The Scathing Atheist - 533: Jedi or Not, Here I Come Edition

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

In this week’s episode, Satan comes for Beantown, we offer Tucker Carlson a very lucrative unpaid internship...working for exposure, and bullshit will rain down from the heavens. --- This week's episode is sponsored by Stamps.com. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/scathing. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! --- 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/ --- Headlines: Christians freak out over SatanCon 2023: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/satancon-boston-massachusetts-satanic-temple-convention/ Satan fired Tucker Carlson according to Christian right prophets: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/tucker-carlson-firing-right-wing-christians-1234724478/ SHS's real women of politics video is the funniest thing that's ever happened: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/04/sarah-huckabee-sanders-brutally-mocked-for-real-women-dont-have-to-fake-it-video/ Pornhub blocks all of Utah over age verification law: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93kbkv/pornhub-blocks-utah-age-verification Christian minister to Ohio lawmakers: Trans rights supporters are "possessed by demons": https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/christian-minister-to-ohio-lawmakers

Warning, this week's episode contains fuck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Stamps.com, Honey, Adam and Eve, and by Matreon, the month that we dedicate to raising money for a very important cause, us. Stick around to the end of the show to learn more. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Dr. Zachary Smith, and even though I'm trapped on this dreadful planet with these tedious Robinsons and that nattering nickel-plated nincompoop, I will never stop

plotting my return to Earth, where as a doctor of intergalactic environmental psychology, I assure you that every person on that glorious orb did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. Oh, my delicate back! Where is that boy with my liniment? William! William! I It's Thursday. It's May 4th. And it's Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you.

Right, but don't stay out too late where it'll be Revenge of the 5th. I'm no illusions. I'm so sorry. I'm Eli Bosn Fifth. I'm no illusions. I'm so sorry. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Ethan Wright. And from Elizabeth Cady Stans, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia,

this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Satan comes for Beantown. We offer Tucker Carlson a very lucrative unpaid internship working for exposure. And bullshit will rain down from the heavens. But first, the diatribe. So I got another one of those emails this week about mission drift. Now this is something that we get quite a bit of.

It's something that we take seriously. We discuss it internally quite a bit as well. Because this is a show about atheism. It's advertised as such. That's what we want it to be. We want to talk about the world from a secular perspective and highlight all the shit that should be of special concern to our fellow atheists. Now, over the years, of course, that's drifted further and further into things like LGBTQ issues, issues of income inequality, feminism,

liberal politics, police brutality, a bunch of stuff that, while certainly related to atheism, wasn't necessarily part of our original idea of our remit. Now, don't get me wrong. Issues of social justice have always been part of the fabric of this show. My entire reason for being part of the atheist movement stems from concerns over religion's sexist bullshit. But the primary focus of the show has always been atheism and the abuses of religion. Of course, over the decade plus that we've been doing the show, our focus is blurred because the lines between religion and government have blurred.

Evangelical Christianity has been a dangerous bedfellow of the GOP since my childhood at least, but it's gotten worse with every Republican president since Reagan. And since the Trump election, talking about what American evangelicals are doing and what the Republican Party is doing are one in the same. They're marching to the same drum, following the same leaders, espousing the same goals. And as this diffusion takes place, we're in the middle of it trying to draw bright lines between atheist show and general show about liberal politics. And sometimes that's really hard to do. Now, for some people who email us about this, the answer is the show you want to listen to and the one we want to make are two different shows, right? Some people won't be satisfied if we ever stray outside of a clinical discussion of how many gods there aren't. Others are just woke-a-phobes who are terrified of

anything that'll make them confront their own privilege. And we ignore their feedback as well we should, but I think there are also non-believers who are just dipping a toe into the waters of movement atheism and are surprised by how sacrosanct issues of social justice really are here. I mean, there are obviously plenty of anti-woke shit-stirring content creators that wear the atheist label, but when you start looking at atheist non-profits, atheist conferences, local atheist groups, the commitment to combating inequality is foundational. But here's the thing that may not be obvious to everyone at a glance. Social justice is a prerequisite to a rational world. You can't have the latter without a commitment to the former. Because look, we don't get to decide what's true and what's not true.

The world decides that shit and imposes it on us, but we get to decide what we believe, or at the very least, we get to decide what we behave as though we believe. And if you want to sell people on accepting reality, you have to start by making it worth the price. Like just as a personal example, when I was super poor, it was really hard to get excited about scientific advancements. Oh, look, here's a new breakthrough in medical sciences that won't be available to me if I ever get sick. Oh, look, here's an amazing advanced in consumer technology that I'll never be able to afford. I mean, as long as it's just billionaires that can afford commercial space travel, how the fuck can we expect the rest of the world to get excited about

it? Meanwhile, there's bullshit over here telling you that you can actually visit other planets spiritually for the low, low price of learning to sit still really good. Here's bullshit telling me I don't need those prohibitively expensive new medications since I can cure whatever ails me with alkaline water and positive thinking. And this obviously isn't limited to income inequality. Every type of inequality serves to further alienate a person from the reality that we're trying to get people to embrace.

If there's insufficient rewards available in this world, people will seek them in an afterlife. That's the main reason why people get more devout as they get more oppressed. If I can't see a path to a good life in the world I live in, I have every reason to accept the concept of some better world to come. I mean, look, as rationalists,

we're basically putting reality on eBay. The least we can do is polish it up a bit before we do. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Revali and Durek Tamayor Bosa, Lucinda called dibs on me, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick.

Felons, are you ready to unleash your beast? Hey, really quick. Hands up if you can fly through the air. Is there anybody who can do that? Or is it just me? You mean like the magical child who just came and took care of your runaway robot

you lost control of? I've been a little busy with my supernatural strength. I'm flying. Thank you. So many people have no idea what's going on. Fun fact, Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom comes out in 10,668 minutes. And while I balance up on these pins and

needles, we're going to pause for a word from our first sponsor this week, Stamps.com. 667. Okay, you guys ready for the Stamps.com ad? Sure. What's the plan? Oh, well, Stamps.com actually said a good intro for this month would be to shout out someone in our company, and I was thinking we could do Tim. Yes, Tim. Love Tim. Yeah, no, thatamps.com actually said a good intro for this month would be to shout out someone in our company.

