eater to rise to power. He just needs you to be a coward. And in show far, show good news tonight.

Apparently, the GOP wasn't quite done losing the midterm yet because their lead in the House was narrowed to nine seats on Tuesday when voters in Virginia's fourth congressional district took to the polls and elected Democrat Jennifer McClellan to be the first African-American woman to represent their state in Congress. And while the victory is no doubt the product of McClellan's impressive track record of legislative accomplishments over her 12 years in the Virginia General Assembly, at least some of it is because her opponent, Reverend Leon Benjamin, once publicly blew a shofar on the Capitol steps in an effort to scare away the warlocks that were trying to keep him out of Congress. That's real.

By the way, Reverend Leon is actually a cool side mission that you can buy with Hogwarts Legacy. It's tricky because the Jewish goblins and the pure blood wizards all hate you. Everybody fucking hates you. Yeah, it's a Battle Royale DLC. So yeah, so this was a special election precipitated by the vacancy left when Democratic Representative Donald McKeachin died of cancer a few weeks after Election Day.

And all McClellan had to do to secure the victory was defeat the same jackass McKeachin just beat by more than 90,000 votes. Or the election McKeachin conspired with witches warlocks and demons to steal depending on which version of events you want to believe okay why would republicans think they were going to win this time i don't know like they were hoping the witches warlocks and demons were on their 15 like all of them at the same time or they wouldn't notice this one because it was a special election i don't know know. Either way, she managed to win it and congratulations

both to her and to the entire fucking country which far too narrowly avoided adding yet another batshit apocalyptic bigot to Congress. Okay, can I just say, US politics is starting to feel a little Indiana Jones-y. Right. You know what I'm saying? Really another tomb full of traps and ancient magic.

He never just finds old pots. I just want an old pot selection. Well, yeah, and I should just emphasize what a piece of shit Benjamin is, right? This guy is so far from just old pots. First and foremost, he literally runs a conversion therapy center. Gross.

It's called Escape Hall, where Hall stands for homosexual and lesbian living. Jesus. In a speech in August, he openly denounced homosexuality and said that gay marriage was illegal. He posted on Facebook that LGBTQ people were sick and addicted to drugs. And of course, he wrapped up his midterm election with an event

where he blew a shofar with the stated intent of binding the demons, witches, and warlocks who were trying to steal his election. Yeah, I think he just wanted to wrap his mouth around something shofar-shaped, to be honest. That might be it, yeah. Did he just, like, frack the note this time on the shofar? What happened? And it's important to add here

that this motherfucker was supported by the Republican Party of Virginia all the way. He was endorsed by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. Hell, Youngkin even appeared at at least one of Virginia all the way. He was endorsed by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. Youngkin even appeared at at least one of Benjamin's campaign events. So to those so-called moderate Republicans who try to defend their party by dismissing guys like Benjamin as the fringe, they need to sit the fuck down. You are who you endorse. That's literally what a fucking political party is.

It's the whole point. Yep. party is. That's the whole point. Yep. And finally tonight, we have a story about a priest, Rihanna, and a dog human on fire. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Heath, why are you setting up a terrible joke premise about walking into a bar instead of doing the headline? I get it, but it's actually a story about those things and, of course, the important details of hell. And, of course, we learned about this from a recent article in Popular Mechanics, which apparently covers cars and also mystical dimensions of cosmic torment. Mystical dimensions of cosmic torment.

Yeah, obviously. named Gerald Johnson, he had a heart attack, which led to a near-death experience during which he took a quick tour of the eternal hellfire. And that's why we all need to have faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Okay, really, Popular Mechanics? Your only job is to lie about magic technology that will be available in the next 10 years.

You had to fill space with some guy's hellfire fugue state? Right. Right. And by the way, in case anybody's wondering about the transitive property here, yes, NDEs are just dreams. And yes, that means all of you get to fuck Gerald Johnson at your earliest convenience. Okay.

Good looking guy. So, big thanks to Squirrel for sending us over the story. Scathingnews at gmail.com. Good stuff. And it turns out I do not usually check in with popular mechanics for religion stories. Yeah, we would have missed this. I would have missed it. Absolutely.

Everyone, please keep sending those links. Very helpful. Dead parent of your choice. So the heart attack and the near death experience happened in 2016. So the heart attack and the near-death experience happened in 2016. But Father Johnson decided to sit on the story of literally seeing the hellfire and then finally told the world about it seven years later, right before Rihanna was about to perform at the halftime show in the Super Bowl. Huh.

