The Scathing Atheist - 558: Precognitive Edition

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

In this week’s episode, Ben Shapiro tries his ctiny little hands at kids TV, we learn about the peer-reviewed climate science in the Book of Genesis, and Eli will tag Marsh into the ring halfway through the episode. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: [e-mail] 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: Check out more from Marsh on Be Reasonable and Skeptics with a K --- Headlines: Trump promises to block immigrants who hate “our” religion: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/donald-trump-ill-block-immigrants Ben Shaprio creates a right wing bluey knock off  https://amp.theguardian.com/culture/2023/oct/17/is-new-kids-show-chip-chilla-a-blatant-bluey-knock-off-for-conservatives Pennsylvania lawmaker cites Genesis 8 as proof that climate change is fake: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/pennsylvania-lawmaker-cites-genesis Holy spirit told school trustee to post meme comparing pride flag to swastika: https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/alberta-school-trustee-claimed-the-holy-spirit-told-her-to-post-pride-flag-nazis-swastika-meme-1.6605709 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6980401  Synod on Synodality reports not ‘secret,’ but still won’t be shared, spokesman says: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255688/synod-on-synodality-reports-not-secret-but-still-wont-be-shared-spokesman-says --- This Week in Misogyny: Judge protects right to lie about “abortion reversal” procedure: https://jezebel.com/federal-judge-sides-with-religious-clinic-that-wants-to-1850951236

One eighth volume podcast contains subliminal profanity and regular profanity. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh and by the fact that our drug-fueled, vulgar, three-guys-in-a-basement-chillin' podcast company is run with more decorum and competence than the House of Goddamn Representatives. Holy shit, yo, this would be funny if it wasn't happening. Anyway, and now, the scathing atheist. Hi, this is Nikki. I'm an accountant, and I've raised ferrets, but I've never known a ferret accountant. Fun fact, a group of ferrets is called a business, so they would probably be suited to accounting if they ever got careers. Ferret, accountant, or none of the above, I do know that we evolved from filthy monkey people.

See you at GAMLive in Las Vegas! It's Thursday. It's October 26th. And it's Intersex Awareness Day. Because Richard Dawkins definitely still needs it. Done either. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright.

And from Bob Menendez's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Ben Shapiro tries his tiny little hands at kids' TV. We learn about the peer-reviewed climate science in the book of Genesis. And Eli will tag Martian to the ring

halfway through the episode. But first, the diatribe. Atheists are often faulted for calling religious worldviews fantasies. It's seen as derogatory, unnecessarily combative, contrary to civil discourse. And you know what? Maybe it is all that shit, but it's also true. And look, I'll admit, being true is not a bulletproof excuse to say something. a bulletproof excuse to say something. Half the bigots on Twitter hide behind some tenuous claim to veracity that wouldn't rescue their argument even if they were right. So I'll admit that that's not enough. In order to be justified, a rude statement has to be more than true. It also has

to be useful. And I would argue, I do argue, I am arguing that there's not just a societal benefit to reminding people that half the population exists in a perpetual fantasy world, but there's a fucking moral imperative to do so. And to do so in a way that is as derogatory to the process as the process is to the society. Because, of course, when you live in a fantasy world, you have to make exceptions when it comes to the rules of evidence. Things that feel true have to, at least occasionally, take precedence over things that are true. That's the first fundamental rule of being religious. Now, the second rule, of course, is that you can't admit that that's the first rule. Admitting that that was the first rule would violate the first rule. So you can't just pretend your worldview is true despite logic. You have to pretend that your worldview is logical. You have to pretend that sources like

your gut, stuff my preacher said, and stuff I read on the Christian Post are as valid as sources based in reality. And when you do, you wind up with this impenetrable fantasy world that spills out all over the secular world around it. See, the people that would have us tone down our language seem to think that there's some bright line that religious people can draw between, you know, that which is real in the true sense and that which is real in the religious sense. And that's fucking ridiculous. Sure, compartmentalization is possible. It happens all the time, but it only happens with religious people that have admitted to themselves that their religion is untrue without admitting it to the rest of the world people who hide behind this idea of compartmentalization are happy to point to those people right to like religious scientists that are able to leave their god

belief at the door when they do their research and yes those examples exist but they're obviously the exception rather than the rule i mean, you can be in denial about it. Not a great defense to begin with, but more often than not, it's also disingenuous. Most of the people don't compartmentalize. And in order to do so, you have to first admit, at least on some basic level, that your religion is untrue. Otherwise, how would you even know what to compartmentalize? Right? What would you be drawing that circle around? And of course, emphasizing the fantasy aspect of things as a potent reminder of the real danger of it, right? If we simply classify these things as untrue,

one could mistake them for beliefs that were limited by some theoretical adherence to natural law or observable fact. Bad political beliefs, for example, can generally be dislodged with enough real-world evidence of their falsity, but religious beliefs defy real-world evidence precisely because they are fantasies. People living in a fantasy world, they don't need to bother with real-world evidence. They have fantasy world evidence. And if that's your standard, shit like trees are pretty is going to be all the proof you'll need that you're an immortal ghost beloved by the creator of the universe who cares enough to personally involve himself in the trivialities of your day-to-day life. But most importantly, they don't confine their fantasies to the fairy