And I was thinking we could do Tim. Yes, Tim. Love Tim. Yeah, no, that sounds great, man. Yeah, so let me be the first to say that not only does Tim do a terrific job planning our live shows and answering Patreon questions, he runs our Facebook pages. But thanks to Tim's limited vision, he's also storage for our merch. What? Dude. That? Dude.

That's right. As we gather more and more merch for live shows and Patreon rewards, I've slowly been replacing Tim's furniture with the boxes of said merch. And if one breaks when he sits on it or tries to use it as a table, I just say, whoa, Tim, better lay off the cupcakes. We do not do this as a company or as individuals. But if you don't have a Tim in your life, there's stamps.com. It's like having a post office in your office.

With stamps.com, all you need is a computer and printer. They even send you a free scale, so you'll have everything you need to get started. If you need a package pickup, you can easily schedule it through stamps.com's dashboard. And if you sell products online, stamps.com seamlessly connects with every major marketplace and shopping cart. He's going to be able to feel that things are boxes. Right. Yeah.

Set up your business for success when you get started with stamps.com today. Sign up with promo code scathing for a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code SCATHING. Stamps.com.

Tim's mom is just me doing a voice. No, it isn't. Could have been just a nice thing for Tim. Yeah, well, it's not. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, nice thing about christians is if you're ever like hey you guys might line and write up here and very visibly debasing yourself and your religion by losing your fucking minds over absolutely nothing they will oblige already there

yep they're right on board and no one is better at getting them to accept that invitation than the satanic temple which hosted history's largest gathering of Satanists last week in Boston in celebration of TST's 10th anniversary. Someone else's event carrying signs that said shit like Satan has no rights. Hellfire awaits. And the delightfully verbose and virtually punctuation list. Don't be deceived. Homosexuals, baby killers, idolaters, unbelievers, liars, drunkards, gossips, cowards, thieves, mockers, fornicators. Hellfire awaits.

Turn to Jesus. Okay, that whole thing is stupid. But how did gossips and mockers make that list for that sign? Right, thank you. Like, they're about to finish up the meeting for their sign building, and someone's just like, also a guy said I don't floss daily. That's fucking gossip. Hellfire for the guys today.

I feel like that should be on the sign. What I love about the guy who has that sign is, one, it's always the same guy. And two, when we met him at ReasonCon years ago, he was like, I don't want to talk to you. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. You don't want to discuss your 11-foot-tall sign with a list of God's enemies?

How dare I not respect your privacy? You don't want any attention right now? 11-foot-tall sign? Yeah, right. And of course, if you or somebody you're talking to about this later is on the fence about who the good guys and bad guys are in this situation, I should emphasize that at exactly the moment that SatanCon was hosting a talk called Reclaiming the Trans Body, Atheistic Strategies for Self-Determination and Empowerment, the Christians outside were being joined by the white nationalist neo-Nazi group,

the Patriot Front. In case you're not familiar with them, by the way, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the Patriot Front is responsible for about 82% of the reported incidences in the U.S. involving the distribution of racist or anti-Semitic propaganda. Yeah, pretty clear.

Also, side note, I saw that Arun Ra was there and posted some photos on facebook and unlike just about anywhere else it was actually hard to pick out aaron ra from the crowd a bunch of steampunk pirates looking sharp at this convention yeah fuck yeah yes yes and the nazis by the way chose to wear ski masks and fucking wears Waldo shirts because they're cowards and they didn't want to be identified. So every video of them is just these dehydrated white boys dying of heat exhaustion while they tell us how superior their race is.

Yeah, have some water. But not all the Christian groups protested. The Archdiocese of boston took time away from raping children to issue a statement urging catholics not to protest the event as doing so would quote only make it more prominent and give the organizers the attention they seek end quote instead they called for intense prayer oh their words okay to counteract all the safety yeah yeah you got to crank up those Our Fathers to 11, I guess. Hold on.

Do you mean like volume 11 or like emotional intensity 11? So like Our Father or like Our Father. Like smoldering like that? What's better for the magic? I'm drowning out Marky Mark on my app. You got to tell me. Also, I just want to throw this out there. If I were the Catholic Church,

I would actually be super psyched that someone besides my organization was getting attention. But yeah, you know, that's me. That's me. Especially the Catholic Church in fucking Boston. Now, from what I can see in the news

and in my friend's social media posts, it looks like the event was a ton of fun. They opened up by destroying symbols of oppression, which included tearing up a Bible and shredding one of those boot-licky-ass thin blue line flags. And it was so successful that they're looking to make it an

annual event. And thanks to all the idiot Christians dutifully promoting the event online, I'm sure it'll be a continued success. And in tuck-your-face news, Tucker Carlson is unemployed. So nice.

And you know what? It's lazy people like him who are causing the downfall of the American economy. This is why we can't compete with China. It's lazy white men who can't hold a job. They don't want to work anymore. Yeah, but how do they fight? That's my question. I know how they don't fight so

as you've all heard by now tucker got fired by fox news last week after they had to spend 787.5 million dollars paying off dominion voting systems in a settlement to avoid having more information about tucker carlson become public he that shitty. He's so toxic that Fox News had to distance themselves from him. Yep. And of course, there's only one good explanation for how this all happened.

Satan, the Prince of Darkness. Uh-huh. According to just about every single Christian right lunatic who's ever had their own scathing atheist headline, this was the work of the goat man yeah and look if they were all claiming that rupert murdoch was the literal devil maybe we'd have found something we could agree on but unfortunately no they're still on about the

fictional devil yeah and big thanks to wanda for the link scathing news at gmail.com wait wait wait wait keith you're telling me that folks like wanda can send us atheist news at scathing news at gmail.com. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Keith, you're telling me that folks like Wanda can send us atheistnews at scathingnews at gmail.com and we'll deliver a full-sized wedding cake to their grave when they die? Okay.