Coincidence. And the perdition desk at Popular Mechanics got the scoop. So that's cool. Apparently, Mr. Johnson saw the bright light at the end of the tunnel and started floating up, as expected when you're a priest. But then up was actually down and he went to hell. Fun fact, hell is located right in the center of the earth huh and the first thing he saw after you know 760 miles of solid iron and nickel in the inner core was quote a man on all fours like a dog burning from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet his eyes were bulging and worse than that he was wearing chains on his neck he was like a hellhound. There was a demon holding the chains.

Is that how worse than that works? No, exactly. I'm on fire. Every inch of my skin is constantly and eternally burning. Also, the leash is a little degrading. Yeah, even worse. It totally clashes with my rags. And that's just not...

All right. Well, you're probably wondering about the official playlist in hell. That brings us to exactly that. Father Johnson heard two songs while he was down there. He heard Don't Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin. Really? Yep, and also Umbrella by Rihanna. Apparently, the hell tour, it was like eight minutes long, and then it went back up. They show you a fiery dog band.

You get two songs, and then you flip back up. Interesting. And according to Johnson, those two songs were being performed by a demon cover band as part of the torture for all the evil souls. A demon cover band with a strangely eclectic catalog that sounds like a fun band to me, honestly. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, but wait. Those are nice songs, right?

Yeah. I know in his weird torture fantasy, it's ironic. But he's just describing a pleasant aspect of hell. Yeah, right. Yeah, the music. Now, to be clear, what he's describing is the orderlies playlist

at the ICU where he was recovering from his heart attack. But yes. Sure is. Seems like an odd detail to toss in one way or the other. Yeah.

That orderly should maybe not play the don't worry, be happy right there. Like that's a weird thing, but that's definitely what happened. Yeah. So just a few thoughts before we wrap up the story. First of all,

we learned that gerald johnson has a weirdly specific hate of exactly rihanna and bobby mcferrin and he's also a liar and he combined that stuff that's the story but most importantly what the fuck was happening at popular mechanics thank you when this got published i am baffled what a meeting led to this being all the way through their process and published. Well, and I guess now that we're all looking forward to hell a little more, we can wrap up the

headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, we'll triangulate some bullshit. Religion is bullshit on steroids. And when you deal with religion as often and extensively as we do, it's easy to lose track of the fact that it would still be dangerous even without the steroids, which we periodically remind ourselves of with a segment called

How Bullshit Is It? So what flavor of fraudulent feculence do you have for us today heath today we'll be talking about the bermuda triangle cool all right so what is the bermuda triangle it's a triangle of water like just just regular water well i mean it's salt water and anything else uh it's also the air above that water part of the triangle technically okay is there anything special about this particular triangle of water not really no and so is that the end of the segment then okay in a perfect world it would be but no because some asshole named george sands fucked us out of that opportunity in 1952 when he published an article in fate magazine suggesting there might be something mysterious about this particular patch of water and air above it uh Don't you mean something fishy?

Nope, nope, do not. Anyway, Sam's article listed the number of ships and planes that had disappeared in that general area. Now, this wasn't the first article to suggest that maybe this area had a higher than normal rate of disappearances, but it was the first to suggest that the reason might be supernatural. Okay. So first things first, are there a higher than normal rate of disappearances in that area? Nope. No, no, they're not. Nice. All right. We solved the mystery, everybody. That was a quick

one. Do the guitarist. We sure did. Look, no two patches of ocean are exactly the same, so it's hard to draw an apples to apples comparison here. But given the size of the area, the amount of maritime traffic, the amount of air traffic, and the frequency of tropical storms, there's no reason to single out this region of the Bermuda Triangle as especially disappearance prone. Lloyd's of London, for example, doesn't like charge you more to ship your stuff through it. The U.S. Coast Guard doesn't pay it any more attention than any other shipping lane. In fact, when the Worldwide Fund for Nature made a list of the 10 most

dangerous waters for shipping, that particular patch of the Atlantic Ocean didn't even make the list. Okay, so exactly what region of the Atlantic are we talking about? The Bermuda Triangle, Noah. I'm so sorry. That's a very reasonable question from Noah

that should have a straightforward answer if it isn't bullshit, right? Yeah. But alas, the boundaries of the triangle shift based on which author you're reading and the point they're trying to make. You'll most often see the vertices of the triangle defined as Miami, Florida, San Juan, Puerto Rico,

and Bermuda. No particular city in Bermuda, No particular city in Bermuda, just the whole of Bermuda, I guess. Bermuda just only gets the one. So, okay. So, but why can't authors agree on the borders? Because at some point, somebody hit on the idea of plotting all the ships that sank and all the planes that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. And when you do that, it's super obvious that there's nothing special about the Bermuda Triangle in terms of frequency. So over time,

conspiracy theorists had to repeatedly gerrymander that triangle to encompass a larger and larger number of accidents to go with their theory. Okay, everyone,

it is now the Bermuda Ocean, and let me just say it's gotten real dangerous out there at this point. All right, so let me play devil's advocate here a bit. Yeah. Literally your job in the segment.