tales in their Bible. The fantasy doesn't end at I get to live forever with grandma and good old Sparky and God is watching over you at this difficult time. It extends to God is mad at you for loving someone of the wrong gender and life begins at conception. And I, a white cishet male evangelical living in America in the year of our Lord 2023 and persecuted. Those fantasies all come together in a package. And not only can they be justified with the same flagrant disregard to proper epistemology as all these afterlife fantasies, they can be justified with the same damned evidence. If you manage to keep the average American evangelical on the hook long enough to establish a train of logic all the way from A to B, you will doubtless find that yes, indeed, they will go from trees are pretty

to therefore God loves America the most as long as it doesn't let gay people get married without introducing any other real world observations. So yes, it's a fucking fantasy. The Bible is a book of fables. I'm sorry, that is at its best, The Bible is a book of fables. I'm sorry, that is at its best. The Bible is a book of fables. It's also a lot of other far less complimentary stuff in between that. And whatever damage I might be doing to civil discourse by pointing those things out, using the words that mean those things, it pales in comparison to the damage religion does by cocooning people and fantasies in the first damn place joining me for headlines tonight on the mario and luigi to my toad heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to jump into action sure am but i won't jump quite as high as eli right

he's got impressive hops actually actually. Doesn't he? And I keep getting trapped in a psychosexual haunting of my own making. So yeah, it's all making track. That's fair. All right. Well, I've got a quick wonder seed to find. So we're going to take a quick break for a word from this week's sponsor, HelloFresh. And then the day after that, I think I'll do just a single lemon slice.

Woof. A whole lemon slice? I mean, I said I'd try to a single lemon slice. Woof, a whole lemon slice? I mean, I said I'd try to do the lemon slice. Hey, guys. Guys, what are you doing? Oh, we're trying to figure out what to eat next week. Next week? Why?

All right. Well, let's just say we're planning on hitting the buffets pretty hard. Yeah, we're going to be in a severe surfeit of crab legs. So we're kind of going to need to cleanse, you know? Cleanse, you know? Lovely, lovely. Guys, if you want to eat well at home, why don't you just try HelloFresh? Oh, 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. My blood will be like 11% cheesecake at that point. Is HelloFresh going to have the variety that I require? They sure are. With over 40 recipes to choose from every week, there's always something delicious to discover with HelloFresh. I don't know, Noah. 18 buffets in three days? That can get pretty expensive. Can we afford HelloFresh? You sure can.

We all know HelloFresh takes the hassle out of mealtime, but did you know it can also save you money? HelloFresh is 25% less expensive than takeout, so that means that you get an easy home-cooked meal on the table and more money back in your pocket. But have you actually tried it? I sure have. HelloFresh sent us a box to try when they became a sponsor.

I loved how the meals unpacked into the fridge in seconds and they were so easy to make, even I could cook them. That's why I, Noah Lusions, personally endorse HelloFresh. All right, we're sold. How do we sign up? Go to HelloFresh.com slash 50scathing and use the code 50scathing for 50% off plus free shipping. So I go to HelloFresh.com slash 50scathing and use code 50scathing for 50% off plus free shipping. That's right. Nice. Now, about that wheelbarrow arrangement we mentioned earlier. Lucinda and I are not

going to wheelbarrow you around the house for the next week. Lucinda said maybe. No, she didn't. No, she didn't. Lazy. And now, back to the headlines. During which, in honor of Halloween, people may or may not creepily appear and disappear at random.

Or just assume I have nothing funny to say. Yeah, no, it might just be that. It also might just be that. I'm just pouting for some of these headlines. In our lead story tonight, if you're ever asked to define Christian nationalism, you could do worse than just quoting directly from Trump's campaign rally on Tuesday in New Hampshire. Tuxt amidst today's bloviations was a promise to adjust U.S. immigration policies to exclude people who, quote, hate our religion, end quote. OK. Yeah.

And by our religion, of course, he means America's religion. And by America's religion, of course, he means the narrow band of evangelical Christianity practiced by like 25 percent of America that makes up his fucking base. So people who hate that, in case you know any of them, would be unwelcome in Trump's vision of America. And boy, do we feel it. No illusions.

Boy, do we feel it. Sorry, I'm just, I'm having a little trouble making out Trump's future vision of America. Are those, are those bars blocking the view? Do you guys see that?

See, right, yeah. It's an orange guy maybe it's him fucking wall so yeah as newsworthy as trump makes bigoted and egregiously unconstitutional promise isn't i feel like this one deserves special attention it came amidst a list of new ideological restrictions he wanted to impose on immigrants and ideological by the way his word choice here not mine right now don't get me wrong i don't believe for a second that he knows what that word means and thus chosen himself but it is the word he used here's the relevant portion of the speech quote i will implement strong

ideological screenings of all immigrants if you hate america if you want to abolish israel if you don't like our religion which a lot lot of them don't, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don't want you in our country and you are not getting in. And then he added for emphasis, quote, we don't want you. Get out of here. You're fired. End quote. Remember? Like my game show. It's from my game show. I did before I was the president. When somebody arrives at the border, we're going to be like, Muslim says what? And if they say what, we got it, right?