I actually kind of like that one. Maybe. Yeah, no, that's good. Here's a few highlights from Christian leaders who accidentally admitted that Fox News is working in league with a literal demon in their heads.

I'll start with Lance Wallnau. He's actually had a bit of a slump recently, so we haven't talked about him for a while. Got the bigot yips happens to everybody. But he got off the schneid with a live stream last week, the day after Tucker got fired. According to Wallnau, Tucker Carlson was chosen by God as a secular prophet, just like Rush Limbaugh and Steve Bannon and, of course, Donald Trump. And this whole thing was actually a clever contract move by Satan. Apparently, Satan wanted to silence Tucker Carlson. So he got Tucker a job at Fox News, made him into the highest rated news anchor in the country for a while, let that keep happening for a bunch of years, got him a big contract with a salary of $20 million a year, and then finally pulled the plug last week. That was the plan. So now Fox News, of course,

on behalf of Satan, is going to keep paying that contract just to keep Tucker off the air for the next three years, which is apparently the length of that contract. to keep Tucker off the air for the next three years, which is apparently the length of that contract. That's the theory from Lance Wall now. Okay, I know that he has a very extensive list of powers, but God can't choose secular prophets, right? That's like we have so few of them. It's a definitional thing.

It's like making a square circle or an enjoyable Terrence Malick movie. It just can't be done. For the omniscient creator of the universe, God does sure hand himself a lot of L's. Right? I think he's building tension for the sword mouth stuff, I guess. Building the moment.

Yeah. Like a Rocky movie. So, Lance Wallnau's in a huff. That's fun. But we also got a different type of angle from some of the other talking heads. Instead of just normal magic lying, like Wallnau's in a huff. That's fun. But we also got a different type of angle from some of the other talking heads. Instead of just normal magic lying like Wallnau, they used the Tucker firing as proof of their divine prophecy abilities. They were much less ethical than Lance Wallnau. Think about that. Not great. That includes Hank Kuniman, who actually spoke to God the day before Tucker got fired.

Big coincidence. And here's what God told him to say. Quote, there will be such a reset that you will not even be able to call certain things by their names because either their names will be removed because they will be removed, sick, or the very things that they represented that they stood for, even in your media, media shall be no more or renamed. End quote. And that's obviously about Tucker. That was the message about Tucker from God.

A lot of ors in God. Why would God hedge his bets? Yeah, and if I'm reading that statement thinking it's about Tucker, I'm thinking he's going to change his name and become a drag performer. You guys got drag performer, right? Right, yeah, that's what it suggests. And here's another prophecy that Hank Kuhneman got from God. Quote,

there shall be a shocking turn of events that will hit even the news. For I will turn shockingly as the shaking comes to the networks and there will be removals but there will be new faces that will arise upon the networks that say we don't care how much you pay us we will not lie end quote that was from november 19th of 2021 from god about of 2021 from God about

Tucker Carlson getting fired last week. Jesus Christ. His prophecy is as broad as a shocking thing will be on the news and someone won't lie and he still needed a year and a half to claim victory with it. Jesus.

Yeah, the slow burn. Yeah, and look, I agree that someone won't lie on Fox News as a barn burner of a prophecy, but I'll believe it when I see it. You know what I'm saying? All right. So one other prophet who totally called this was Julie Green, who appeared on the Reawaken America Tour podcast along with Clay Clark. That's right.

Heath. Clay Clark. Heath, it's not better if you just put a tiny picture of Clay Clark in our notes. Look at him. It's hardly there. I made it big now. It's definitely there. Damn it.

Oh, damn it. And so Julie Green is actually happy about the whole thing with Tucker because it proves that God is omniscient this time, I guess. She said, quote, I guess she said, quote, prophetically, this is on point. I get excited when I start seeing these things happen because God had already said this before it happened. And quote, when did God call it? Go fuck yourself. Does not have an example. November 19th of 2021.

Heath Panton. Yeah, sorry. No, it did. And here's my favorite part. Yeah, obviously. Sorry, no, Ibid. And here's my favorite part. This whole thing led to a really big idiot fight between Lance Wallnau and the magical prophets. In response to all the retroactive soothsaying, Lance Wallnau came back even angrier and said, quote,

I'm mad for a good reason right now. I don't like it when the devil wins, and I don't agree with the prophets prophesying, yeah, I said this would happen. It's not a victory when you prophesy that you're going to lose the Super Bowl. The object is to win it, not predict it, win it.

End exact quote. You play to win the game. Yeah. I never thought I'd see the day where I sympathized with Lance Wall now, but I'm pretty sure I've sent that exact same email word for word to a Green Party voter.

So here we are, everybody. Here we are. All right. Yeah. So moral of the story, you should have voted for Hillary Clinton. And also,

just one more time, tuck your face. I'm going to say that a lot. Oh, rest in pepperonis. And in un-mockable news, well, podcast listener, the day where we, here at the Scathing Atheist hang up our rubber chickens and microphones is upon us.

Because the funniest thing ever to happen has happened. Yeah. And sometimes you just got to know when you're beat. I'm talking, of course, about the video advertisement for Sarah Huckabee Sanders' new line of transphobia-themed beer koozies. Yeah, so this was a super late stab at joining the anti-bud light transphobia thing from last month, but these people are idiots, so they made a koozie with bud light style design

to cover up the bud Light that you're still drinking because, yes, you're a bigot, but you love the amazing flavor of Bud Light so goddamn much. It's even more than you love your bigotry. Well, and you know, if there's one thing

big woke beer companies care about, it's what you do with their product once they have your money. That'll show them. Got it. Yeah. Now, listen, podcast listener, we're not a show that regularly plays clips,

especially ones as long as the one I'm about to present to you. But I have to be very clear with you. What you're about to hear is the actual audio of the video shared by Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Twitter. It's not self-aware. It's not an SNL sketch or something we made

to make fun of what Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted. It is the word-for-word, wavelength-for-wavelength, real deal. Have a listen. America presents Real Women of Politics. Real Women of Politics. Real Women of Politics. Today we salute all the real woman leaders of this great country. Real women don't have to fake it. Real women doing real things.