Cool. My job is to lend the adorable heart of gold. Yep, that is. Perfect. Your job. And thank you, Eli, for doing that job. So even if we accept that there aren't any more accidents in the Bermuda Triangle than there are elsewhere.

Even? I'm sorry. No, you're right. Accepting that there aren't a higher rate of accidents there. It's just like a number. That doesn't disprove the overall claim

that there isn't something supernatural about the disappearances that do happen there. Ah, okay. So, Noah, are you suggesting that there are supernatural forces

stealing ships and planes from the Bermuda Triangle, but like their hearts aren't really in it? They're not better than average. Here's the thing, it's actually worse than that because to keep the overall rate from going up, those

supernatural forces would have to accidentally keep ships from sinking that would have otherwise disappeared as well. Right, exactly. Fucking up the average, yeah. Play a devil's advocate here, goddammit. Are you sure? You're not just clumsily transitioning into a discussion of the individual Fucking up the average, yeah. Play a devil's advocate here, goddammit. Are you sure you're not just clumsily transitioning into a discussion of the individual disappearances that Bermuda Triangle believers tend to talk the most about?

I don't see why it can't be both. Okay, fair. I want to be the devil's advocate next time. I don't know. Quack, quack, quack. I'm the devil. Quack, quack, quack, quack. All right, so.

It's going to be me. Let's take these chronologically, starting with the HMS Atlanta in 1880. Atlanta was a Spartan class sixth rate frigate of the Royal Navy. And yeah, don't worry. I have no idea what any of that means either. Anyway, it was a big ass ship originally launched in 1844 that had since become a training ship, meaning a ship that basically had to have the big, you know,

student driver sign on top of it. And it sunk, you say? Yeah, it did somehow. Yeah. It set sail from Bermuda on January 31st of 1880 with 281 men, only 11 of whom were experienced enough to earn the title of able-bodied seaman.

And the ship was never heard from again. Okay. Well, if that's all it takes to start a worldwide legend, wait till everyone hears about the Bermuda, back of every car I've ever tried to park in. Very accident prone. Okay, but wait, so to be clear, we don't know that the Atalanta was in the triangle when it went down, do we?

If it was never heard from again we do not correct in fact given that it was starting in the northeast part of said triangle and heading northeast there's no reason at all to believe that it was also there's nothing remotely mysterious about the disappearance on top of the damn near criminal inexperience of the crew we know that a major tropical storm crossed its intended route about two weeks after they left. And at a hearing about this disappearance, a former member of the ship's crew testified that the Atalanta was a bit top-heavy and tended to roll way more in inclement weather than it should. He even quoted the captain as saying, Okay, so a ship sank in a very ship-sinky circumstance. he even quoted the captain as saying if she rolled one degree more she would have gone under and

foundered okay so a ship sank in a very ship sinky circumstance and and they never found the wreckage that's the story yeah a sinky ship did that yeah right oh and they found the wreckage by the way oh really in april yeah in april a gunboat reported seeing a bunch of wreckage floating off the shore of the Azores. And then in September, a German brig spotted a sunken wreck south of the Irish coast that couldn't be exactly identified as the Atalanta, but was pretty much the right size. So almost certainly that was it. Okay, and for those who are geographically challenged,

the Bermuda Triangle is not due south of the Irish coast, correct? That is correct, yes. Okay. How far due? It depends on the do-ness of south-ery. You got to do south. You got to triangulate south with San Juan. Really south.

And the island of North America. Yeah. Who's to say what is south? Here's the thing. There are some very flexible definitions of the Bermuda Triangle's borders. Well, who's to say what is south? Here's the thing. There are some very flexible definitions of the Bermuda Triangle's borders that would actually encompass this thing. What? Yeah.