Right. Yeah. Hard to imagine which specific demographic of people he was referring to. But in unrelated news, he also vowed to expand his Muslim ban if he should win a second term in office. And Trump supporters see nothing wrong with this because ever since they reappropriated the term religious persecution to mean not allowing people to impose Christianity on schoolchildren, they no longer have a term for religious persecution. As long as the Muslims we put in them camps don't have to make any wedding cakes,

they're good. I checked with our lawyers. It's all about the lawyers. And if we need any swastika cakes for an insane hypothetical, like we often do, they are up for it, right? Muslims are Nazis, right? I'm running for president. And also, look, I know this has nothing to do with the story, but I have to bring it up. Apparently, right before their speech, somebody taught him how to spell the word us. And he was fascinated.

He really is. This is mystifying. Real fucking quote. Yeah. In a potent reminder of just how spectacularly inoperative his brain really is. He word vomited the following actual quote. Quote, I'm for us. You know how you spell us, right?

You spell us, U-S. I just picked that up. Just now. Has anyone ever thought of that? I'm reading it and it says us. Cool. And if you think that blew his mind just wait until he realizes that there's no

I in team Jesus fucking Christ but there's a reason in treason he'll figure it out and in red white and bluey news for every successful IP there come a dozen lesser knockoffs

Transformers has its transmorphers. X-Files has its freaky links. Pearl Jam has its creed. You get it. And when it comes to ripping off a well-known children's program with a cynical half-assed cash grab, you couldn't ask for a better TV producer than

failed screenwriter Ben Shapiro. Keith, do you want to do this? His wife told him a wet vagina is a disease and he believed her. There it is. Okay. A nose was bleeding. Yep.

It was. It was. A lot. Yes, as a part of the Daily Wire's $100 million investment into child indoctrination, Shapiro's hate outpost recently produced an animated children's program, which, if you'd squint, recently produced an animated children's program, which if you'd squint,

you could swear start a famous Australian blue dog with polyamorous parents. I don't think that he's supposed to have- Don't argue bluey lore with me if you're not going to watch the TikToks, I send you no illusions, okay? Okay, okay. Anyways, the show is called Chip Chilla and the series focuses on a family of wide-eyed chinchillas

in a style and color scheme tried and tested by its spiritual predecessor louie and with one look you can tell the show is aimed at fundamentalist parents who homeschool their double-digit children as well as grandparents who mistakenly buy the wrong toy for birthdays and christmas right yeah, it's a Prey Station 5. Cool. Yeah. No, these are all so good, I hear. You have the receipt? No, I just, I love that they keep

doing this though, right? Because it used to be so hard to tempt Christian children to the side of the devil, right? You had to offer sex, drugs, sweet guitar skills, shit like that.

Nowadays, you can be like, hey, would you like all your entertainment to not suck? To just one piece. Yeah. Yes, featuring the voices of unfamiliar Broadway actor Laura Osnes and the unfortunately familiar Broadway sleeper Rob Schneider,

the Chip Chilla family intends to be... Yep, Rob fucking Schneider. It's a Rob Schneider vehicle. Cool. Yeah, the you can do it guy. But it intends to be a more wholesome and traditional family unit than the freewheeling, sexually liberated commie commune that Bluey's a part of. Rob Schneider making copies.

Tracks his whole comedy career. Yep. Sure does. Gender roles are heteronormalized with the dad, Chum Chum, being the alpha leader and the mom, Ginny, being the domestic caregiver. A family dynamic

that really ought to shake up the 1952's television lineup it was meant for. Okay, in fairness though, the episode when Bandit on Bluey got pegged was aggressive, right? Like, good message about losing heteronormative stereotypes,

but a little advanced, I think. I get why they made this copy. To be clear, by the way, that is the TikTok that Eli sent me. And we'll keep sending you until you watch it for its subtleties. But as far as the hyper evangelical message goes, Chippchilla is decidedly understated.

Initial reviews noted the overall lack of prophetizing to young viewers, instead opting for eye-wateringly dull storylines and dialogue. Maybe Shapiro and company assumed propaganda is more effective when the child is almost asleep. Right, yeah, like playing Mozart for a fetus, but with latent homophobia in the cello part, I guess. Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Chip Chilla is one of four series on the Daily Wire's newly launched subscription streaming app, BentKey,

a venture that has absolutely, positively, no chance of succeeding in an oversaturated marketplace. Whereas Quibi had legs as a punchline, it's doubtful anyone will even retain the name BentKey long enough to mock it, let alone watch it. So, sorry, Rob. Better keep Sandler in your contracts. That's just the thing, though, right?

No revenge is needed against a man who goes to bed every night knowing that he'll be remembered forever as the less talented guy from the Adam Sandler movies. Yeah. And in let there be blight news. With the overwhelming majority of climate scientists in agreement on climate change, the holdouts are forced to reference unconventional material to back up their claims. When data just won't do, you got to go rogue. Sure, you can use Fox News soundbites and quotes from people that you met in dreams, but it's best to have a recognizable text to throw on the table and pwn all those fact-based liberal snobs and their data, in quotes. And no better 21st century climate analysis exists than the book of Genesis. And here at

The Scathing Atheist, we are open-minded about that. So we're going to see what that book has to say about climate science. Any old skeptic can be open to new evidence, but we're open to old evidence here on The Scathing Atheist,

everybody. I mean, not for nothing, but I seem to recall there being climate change in that book. So sure. All right. Let's dig in.