Real women work too hard for this. Some big companies can't tell the difference between real and fake anymore. That's why we're introducing the Real Women of Politics koozie. Now, you can salute the Real Women of Politics at every backyard barbecue and tailgate. Real Women of Politics at every backyard barbecue and tailgate. And if it covers up the label of a big woke company, well, that works too. Order your Real Women of Politics koozie today.

And yes, those koozies. Amazing. Really are available on her online store right now with the words real woman in all capital letters behind behind your choice of governors k ivy kim reynolds christy gnome or of course sarah herself in the foreground. So yeah, snatch those up. I'm going to get that complete set. And again, this was a real thing they made.

Like really, really for real. For the last several years, we've been saying things like the Christian right is so absurd, they're immune to satire. But apparently, not from themselves. Right.

They folded up into their own asshole so far that they actually became funny and wrote the perfect sketch roasting themselves. Right. They folded up into their own asshole so far that they actually became funny and wrote the perfect sketch roasting themselves. Yep. I don't know how they did it. Like, they must have beeped a swoosh and swooshed a doodly-doo.

Now they're a collapsing neutron star of bigotry and, like, meta, meta, meta self-loathing. It's honestly impressive and delightful to watch. It's so stupid. My favorite aspect of this is that they literally use the same tune for their little jingle as Eli would have used if we had made this up. 100%.

Absolutely. Without no notes. I have no notes. None. So yeah, obviously we all quit comedy. The reality is just too much for us. I'm sure you all understand. But don't worry if you ever need a laugh after this, our ultimate episode,

you can find that clip on Sarah's Twitter because she posted it there on purpose. All right, well, I'll tell you what. Obviously we need to find new employment and new ways to save money. So it's a great time to hear from our second sponsor this week, Honey. Today's episode is sponsored by PayPal Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. And code. Nice. Hey, Heath, what you doing? Yeah,

man, we could hear you all the way from downstairs. Oh, sorry, guys. I was just getting my coupon fix from Honey. Say what now? Yeah, thanks to Honey, manually searching for coupon codes is a thing of the past. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. So whenever I'm feeling down, I just fill up a cart on one of Honey's many affiliate businesses and watch the prices drop. But Heath, how does it work? Glad you asked, Noah. Imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites.

When you check out, the Honey button appears and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons. Wait a few seconds as Honey searches for coupons it can find for that site. And if Honey finds a working coupon, you'll watch the prices drop. It's true. I started using Honey when they became a sponsor

and I've saved money on everything from Christmas baskets to food delivery. And Honey doesn't just work on desktop. It works on your iPhone, too. Just activate it on Safari on your phone and save on the go. If you don't already have Honey, you could be straight up missing out. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show. Get PayPal Honey for free at joinhoney.com Thanks, Heath. So, I guess you were getting your coupon fix from, what is this, cheesecloset.com? Oh, no, that order is real. Wow. This is big.

Yeah, well, it's a percentage coupon, Noah. I'm a smart shopper. I mean, it's just... I said I'm a smart shopper. And in porn again news, Utahns fucked around, found out, and can't fuck around no more. I'm so happy about this.

That's the position of Pornhub, which deactivated their site statewide in protest of Utah's new age verification law. So when residents of Utah, America's per capita leader in porn consumption, logged onto Pornhub, instead of being greeted by a truly disturbing number of intimate step siblings as they expected, they were greeted by a single video where a fully dressed Sherry DeVille explains why their new law is stupid and urges them to contact their state legislators and do something about it yeah okay i feel like we need to do this for every campaign ad for the good team like if porn is

about to happen but you just need to do one little thing first as a favor to a porn star you're doing that thing right yeah We need horny women in your area doing voter registration. That'd be responsible. Oh, my God. Gives a whole new meaning to Super PAC.

Right? So, quick thanks to William for alerting us to this story at skatingnews at gmail.com. I'm sure Eli has some kind of possum nipple thing for you or something. Grave wedding cake, Noah.

Pay attention. No, you're right. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. Take it right. I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention. Take it seriously. I'm stoked to talk about this because we haven't really addressed the dangerous trend of new online age verification

laws that are spreading around the Bible Belt yet. And one of the things that makes them dangerous is that they sound unassailable. Right? The law just says, well, in order to watch porn, the porn provider has to ensure that you're 18 or older who could possibly be against that oh oh well yeah i will later right but but like how do you do it well the only real means of doing so is through divulging personal information in

the form of a state issued id so the law requires people to give their personal identifying information to those notorious bastions of credibility and trustworthiness online porn sites. Hey, can we maybe just focus on all the porn actors being over 18? That would be great. That could be the focus.

Also, do we really want to stop high school kids from ever watching porn? I'm just thinking back to my experience. I was enough of an asshole at 16 already. Take away porn. It gets worse. Yeah.

Man, people will do anything not to parent their kids, huh? Just, yeah, no, I had to insert my driver's license into my CD drive to watch Anal Sluts 3. But hey, at least i didn't have to talk to my kid about naked people on the internet am i right that would be embarrassing right no that's the thing look every fucking computer or phone or tablet or whatever it all comes with parental settings built in with a modicum of effort any parent can safeguard their kids from the dangers of knowing how their genitals work and this device-based verification system is already in place and it makes sense. What's more, according to Sherry DeVille's video and virtually every expert who has opined on this shit, these systems don't protect children from porn.