At that point, the triangle is basically the entire Atlantic Ocean south of where the Titanic sank, so it's meaningless. Yes, the Bermuda Equator. Exactly. We all know about the Bermuda Equator. All right You all know about the Bermuda Equator. All right. So a ship known to handle poorly in bad weather hits bad weather with a crew full of trainees and is later found. Yep.

Hope the next one's better. What else do you have? What about the Carol A. Deering? So here we have a genuine who-the-fuck-knows story of a five-masted commercial schooner that launched from Puerto Rico in July of 1920 to pick up a load of coal in Rio de Janeiro. It arrived with no incident, but disappeared during the return voyage only to reappear in January of the next year, run aground and denuded of its crew near Cape Hatteras,

North Carolina. Explain that. Oh, awesome. Okay. So that one actually sounds like a genuine mystery. Yeah, as long as I stop now, it'll continue to sound like that. But I'm not going to stop now.

See, what we do know of that journey suggests that the captain was a complete piece of shit and the crew fucking hated him. In fact, one dude was actually arrested in Brazil when authorities overheard him talking about plans to murder that captain. But apparently the captain forgave him and then bailed him out of jail and set sail with the guy anyway. When the ship was found, it had been sabotaged in several ways and the crew's personal belongings were all missing along with the lifeboats also all missing. So it's almost certainly a case of mutiny. Okay, so not so much abandoned teeth as everyone got off. All ships have people who get off them. That's what ships do, Ethan, right?

All right, so I guess there's no need for a bunch of wild and implausible theories when it comes to this one, huh? Well, no need for them, sure. But again, this one really captured the public's attention. Then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover made a big deal of it and ordered an investigation that ultimately roped in the Treasury Department, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the Navy. And that investigation ultimately settled on mutiny. But some journalists still suspected piracy, specifically communist piracy. Really? Yeah. The headquarters of the United Russia Workers Party in New York City at the time were raided

shortly afterwards, and the FBI found a bunch of papers calling on members to seize American ships and sail them to the Soviet Union. And then, as now, a huge swath of America can't pass up on an opportunity to blame any negative thing ever on communism. It's true. Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. All right, enough with all these boats. How about a change of pace with an airplane or two? All right, I'll see you two and raise you three, actually. So probably the most famous disappearance pinned on the Bermuda Triangle

is the disappearance of Flight 19, a group of five Navy bombers that disappeared during a training flight on December 5th of 1945. This group was led by a veteran pilot named Charles Carroll Taylor, who was taking out his team on a pretty common practice run off the east coast of Florida. During the run, both of Taylor's compasses stopped working and he became hopelessly disoriented. The Navy picked up a series of sporadic and increasingly panicked transmissions over the next few hours

while Taylor tried to figure out where the fuck they were. About four hours later, they overheard the last transmission from Taylor instructing his men to ditch at sea as soon as the first plane dropped below 10 gallons of fuel. And let me just say, it's about damn time somebody's compass fucked up in this story. Yeah.

But then, at the last minute, Thomas Cruise comes barreling in from the clouds. Yes. So, all in all, Flight 19 lost five planes and 14 men. To make it worse, and to fuel the shit out of future claims of supernatural causes, the plane that was sent out to find them also disappeared along with its 13-man crew. So what's the official story on this one?

Well, the official story is cause unknown. But that's not because they don't know the cause. They just said that. That sentence is the most mysterious thing about this segment so far okay so what very clearly happened here is that lieutenant taylor's compasses fucked up he panicked he got hopelessly lost and his refusal to do the you know the pilot

equivalent of stopping at a gas station and asking for directions got his entire crew killed pretty much every legitimate investigation of the situation came to the same conclusion. At some point, he saw some islands south of the Bahamas, he mistook them for the Florida Keys, and he headed the wrong way. There are even snippets of overheard radio conversations where his subordinates are telling him, dude, you're going the wrong way. We know you're definitely going the wrong way. But military discipline is apparently so ingrained that these people all just followed him to death rather than turning west and going in the direction they knew was home. Okay, well, so if it's such an open and shut case, why would the government list it as cause unknown? Because officially admitting what happens would mean blaming Taylor

for the loss of six ships and 27 men. But that seems reasonable if it's his fault. Right. Yes, it does. And that's originally what the Navy's report did. But later, his mom complained. What? And said they were blaming him without any real evidence. Yeah.

I bet you do. Everybody's mom would do that. And since that's technically true, and since nothing is really gained by officially blaming this dead guy they decided out of respect to his family to revise the report and say the cause was unknown so wait a minute so the bermuda triangle enthusiasts found the last tiny crack of humanity left in the american armed forces and spackled it with conspiracy theory bullshit sure the fuck did yep no ma'am ma'am, ma'am, we understand. That's an upsetting story. I'll tell you what.