Some pretty aggressive climate change, if I remember. All right. Sea level rise in the whole night. Let's learn in. Some pretty aggressive climate change, if I remember. Sea level rise in the whole night. Let's learn some science. Our expert is going to be Pennsylvania State Representative Stephanie Borowitz. Quick background. She's a lunatic bigot, just like you were guessing.

To wit, she introduced her own extra hate crimey version of the don't say gay bill. She introduced her own extra hate crimey version of the don't say gay bill. She's also an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist who called COVID, quote, a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins. And on the very day the first Muslim state legislator was sworn in in Pennsylvania, Horowitz gave an invocation that mentioned Jesusesus christ 13 times in 90 seconds wow and she called for everyone to bow down before the lord and savior during that invocation also just need to point this out she looks like jeff bezos in a wig telling himself he doesn't have to pay taxes she really dies really does all right so here's how bad it's gotten when When Heath said she thinks COVID is a punishment for our sins, I was like, all right,

well, she believes in COVID. Could be worse. Could be worse. So, luckily for us, Orwitz is here to cite that very important science book called Genesis

and dutifully break down its comprehensive facts and figures for the layperson. Orwitz pointed to God's early work as his strongest environmentally and praised the deity's foresight

in providing the people of Earth with an inexhaustible supply of resources. In her speech on the statehouse floor, Borowitz references the Democratic Party's attempts at banning gas-powered mowers and gas stoves as a means to stem climate change. And yes, owning a gas stove does as a means to stem climate change. And yes, owning a gas stove does run the risk of an ice raid.

But rather than mock those green-friendly plans, Horowitz had this to say. Quote, the truth is, in Genesis 8.22, it says, as long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and and night They will never cease And driving the point home She added I'll say that again Will clap Never clap

Cease Yeah, lady Even if I did take your book seriously It's not about summer and winter survival That I'm worried about Yes, you're right, yes Yeah And true to her word,

seasons and day cycles have existed since the Bible was written. Well, she's got us there. Yeah, that renewable resource called the time dimension that's hard to argue with. One only need point to a sunset or a snowman to back up her claims. But some people might argue that

seed time and harvest does, in fact, ebb and flow with wildly fluctuating yields. People like every farmer ever from all of time. But regardless, Orwitz went on to insist that we burn through our resources and just let God sort it out. She continued, quote, we are to be good stewards of God's creation, but not through a forceful climate control global agenda. Okay, I know this seems like a small point to quibble with, but I don't think she knows what steward means. That's that.

She doesn't know what a lot of things mean. Clearly, she's reading through her book, and she's like, well, fuck, that one's a point for y'all's side. But God didn't really mean it. He meant not like Democrats would. Yeah. Now, surely this biblical grandstanding was in reaction to a sweeping green energy bill that bans playful coal from stockings at Christmas because we hate Jesus Christ, right?

That's got to be it. Well, no, because those bills don't actually exist in this country. The Green New Deal got burned in a jet turbine to power a larger jet turbine, I'm pretty sure. I heard that, yeah. No, no, Borowitz was reacting to the toughest climate measure the American government can muster right now. And that would be naming the first week of October Climate Week in Pennsylvania specifically. Oh, my God. Okay.

over climate week in Pennsylvania specifically. Oh my god. Okay. Now, to be fair, that does impinge on spooktaculars and I am on the Christofascist side of it. So, no. Let's take this seriously. Oh, shit. Cue the climate gets a whole week but our veterans only get one day

argument in four, three, two, one. Don't count down in front of the veterans. But here's the thing oh jesus christ okay but here's the thing in the end we got a win for environmental fascism

a strongly worded resolution that does nothing it passed by a vote of 14 to 11 with every single republican voting against it of course fuck yeah they, they did. Exactly. That's right. Pennsylvania climate change deniers. It's called Climate Week from now on in that state.

And Big Brother will kill your children if you don't say it right. It's the law now. No, it's not. It's a resolution that just says whereas. It's nothing. Yeah. And while we make up the world's saddest mission accomplished banner, we're going to take a break and hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible.

A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. If it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This week in Masajid. Hey, did you know that abortions are reversible? Yeah, that's because they're not.

That's why you didn't know that. The closest thing we have to abortion reversal is fuck again. But that doesn't stop a bunch of unethical, ideological-driven clinics from offering that exact service, the abortion reversing, not the fucking again. So to be clear here, we're not talking about sewing the fetus back up $6 million man style and sticking it back in there. As you know, if you listen regularly, medicinal abortions in this country generally come from a combination of two medicines, mifeprostone and misoprostol. The claim from these clinics is that

if you take the first pill, then change your mind, you can take a shot or pill of progesterone, and that will reverse the effects of the mifeprostone, allowing you to abort the abortion in its second trimester. Now, to be clear, there is almost no research at all backing up this claim. There's one case study of six entire pregnant people who took mifeprostone and then progesterone. Four of them carried pregnancies to term. That's pretty much the end of the positive studies. And to be clear, that's not because nobody has followed up on it. It's because when they've tried, it's proven too dangerous. As you can imagine, getting half an abortion can have some very negative consequences. When they tried to do the first randomized clinical study of this back in