They just drive porn to less and less safe spaces online, which actually endangers children in a real way not just an imaginary seeing boobs kind of way right and of course it also exposes adults to unnecessary identity theft risks so it tries to tackle a problem that a doesn't exist and b was already solved and it still manages to fail so badly that it creates new problems as is the fucking way of religion i guess sounds like religion yeah it's the triple crown. There you go. Honestly, why aren't we teaching porn in schools? Like in public school sex ed class,

just like talk about the subject a little bit. That makes sense. Hey man, if you're really delivering pizza, you will never get laid because of it. Like just let me know. That's an important lesson. Thank you. You're going to get anti-laid

because you're delivering pizza. You learn the hard way and it's not fun. Right. You don't smell get anti-laid because you're delivering pizza. You learn the hard way and it's not fun. Right. You don't smell good. And finally tonight, we have a story about the Ohio State Legislature. Republicans control both chambers and they're currently working on HB 68, which would completely ban gender affirming care for anyone under 18 years old. So last week, they're having a perfectly normal day

of taking away medicine from kids. They're debating the pros and cons. A few Tim Ryan clones on the Democrat side are politely explaining how that's absolutely pure evil to do that, but in a folksy, relatable tone with like a JV football metaphor to help explain it. But then a lunatic preacher named stewart long showed up and they let this guy give an entire speech explaining how science doesn't matter because this is about demons literal demons so casually this dude mentioned the devil had filled his colleagues buttholes with his nefarious servants like he was pointing out a mistake in house procedure.

Well, our side's secret weapon really is just letting them speak for more than two minutes, right? That's all we need to do. Just let him let him go. He'll hang himself. Yeah. And it turns out the bigot preacher is not a strong face noising guy, but I boiled off about 80% of his words that were mostly triple nested interruptions of himself that went nowhere. And I kept anything with

informational content, at least in theory, informational content. Right. Yeah. Here's what he had to say. Quote, I'm a minister. Nope. No, you're not. You're just a guy. He's just a guy. He works for a nonprofit. I think the heart of the issue, the root issue. Well, of course, there's the money part. Pharmaceutical companies. That's a whole nother issue.

But the root issue is identity. The only thing that makes sense for what's going on in this country is that demons are influencing people, allowing their bodies to be possessed to run satanic agendas. Yeah. Occam's Hellraiser, if you will. Oh, well done, Elon. Excellent work. Continuing the quote. And if you can't say Jesus Christ is

come in the flesh, your body is possessed, most likely by demons. Yeah, they have a password. Or you haven't invited him in. So I think that's what I would like to see. People that are possessed by demons don't get to make demonic agendas and demonic doctrines. And then he continued to have a driver's license. He gets to vote this year. Hey, if you're in Ohio and you're a little demotivated as a voter this year,

the fact that you are canceling out Stuart Long should be all you need to drive you to the polls. I like that he hedged his bets a little there. Your possession is only most likely demons, right? It could be Sam Beckett

from Quantum Leap, but it probably isn't. It's just the one it's not usually that occam's hellraiser or whatever so the only saving grace of this whole thing was democrat beth liston stewart long finished talking and the republicans tried to just move on as if a crazy person didn't just give a completely unhinged rant that was arguing for their fucking side but beth liston was like absolutely absolutely not. We're not moving on. I have a fucking question. She said, Mr. Long, did you just call our Hindu, Muslim and Jewish members demons?

And which he did. And Stuart Long responded, no. And then explained that absolutely. Yes, I did. Stuart Long responded, no, and then explained that absolutely, yes, I did. He said, quote, no, if you have the Holy Spirit inside you, there's a phrase you can say. Magic, magic. Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, magic, magic. And if you are open to those other gods, based on that faith, you're allowing other gods to possess your physical form. your physical form. If you're not down with that, so to speak, if you're of another religion that's not of that, you've given access to non-godly entities to make your decisions. End quote. That was his answer about saying people were demons. Oh man, I sure hope super genius and demon password knower Stuart Long doesn't challenge me to say his magic words for money. I don't know if I can

do it. Does it count if you're just quoting him? Right? Because if it does, I feel like Heath might secretly not be possessed by demons, which is a violation of our operating agreement. That's true. He said it twice. I'm trying to go undercover. Just be cool. It's like not being a cop.

Show me your butthole? Yeah, it's a butthole. It is butthole. So yeah, just to recap, that was Big Pharma, kids get medicine, Antifa takes your skin. Yes.

Also, everyone's either Christian or a literal demon. And that was off the rails even for the Republican Party. Right after the hearing, committee chair scott lips immediately found a reporter and he was like that was just some guy doesn't count with it we didn't he's not our testimony guys he just can't he is on our team but he's not a fan of our team he's not

right so i that's good i guess that he wanted to distance himself from Stuart Long. But just to be clear, Chairman Lips and the GOP, they're saying that crazy guy wasn't describing the correct reason to steal medicine from children, but there is one. Yes. And we're going to be enacting it because we're pure evil. Right. We're not with him. We're just enacting his beliefs into law. It's a coincidence. Exactly. Working clock once a day. I don't know. All right. Well, now that Republicans are distancing themselves

from themselves, I suppose our work here is done. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Real women of genius. And when we come back, Heath will take us on another guided tour of a bull's ass.

ass. Guys, guys, get in here. Get in here. Yeah, Heath? What is it? It's a fuck-mergency. A fuck-mergency? What do you mean? Okay, so you know how the Woldasher Mizzle turned me into a marble, kept me in his pocket for like a week? I do remember that, yeah. Well, yeah, of course.

Yeah, and you remember how I rolled into a storm drain and then I befriended a frog and the frog helped me reverse the curse, but she turned out to be a princess. Feels a little pickle, Rick, but yes, I remember that. Well, she's coming this week and she's going to want to do all sorts of stuff.