What if we say that all the pilots were like, let's roll, and then they fought the compasses really heroically, but at the last second, Pennsylvania's in that triangle if you think about it. If you move one of them up. All right, but to what end, though?

What theory are the conspiracy theorists promoting by pretending all these stories have some supernatural agent at their heart? Come on, Noah, you know better than that. There doesn't need to be a point for these people. The point is the mystery. The point is establishing that something happened anywhere ever that was sufficiently inexplicable to justify doubting the entire scientific model of the universe.

If science can't explain the Bermuda Triangle, how can it claim to understand the universe? So rather than any one consistent explanation, the Bermuda Triangle is offered up to justify any number of demonstrably incorrect worldviews. And they love that. Such as? Well, a lot of them center around alien abduction,

as seen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Another common culprit is the lost continent of Atlantis. Huh. The theory here is that there's some ancient buried technology that fucks up compasses and or creates mysterious whirlpools that appear without warning and track data to fudge it correctly. Still, other theories posit the existence of some kind of wormhole or a portal to an alternate dimension, just kind of, I don't know, hanging out around there.

I love the idea of Atlantis sinking into the sea. It's okay, my prank machine that fucks up everyone's cell phone will still work thousands of years from today we got them prank war blah blah blah all right so but but honestly though if this is all so explainable and the theories are all so silly why does the idea persist at all well because for most people questions are way more fun than answers as As far back as 1975, all the claims about the Bermuda Triangle were thoroughly debunked. What's more, a skeptical author and pilot named Larry Koosh showed that not only were the mysteries easily explainable, but that you'd kind of have to be

going out of your way not to explain them. He showed that many of the facts presented by Bermuda Triangle proponents were easily falsifiable. Shit like saying a ship disappeared in calm seas when there was a record of tropical storms in that area on that day. Or saying that there was no sign of the crew when all the crew members' bodies were accounted for. It was a manufactured mystery created to sell books. And the only people who can't explain it are the people who really don't want it explained. All right. Well, I guess the only question left to ask is...

How bullshit is it? Okay, on a personal note, it's reminding Heath not to base his scientific worldview on season one, episode 17 of DuckTales, Bermuda Triangle Tangle. Levels of bullshit. All right. So I guess that it's with that scent lingering in your nostrils that we're

going to leave you for the night, but don't worry, I'm sure Heath will find another shovel full soon. Before we make way for the next item on the playlist, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our friends over at Camp Quest Texas, who apparently do camp for adults in addition to the kids one. It sounds amazing.

There's snacks, there's games, there's karaoke, there's hiking, there's science stuff. It's March 31st through April 2nd. It's in the general Dallas-ish area. And if you want to know more, check the show notes for a handy dandy link. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. 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,

The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and an even newer episode of our sister show, Hot Friend Got Off on Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Dita, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I couldn't hold my head up high if I neglected to thank Eli for being so broad-minded, Lucinda for being so high-minded, and Heath for being so tall-minded. I just put him last because that's the way the joke works. Don't read anything into it. I also need to thank the guy who was sitting outside of his car

listening to the bonus content in his work parking lot on August 25th for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Really needs something shorter to call you, though. Made my job a little easier. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, PJ, Regular Dissonance, Brett, Lauren, ThreeOrd, George, Iron Rex,, fractured but whole, Ashley, Jezebel's human, Nathaniel, Jake, torture orchard, the fish that was, Siabra, Pat, low IQ, tiny pee-pee, love that, Danhausen, bunny, bismuth, bun-bun of seething, and anti-Sara. PJ, regular, Brett, Lauren, George, and Rex were smoother than a quantum-stabilized atom mirror. Look it up. It's very cool. Whole, Ashley, Jezebel's human, Nathaniel, Jakechard, who are so bright their intelligence is measured in lumens.

Torture the fish, Siabra, Bat, Danhausen, Bun Bun and Sarah, who are so hot you could burn your tongue going down on them. And low IQ and tiny PP, who has more or less voluntarily stepped outside the whole compliment bit that I do. And I respect that. Together, these 19 naughty non-believers nudged our net worths northward this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll have 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 scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but not in a money-kind of way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media. And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson takes care of that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote 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

ScalingAdeus.com Did we just hear you physically exert yourself to press the record button? Yeah, because it's reacting slow. So that was my quack of displeasure.