2019, they had to stop midway through after three different participants had to be hospitalized for severe vaginal bleeding. So yeah, fucking terrifying that people are able to sell this dangerous, unproven medical procedure, right? Well, Democratic lawmakers in Colorado tried to put a stop to it by passing a law that would have officially dubbed offering abortion pill reversals as unprofessional conduct, which would allow medical review boards to discipline doctors who did it on a case-by-case basis, which seems like a pretty low-grade solution to a pretty high-grade problem, but it's still progress. Or rather, it would have been if it hadn't been for the fact that one such clinic, a place called Bella Health and Wellness, sued the state. Their complaint? That the new act violated their right

to free speech. That speech, of course, being the ability to lie to people about the efficacy of a dangerous medical procedure. Well, you already know how this ends because you know how damn many judges Trump appointed to the bench in his tenure. That's right, a judge agreed with this horseshit claim, and as of now, Bella is still allowed to lie to their patients. In the same decision, that same judge struck down the part of the law that would empower the state's consumer protections agencies to punish clinics like Bella for advertising the fact that they offered emergency contraception and abortion services when they didn't. Which is a thing these clinics do constantly. when they didn't, which is a thing these clinics do constantly. Now, this is an injunction, not a decision, but the injunction is so broad and baseless that I think it all but tips the judge's hand in terms of ultimate outcome, which is all the more fucked up when you consider how little

these very same crusaders care about free speech when it works against them. To wit, despite the glaring lack of evidence that this shit works, there are more than 12 states that have passed laws forcing doctors to tell their patients abortions are reversible, which they aren't. So they're fighting to protect the right to force doctors to lie about the efficacy of a dangerous, ineffective procedure in the name of free fucking speech. So, yeah. Thanks to Alan, who was the first who sent us this story at scathingnews at gmail.com. And thanks to George Orwell and Margaret Atwood for doing all they could to warn us.

And with that, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in rainbow correlation news, with nearly 200 nations in the world, flag recognition is one of the toughest geographical challenges there is. Indonesia and Monaco, for example, are both red and white horizontal stripes, discernible only by the flag's overall dimension. Chad and Romania are both blue, yellow, and red, with only the subtlest difference in shade to tell them apart. But whereas this confusion is often struck during the World Cup, other cultural flags are pretty well distinct from one another in looks, design, and intent.

Flags like, I don't know, just an example off the top of my head, the pride flag and the Nazi flag. Oh, God damn it. Yeah, I'm parsing those out in my head right now i don't like where this stuff's going at all yeah even without them in front of you i bet you can probably picture the two well enough and you know cite the general difference in colors emblem choice and the folks that usually wave them and And the slur words you can hear while, yeah. Uh-huh. But not everyone possesses such keen observational skills and might conflate the two in contexts only logical to them. And such is the case for Alberta school trustee Monique Lagrange, who, aside from sounding like a hastily cut Harry Potter character, was recently under fire for posting a meme

comparing a vintage picture of children waving Nazi flags to a modern day photo of children waving rainbow pride flags. Adding the caption, brainwashing is brainwashing. Oh my Christ. Rectangles are rectangles and squares. I forget how that part of it works. Also, the little green thing hovering behind me is my Patronus Pepe the Frog.

Yes, I was cut from Harry Potter. Yeah, no, she sounded more and more like a J.K. Rowling creation all the time. Yeah, exactly. Now, the post has rightfully drawn the ire of parents and the board of trustees on which Lagrange sits, but don't worry, the school official has the perfect alibi.

The Holy Spirit told her to do it. Oh. Yep. Lagrange claims she saw the meme, mentally spoke with her higher up,

and was told, quote, do it. Go for it. End quote. That sounds like God. Yeah, glad to hear that the Holy Spirit

and a No Fear t-shirt are on the same page. Hey, God, quick question. Second place is first loser. Yeah, okay. I just wanted to ask about YOLO. Sure, YOLO. Yeah, yeah, totally. But in terms of doing it, got it, doing it. Yeah, totally. Trans people are Hitler. Good talk. Cool. That's the conversation she had. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. In a statement, and again, I can't emphasize this enough,

arguing for her defense, Lagrange's lawyer said, she's just a normal Bible-believing Christian who, when she's considering something, prays about it, which is what Paul said you should do in the New Testament. And then she received the affirmation

she was seeking, so she did it. End real quote. Nine out of 10 voices in her head do agree. Exactly. Yeah. But of course, thanks to Canada's staunch policy of forgiveness, Lagrange will not be removed from the board. And instead, her punishment will consist of a sensitivity training and a sincere apology. Naturally, Lagrange is fighting the charge and hopes any recompense doesn't reach such extreme levels, given her religious background. But, hey, brainwashing is brainwashing.

Yeah. Next up in headlines. You'd think once we aged out of public schooling, we'd have stopped pledging allegiance to things. Right after spending most of our first 18 years swearing fealty to the flag and the republic for which it stands, it seems kind of childish to place our hand on sacred texts and recite a vow for something as mundane as starting a job or entering into a marriage. But be that as it may, federal agencies have no plans to do away with the fairy tale pomp and circumstance and still require certain inductees to swear an oath.