I need sexy fuck stuff right now. Well, Heath, why don't you use adamandeve.com? What's adamandeve.com? Let's go. No pause? Fuck! Emergency! It's the number one

adult toy superstore and right now, Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about any item plus free shipping which includes rush processing. It doesn't matter

how much you spend or what you buy, all of it will be packaged and sent discreetly for free and fast. Okay, quick. How do I get the offer? Just enter the code

SCATHING at checkout. That's SCATHING, S-C-A-T-H-I-N-G at adamandeve.com. This is an exclusive offer specific to this podcast, so be sure to use the code SCATHING to get your discount. 100% free shipping and get it fast with rush processing. Code SCATHING. All right. Thanks, guys.

Hey, what kind of fuck stuff do you buy for a fairy princess who used to be a frog anyway? Butt stuff. Butt stuff, yeah. Yeah. of fuck stuff do you buy for a fairy princess who used to be a frog anyway butt stuff butt stuff yeah yeah wait how do you know i mean it's just obvious i don't feel like it's obvious it's obvious come on come on Our jobs, much like a late night trip to the Taco Bell drive-thru, often lead us to desperately cry out, how can there still be more shit? But somehow there always is, which is why we've dedicated a whole segment to it that we call

How Bullshit Is It? So tell us, Heath, what cattle prattle will we battle today? We're going to be talking about chemtrails. Oh, nice. I can't believe it's taken this long. Yeah, we had to loop back around in the alphabet. I wanted to do chemotherapy, but apparently that's real. Did you guys know that?

It's a real thing. Citation needed. So tell us, Heath, what are chemtrails? That was a joke. It's definitely real. Chemotherapy. We don't believe in chemotherapy. Let's just be 100% clear.

Yeah. My dad lived an extra like 30 years because of it. Okay. Chemtrails is a portmanteau of chemical and trails. Are they anything else? Well, they're bullshit, but we usually save that for the end. You know what? That's on me.

I should have learned to be more specific on the opening question. So tell us, Heath, what would a credulous conspiracy theorist tell me that chemtrails are? Well, like a lot of the old school conspiracy theories, there's actually not much agreement on what they are beyond evil and chemicals. on what they are beyond evil and chemicals. But the connective thread that runs through all the different theories is people looking at airplane contrails and deciding to hide from them just in case. Yeah, it's as close as conspiracy theorists get to telling us that the sky is falling

and I am here for it. It's also exactly old man yells at cloud depending on the age and gender of the conspiracy theorist. It's true. It is. Okay, so to be clear, we're just talking about normal contrails, the little exhaust clouds behind airplanes? Well, not any contrails. Chemtrails are distinguished by the fact that they persist for hours and often spread out into cirrus clouds. that they persist for hours and often spread out into cirrus clouds.

Proponents of the conspiracy argued that contrails would need additional chemicals in them to stay in the sky over such a long period. Okay, is that based on any facts? No, of course not. Okay, so not that I need it or anything, but I'm sure it would be helpful to some people

if you could remind us what contrails actually are. Okay. Don't worry, Heath. I've got this one. Oh, you got it? Yeah. Noah, when you flush an airplane toilet, it has to first turn your peepers and poopers into candy floss.

So it doesn't land on people at high speed and kill them like chill dirt. None of that. So, contrail is a portmanteau of condensation trail. They're formed when an airplane's very hot exhaust meets the upper atmosphere's very cold air. It's no different than water beating up on a cold can of beer on a hot day. Real women, sorry. Here's the thing though, there's no can of beer though for it to

condense on up there, so it stays in the air and the air is so cold that it freezes. So what we're seeing is a cloud of tiny ice crystals trailing behind the plane. Well, and they persist for varying amounts of time, like even when they're not carrying evil chemicals? Yeah. The determining factor is humidity. If the air around them is really dry, the contrails dissipate quickly. If it's near saturation, they linger. And because the ice crystals vary in size, some fall quicker than others, so they spread out vertically. And because wind ice crystals vary in size, some fall quicker than others, so they spread out vertically. And because wind speeds vary depending on

altitude, they can spread out horizontally. So if they hang around long enough, they turn into sheets of cirrus clouds. Look, I know what Heath is saying is true, but on behalf of the stupid people like myself listening to this podcast, can I just say the government releases Jewish gay chemicals

makes a lot more sense than floating ice crystals. I just want to government releases Jewish gay chemicals makes a lot more sense than floating ice crystals. I just want to be out there with it. Fair enough. All right. Yeah. All right. So now you refer to this as an old school conspiracy theory. How long has this one been around? It got started in 1996 when the U.S. Air Force published a report about weather modification. The report was called Weather as a Force Multiplier, Owning the Weather in 2025. And it was entirely speculative. It was almost certainly the byproduct of some congressman saying, well, how do we know them Chinese ain't making the hurricanes during like a classified hearing at some point in 1996? And it basically concluded that weather

manipulation is a silly thing from science fiction and it's not something the Air Force should be wasting their time on. Okay, so in the middle of the 90s, the Air Force publicly released a report that said we sure aren't doing any weather manipulation. So I guess I could see why

conspiracy theorists' ears perked up at that. Yeah, mine did too. Because if we've learned anything from dozens of documentaries on god awful movies it's that everyone openly announces their conspiracy theory easily searchable documents don't they know the perfect crime eli is the perfect crime hiding in plain sight also keep in mind this is 1996 i'm talking about people are still using free hours from aol cds they're not the savvy incredulous consumers of information that we have today so right yeah when news of this report started circulating online people immediately accused the air force of

spraying the u.s population with mysterious substances and creating unusual contrail patterns. In 1999, it was picked up by radio host Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM, and it entered the mainstream of popular bullshit. I'm sorry. They're accusing the Air Force of spraying deadly chemicals on us and doing loop-de-loops? I feel like you'd stick to just one of those accusations. Okay, but wait, hold on.

So, were they accusing the Air Force of having always sprayed Americans with mysterious substances? Because contrails were a thing before 1990. Like, I remember them. Right, yeah. So, an enormous amount of this whole conspiracy rests on the completely unevidenced claim

that before the mid-90s, contrails didn't persist as long. But they did. I grew up by an airport. We definitely had contrails. There are photographs from when I was a kid. Are there? I don't think there were cameras back then.

Of course, there are photographs of contrails. The Wikipedia article shows contrails from World War II, actually. But what they don't have is photographs of contrails lingering for hours. Alright. Look, I try to bring more sophisticated

objections to this segment than nuh-uh. But I don't know if this merits one. No, you're good with nuh-uh. I don't know if this merits one you're good you're good with i don't think that the atmosphere has gotten wetter over time so this is this is like basing your conspiracy theory on the idea that grass wasn't green back in 2007 okay but to be fair there had been a large increase in the number of persistent contrails the average person observed over time because there were a lot more airplanes over time. So a person who's in their 50s when this nonsense all started, like Art Bell, looks up into the sky after hearing the theory and thinks to himself,

you know, when I was a kid, there were fewer contrails in the sky. And, you know, he's not wrong. He's just too stupid to consider the very obvious alternate explanation. Yeah. Also, if you find yourself thinking the sentence, you know, when I was a kid, there wasn't blank. It's probably just a good thing you should find and just accept that, you know? Yeah. So, okay. So, so this all stems from the fact that airplanes weren't the one form of technology that didn't get more ubiquitous in the 20th century then? In more ways than one, yeah. Another piece of evidence,

I say that with air quotes, that believers will point to is that you often see contrails in grids across large areas as though they're trying to dissipate their evil chemicals evenly over a broad area. Okay, so wait, so, so the fact that airplanes travel

in the way that makes them least likely to, like, run into each other, that's evidence of a conspiracy? Correct. I mean, yes, air lanes have always been constructed in grid patterns, but air travel has to reach a certain level of ubiquity before people tend to notice

that from the contrails. But that's not all. I mean, if the Illuminati is out there poisoning the air with evil chemicals, you should be able to find the evil chemicals, right? And you should be able to find them in greater concentrations in places where there are lots of chemtrails, right? Okay, but hold on a second, because the places with more air traffic are, generally speaking, going to be more populous areas to begin with. Yeah. I can think of a lot of reasons why you'd find higher levels of various pollutants in places with greater air traffic

that don't involve evil conspiracies to randomly poison the populace. Okay. Love where your head's at, but you're way overestimating these people. It would honestly be something of a relief if those were the kinds of mistakes they were making. But instead, we get shit like,

they captured the air samples. they would later test for heavy metals in jars with metal lids oh jesus christ yes yeah it's like how i figured out that detectives committed every murder you know oh yeah it's all about the fingerprints no so one of my favorite examples of this kind of absurdity comes from conspiracy heavyweight Jim Mars, that's the JFK guy, who cited an air quality test that a Louisiana television station did in 2007 as proof of chemtrails. When the reporters did the test, they found barium at 6.8 parts per million, which is three times the U.S. nationally recommended limit. But when skeptics examined the video from that station,

it turned out the reporters were misusing the equipment in a way that exaggerated the readings by a factor of 100. Oh. Uh-huh. And there was no more barium fun dip for anyone at the carnival that summer. Thanks, Heath. Okay. So up to this point,

you, you've just been talking about evil chemicals in general. So is barium evil? Evil? Sure. I guess it can be, but here's the thing. As much as possible,

chemtrail believers will hide behind general terms like toxins or nerve agents. There's pretty much no agreement on exactly what is being dumped on the populace. But conspiracy theorists never met a ridiculous anomaly they didn't like. So if signs show unsafe levels of barium, for example, then yes, of course, barium was the toxic nerve agent all along. And then they can work backwards from there to see how barium could advance the nefarious goals of the Illuminati.

Okay, but what are those goals? Like, why would the government want to secretly spray us with Barium? Qui bono. Great question. Again, there's very little consistency here. If I wanted to, I could probably present a dozen different incompatible theories just from InfoWars alone. But instead, we're going to limit

this to what I think of as the big three in terms of chemtrail conspiracies. Jews, gays, and Jewish gay people. Close to correct. So the first is the most reasonable, which I only point out as a condemnation of the other two, not a defense of this one. It's still really stupid. It's the idea that the government is secretly controlling the weather, but they haven't sufficiently safety tested the chemicals they're using.

And these chemicals are causing a bunch of illness that the government can't acknowledge because the weather control program is a secret. All right, everyone. Good news.

Michigan winter, a little less harsh this year. Downside, eyeball AIDS. We have given everyone eyeball AIDS. Okay. I know it's silly to bother injecting logic here, but presumably the people plotting this thing also live in America, as do their families.

So the idea here is that they're willing to murder their own families with eyeball AIDS in an effort to predict which days will be rainy well in some versions of the story sure but you have to keep in mind that contrails only persist under certain weather conditions so most chemtrail believers claim that we're being poisoned every now and again on a set schedule. That way, the elite people can make sure their families are off in the south of France during those weeks. I'm telling you, darling,

you must see Paris during Jew poison season. It's the only time to go. All right. Well, glad to have the most reasonable one out of the way. You said you had more? Yeah. Second one is just straight up genocide one of the repeating themes of grand conspiracy theories is that the elite want to reduce the world population

so that we don't run out of resources because you know what are the billionaires and government leaders going to do monopolize scarce resources while the rest of us do without it'd be unsustainable so spray deadly poison on people from 30 000 feet is what they came up with for this one okay and i'm not trying to give the illuminati notes here or anything but wouldn't that be a terrible way to disperse poison sure the fuck would yeah from that height it could take like a day and a half to fall and there'd be no way of predicting where it would fall exactly or how much would fall or what concentration it would fall in unless you also controlled the weather with different chemtrails interesting okay sure but the point is that if you wanted to poison a population

with an aerosol you would drop it from a low altitude. And you'd also probably do it at night. And you definitely wouldn't use a chemical agent that's white and puffy and starkly visible from six miles down for hours at a time. Sorry, Heath, just to clarify, you know, for listeners who might be curious for completely innocent reasons,

when you say low altitude... For the last time, Eli, the company is not renting you a crop duster and some very nice people live in mississippi i hate being the new guy so okay sorry you said there was a third main theory too yeah the one you're most likely to come across in my experience is the idea that the chemical agent they're spraying is designed to keep people docile yes because if there's one thing a country that measures lost productivity because I was too busy

scrolling to realize I was done with this shit in the billions of dollars needs, it's help being docile. Am I right? Us Americans. Yeah. There's also a version of this one

where the goal is to keep us perpetually sick since they can make more money selling us expensive drugs and we're too sick to rise up in class rebellion at that point wait so so hold on so in order to sell us more drugs they're dispersing drugs drugs yeah but cheap ones presumably okay i feel silly asking this but I kind of have to. How do we know

this isn't true? Other than the fact that it's scientifically unfeasible, completely unevidenced and obviously would have been leaked to the public by now?