And whereas the Christian Bible serves as the unimpeachable default for many a left hand throughout the years, NASA's new policy chief decided to pledge her oath last week on a more scientific text, namely Carl Sagan's contact. And before you ask, no, Jake Busey was not on hand to keep things interesting. Well, let's face it.

Nothing kept the movie interesting. So, no, I, I, I appreciate it. I like that you didn't use the Bible, but I'm just going to say it.

Coward. I have three books out, lady. Thank you. You want to send the message, let's send a fucking message. Sagan doesn't need a signal boost. Exactly. Yes.

Especially contact doesn't need a signal boost. Right. All right. So yeah, last week, Charity Whedon was sworn in as the new associate administrator for NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, formerly of the Royal Canadian Air Force and Satellite Industry Association.

Whedon would be overseeing planning and investments for the future of space exploration. And being the starry-eyed nerd that she is, she chose Sagan's 1985 sci-fi novel as her Einstein Rosen Bridge to gainful employment. Nice. Okay, alright, so no disrespect at all to the Associate Administrator for the Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, but it seems

weird that that job has a swearing in ceremony. The Associate Administrator, like I mean, I get it with members of Congress and judges and doctors and shit, but it's not like we're hearkening back to ye olde days of aeronautic engineering administration here. But don't worry, in terms of forging new paths via secular tech, Sweden is barely Buzz Aldrin.

Even within NASA, in April, Dr. Mackenzie Lystrup, the first ever female director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, took her oath on a copy of Sagan's pale blue dot. And there is nothing you will ever say to convince me that these two women are not bitter enemies over which one of them chose the better text.

Yeah, all right. But it was Dr. Lystrup. It was obviously Mackenzie. Yeah, no, I just didn't want to make her feel bad. She's probably a listener. So let that be a lesson for all of us. Even though swearing an oath feels childish, nonsensical, and embarrassingly performative,

at least we're no longer making our space program do it on a book that's pretty sure their next project is going to smash into the firmament and explode. Well said. And finally tonight, most modern experts will agree that secrets, secrets are no fun. Some would even go so far as to say

secrets, secrets hurt someone. And yet when it comes to the Catholic Church, secrecy and clandestine maneuvers to maintain secrecy are the name of the game. To that end, the Pope's ongoing summit with Catholic bishops, known as the Synod of Synodality. Seriously, that's the name. The Meta-Synod is going to be keeping the records of the meetings private,

despite insisting the reports are not secret. Oh, whatever could they be discussing? Will it be the epistle of Paul to the fourth council of the pap? Child rape. They're covering up their child rape, the meeting. That's why you can't see the notes.

Eli, this meeting isn't about covering up child rape. It's about maintaining a worldwide consistent policy of homophobia and covering up child rape. Right, exactly. Very good point.

And a big thanks to Stormy for the link. Scathingnews at gmail.com. You want to help out? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Right, exactly. Yeah, very good point. And a big thanks to Stormy for the link, scathingnews at gmail.com, if you want to help out. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Heath, are you telling me, this late in the headline segment, that not only can folks send us

the latest Christian bullshit to scathingnews at gmail.com, but when they do so, four weeks in a row, as Stormy has just now, we promise, as a podcast, Already know. to sneak into their childhood church

and take a shit between whichever pages of the Bible they choose. No. Scathing news at gmail.com. Here's what we do know about the Synod of Synods. The month-long meeting of bishops and other clergy members is intended to

establish the direction of the church and lay out marching orders with regards to selected topics, some of which include climate change, LGBTQ issues, and the issue of women getting, quote, way too sassy these days. But while a few general ideas about the talks are known, church officials maintain that the details of the small group reports will be kept under wraps. According to Paolo Ruffini,

president of the Synod's Communication Commission, making the reports public would, quote, threaten the prayerful spirit of discernment sought by the organizers. Yeah, they get real casual with the G-men at these things. All the prayers start up with, what up, dog? And you can't let people in on that side of things.

It's a real... Well, that's the thing, though, dog? And you can't let people in on that side of things. It's a real... Well, that's the thing though, right? Because it ain't that. When you say, but if we were keeping records of the things we said, we would say different things. You're admitting you're a bad guy just as much as if you just said the bad guy's shit and published it. It's the same, it's worse. Yeah.

I would say even. Really? And that's going to bring us to my favorite part, though. The secret public reports immediately became public by accident. These people are idiots. Despite the amazing cybersecurity acumen of octogenarian wizards in silly hats, media outlets were able to access documents about the talks on an unsecured server. According to Ruffini,

they did have it secured, but a bunch of the wizards who tried to view the documents couldn't get past the step of entering a password they were given. Oh my God. So Ruffini had to shut down the password protection and give everyone a public link.

And of course, the media found that. Yeah. Priests be not men or angels but somewhere in between also what the fuck is a whatsapp community i have to add the group to the community so that everyone i'm confused i just i love that their bullshit line about not being secret and not publishing the reports ended up accidentally being true. So, following the leak, Ruffini told the press, almost quote, fuck, please don't tell, please don't tell.

Just don't say anything. So, we'll just have to wait and see if any information about the Pope and Powell's meetup is presented for public consumption. We'll see how it goes. Here's hoping it presents a bold new direction for the Catholic Church and ushers that church into the 20th century. Either way, it's good to know that you can keep priests out of your house with captcha.

That's a nice, safe feeling. Right. Yeah. Well, it sounds like we've got some fucking garlic to replace. So we're going to close the headlines off there. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, Marshall will be here to explain how I possibly could have known that

if there's no such thing as psychics. Hello, adventurers. It is I, Achum, the Wizard Cat. Star and brilliant mastermind behind season two of the podcast D&D Minus, which has just premiered across the various podcast-averses.

If you haven't given D&D Minus podcast a try, there's never been a better time to start. There will be an adventure, a comedy, but most importantly, there will be me, Atum, the cat of many hats. I wear many hats. Get it wherever you get your podcasts and your hats. Now I'm going to go play with a ball of your heart. Bye-bye.

There's a skeptical equivalent to the Christian refrain of love the sinner, hate the sin, where we insist that our targets are ideas, not people. But ideas come from people. And bad ideas very often come from bad people, or at the very least are perpetuated by them, which is why we're happy to welcome Marsh back for another installment of Who's Woo? So Marsh, who sucks today? So sometimes when we're looking for woo and the people who do, we can be a little biased by recency, which is why so many entries in this asshole hall of fame have a medical or anti-vax flavor. But we shouldn't neglect the more traditional forms of bullshit and the people who've been profiting from and continue to profit from those, which is why for today's

Who's Woo listing, we're going to get paranormal, we're going to get supernatural, and we're going showbiz. Nice. Because today I want to tell you about psychic Sally Morgan. With that setup, I was hoping for Miss Cleo, but this could be even better. I'm excited about this one as well. So who was Sally Morgan? Sally Morgan was born Sally Mary West on the 20th of September, 1951. was born Sally Mary West on the 20th of September, 1951.

And according to the story that she's told in a range of newspaper interviews, she had her first psychic experience at the age of nine months. And she saw her first ghost at the age of four. Now, of course,

we only have Sally's word for this. And at the very best, that's the word of a woman in her 60s misremembering experiences from six decades prior. Yeah, so my dad's face would disappear and I was like, he's going to move his hands back.

He's going to move his hands out of the way. I was right every single time at age nine months. I'm a wizard. It's weird that she knew she was nine months old at that point, you know, before she could count or comprehend time or form permanent memories yeah yeah clearly just googled like when can you start forming

memories and google tells you nine months and she was like yeah that's fine still even if we can forgive her reports of early psychic experiences as the misattributed imaginations of a child the same can't be said of her apparently spending her reports of early psychic experiences as the misattributed imaginations of a child. The same can't be said of her apparently spending her 20s doing psychic readings for friends at parties, nor of her eventually giving up her 25-year career as a dental nurse to become a full-time psychic reader. As a dental nurse, just being like, hey, do you know anyone named John? Or maybe Mike? Or like, maybe a... I just love the idea of her sitting there for like a quarter century and finally going,

you know, maybe my unique ability to see the future could turn a buck. This dental nurse shit, this is not doing it. The story of her early career as a psychic is somewhat fuzzy, mostly because, once again, we only have her word for what went on. There's no other reports that I could find. But according to Sally, she did a psychic reading for Princess Diana in 1992 and would go on to be

the princess's most trusted psychic, giving her, according to Sally, regular readings for the next four years, where she would predict important things that were going to happen in Diana's life. That timeline, you'll note, conveniently stops just short of 1997, the year Diana died in an accident. Hey, Diana, I'm getting a really good vision here. This is a good one. Elton John is going to write a song about you. It's going to be fucking great.

So how seriously we should take the claim about Diana is, you know, like a lot of Sally's background, heavily dependent on how much we want to just take Sally's word for something. Because again, we've got no external verification of it. We know that Diana did see psychics and astrologers, so it's probably not untrue that she met with Sally, but how often and how close they were, that's completely unclear right now. We do know that Diana had a habit of sending letters to people that she was very close to, as well as gifts and trinkets. And if Sally has anything like that, she's never once mentioned it, which is odd because she talks about her time

with Diana a lot. In the 2000s, Sally set out on the road for an extensive UK tour. And at one point, she was playing something close to 200 dates per year for theaters that would regularly have more than a thousand audience members, each of whom paying more than 20 pounds a ticket. And once you remove a cut for the venue and the cut for her showbiz agent, it's fair to assume her new career was paying a lot more handsomely than her life as a dental nurse. Yeah. Sally was a big fan of that nitrous for a while. I wasn't ready to move on right away. I get it. Okay. And then on top of that tour, she also secured a deal for a succession of TV shows, including Psychic Sally on the Road and Sally Morgan Star Psychic. And just be clear,

that was star, not asterisk. I feel it should have been asterisk, but it was star. The TV show made her a household name and it featured highly edited clips from her live shows, from her tours and some behind the scenes, fly on the wall type stuff of her life. And then a bunch of celebrity readings. And many of her celebrity readings did actually involve Sally giving details that were verifiably accurate. It's just that in many cases, those details could have been verified accurate with a casual Google long before Sally recorded the interview. Okay, so like Eli's other job, but successful. She's like, sets the crystal ball in her lap.