Yeah, like other than that. Other than that. The Illuminati are really good at keeping secrets, guys. Except for your uncle who doesn't know how to do Facebook on his phone.

He's ahead of them, but everyone else. Right. Well, the chemtra, the NOAA, and NASA reassured Americans that no mysterious poisons were being dumped onto them to keep them docile and make the frogs gay. Well, I'm sure that assuaged the fears of the conspiracists.

Yeah. Well, the response was basically, why would all of those agencies respond if they didn't have anything to cover up? Of course it was. Naturally. And by 2001, so many people were convinced by the conspiracy that there was actually a half-hearted effort to address it in U.S. Congress. Well, sort of.

Former Democratic congressman and prolific tree-based cookie baker, Dennis Kucinich, introduced a bill called the Space Preservation Act of 2001 that would permanently prohibit space weapons. And it specifically named chemtrails among the exotic weapons it would ban. Well, the Department of Defense looked at the bill and they were like, hold on. What if we want to put exotic weapons in space, though? So the bill died in committee thanks to the dod and of course congress's failure to outlaw chemtrails was forevermore presented as evidence that they were already doing it the whole time yeah it's not a good look for congress but for a different reason and the u.s wasn't the only government that felt the need to respond to this

nonsense theory a petition in canada reached whatever threshold of signatures triggers there. Now the government actually has to look into this provision. So Canadian Parliament looked at all the evidence, which was none, and released a statement that read in part, quote, There is no substantiated evidence, scientific or otherwise, to support the allegation that there is high altitude spraying conducted in Canadian airspace.

End quote. Sorry, Heath, not to bury the lead here, but there's a signature amount where the Canadian government has to answer my dumb shit questions because I have an amazing idea for a prank war. How many listeners do we have? Like 100 million?

Do we have 100 million? Yeah, we have like 100 idea for a prank war. How many listeners do we have? Like 100 million? Do we have 100 million? Yeah, we have like 100 million. Nice. Okay. So wait, the only evidence is a denial by the accused party and a complete lack of evidence in the affirmative. Actually, there's more. So keep in mind that toxic chemicals in the air

is the kind of thing we need to keep track of. Whether or not they're being intentionally sprayed by shape-shifting Jewish lizard aliens. So a number of different groups are constantly monitoring air quality. And these range from government agencies to state universities to privately funded environmental groups. So the idea that some exotic chemical is being blanketed over the country without anybody noticing is pretty much impossible. Well, unless they're all in on the conspiracy. Right. Interesting.

Of course. So just like pretty much every single grand conspiracy theory, the sheer number of accomplices it would require leaves the whole thing crushed under its own weight. All right. Well, I guess the only question left to ask is, how bullshit is it? Great question. It's such bullshit that it

doesn't even get mentioned in David Huyck's book, Everything You Need to Know But Have Never Been Told. Until chapter 15, which we are doing next. We haven't got there yet. 42 mentions when I did a control F of chemtrails for the rest of the book. All right.

Well, I guess with the audience thusly looped, we're going to wrap things up for tonight. But don't worry, there will always be more bullshit to come. Before we give you back your ears tonight, I want to remind you one more time that may as matreon this is the closest we ever come to just begging you for money all month we're going to be doing a pledge drive across all our shows for increased and new pledges at patreon.com which will all culminate later this year with an exclusive patreon only live stream of our annual pajama party extravaganza. What crazy shit will we force each other to do on camera? Well, that depends on how many new and increasing patrons we can ring out of the month of May,

so be sure to check out patreon.com slash scathingatheist and join in the fun. 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, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. And an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, we couldn't dedicate a whole episode number to this show if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for digging through bullshit for us. I need to thank Eli Bosnick, who also digs through shit for unrelated reasons.

I want to thank Lucinda Lusions for things entirely unrelated to digging through shit. I also want to thank Kernan Coleman at Ranch 7 Creative for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. I'd to thank Lucinda Lusions for things entirely unrelated to digging through shit. I also want to thank Kernan Coleman at Ranch7Creative for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. I'd be lost without you, but most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most scintillating Simeons. Stacey, Paul, Darkstar, Morning, Toosie, Carrie, Phil, Satan's Little Monkey, Jeremiah, Mikella, Congress, The Opposite of Progress,

Joel, Michael, Jeff, Chris, Big Black Cockatoo, Caleb, and NotKetchup Banksy. Stacey, Paul, Darkstar, Toosie, Carrie, and Phil, who are so sexy the MPAA tried to rate them. Satan, Monkey, Jeremiah, Mikella, Congress, Joel, and Michael, who are so cool their tea can't help but be iced.

And Jeff, Chris, Cockatoo Caleb, and Not Ketchup Banksy, who are so bright the sun gets the same view of the eclipses we do. Together, these 17 people, monkeys, birds, prophets, classifications, and classic bits of wordplay came together to help us have more money. And if you'd like us to have more money while you have correspondingly

less, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, where everybody will 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 scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but all your money is tied up on 21 Red, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about about the show and following us on social media and

speaking of social media tim robertson handles that for us 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 scathingads.com Okay. Let me give Noah a clean edit. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.