Okay, so according to the crystal ball, if we just give Wikipedia $3. Oh shit, I'm going to skip ahead. So for example, she amazed the pop star Alicia Dixon by telling her the name of her mom and her brother. Details that were freely available in a range of newspaper interviews and even appeared on Alicia Dixon's Wikipedia page. Also, Sally Morgan asked the actor Helen Flanagan if she could share a photo of her boyfriend. Sally claimed, I've never seen this guy before, but she could tell from the photo that the guy had a brother called Martin who had cerebral palsy.

Now, the boyfriend in question was the Premier League footballer Scott Sinclair. Come on. His brother Martin was at the time the captain of Team GB's Paralympic football team. Oh, for fuck's sake! Details that were, again, completely available on Scott Sinclair's Wikipedia page. Do British people pay attention to football? Is that... And, you know, what all this tells us, of course, is that Psychic Sally is excellent at psychically confirming information that was already readily available in Wikipedia and in newspaper interviews.

That was already readily available in Wikipedia and in newspaper interviews. And one possible explanation for that is that the spirit guide she psychically connects to is pretty good at using Google. That's just one explanation of what could be going on. She's not even connecting directly to the family members. There's like a spirit guide in heaven who walks up to other ghosts being like, hey, can you mumble some vague shit about your death really quick? I'm doing a thing. I'm doing a thing.

Don't say it all the way. Don't enunciate. Yeah, I mean, even when it's not publicly available knowledge, psychic predictions about the past and present are the low effort ones. Those aren't really that good. Yeah, they're not impressive. And it's not just celebrity details that Sally's apparent spirit guide might be checking out online. And it's not just celebrity details that Sally's apparent spirit guide might be checking out online. Imagine for a moment if you were to go through every single clip of Sally Morgan available

on YouTube and watch every single one of her DVDs and read all of the online reviews for her tour shows and then take detailed notes on each of those readings that appear in those and then use those notes to scour local and national news coverage from prior to the date of that reading. That person who did all of that might find literally dozens of examples where the most memorable moments from Sally Morgan's tour show seem to come when Sally connects with the spirit of someone whose death had previously been a matter of public record.

Weird. Okay, Charles, I'm getting like a Diane or a Deanna, something like that. She is not happy with you. So, Marsh, in that example, might that person from our imaginations then come unscathing atheist to tell us all about what they found? They might. I mean, they might even be able

to send you a 57-page dossier on it if you want to. Oh, really? This is one thing they might be able to do. And that dossier would include the reading that Sally gave at a live show in St. Helens on the 26th of November, 2014,

where she heard from the spirit of a little boy who says that he died in a house fire. And he keeps telling Sally a name like Bess and a name like Shirley and the address Myrtle Street. But the thing is, in November 2010, a young mum called Charlotte, not Shirley, but pretty close. Her surname was Messam, not Bess, but Mess, pretty close. She lost her son Leo in an accidental house fire in their home on Myrtle Street in nearby Crewe. And that was in many, many newspapers. Okay, I'm getting a little bit more.

Now the little kid is saying, where the fuck were you four years ago? Nevermind, nevermind. Just moving on, moving on. Jesus Christ. Or there was the little girl who Sally channeled on stage in South Sea in November 2010. This was a girl called Lila.

She actually introduced it by saying, I'm hearing the Eric Clapton song, Lila. It's her name, Lila, something like that. Her grandma was in the audience for this show. Sally conveyed the message in a high pitched and childlike voice because she was channeling the spirit of a dead toddler. She did the voice? She did the voice. You can see it on YouTube.

She says, I got my toes stuck. I got my toes stuck. Before she snaps out of that channeling to ask, what could that possibly mean about getting your toes stuck? At which point the grandmother clarifies, it wasn't toes that were stuck. It was toast. And that her two-year-old granddaughter

choked to death on a piece of toast. Oh, fuck. Yeah. This was a story that had been in the newspapers extensively in July the previous year, when the real-life Lila died. Now, either Sally Morgan was genuinely channeling the spirit of the dead and couldn't control if she came across as crass and in bad taste because that two-year-old toddler's spirit was in control of her,

or she made a conscious decision to do an impersonation of a dead toddler on stage in front of a grieving grandmother. And there might be a third option, but I personally struggle to think of another way that this could have happened. Wow. Wow. Holy. And to really appreciate how cold blooded that latter of the two available options that you're required by UK libel laws to talk about. You've got to imagine the moment in the shower when that light bulb went off with the toes instead of toast thing, right? Because it was a toddler that was robbed of a chance to live by tragic happenstance. No, I knew it was toast, not toast.

I got paid for a gut milk ad that I did just now. I had to do a make good on it for the ad rep was really angry. Really angry email. Sally's amazing powers. They do have this odd knack of letting her down in unexpected ways too, though. On more than one occasion, she's told someone that their loved one's spirit is on stage with her right now, only to find that the loved one is very much still alive and sometimes in the audience.

At a show in Middlesbrough, she connected with the spirit of a young lady in a photograph. She gets people to bring in photographs that she can connect with. And she connects with the spirit of this young lady in a photograph that one of the audience members has brought in. And she begins to give a reading to the lady who brought the photo in

about who this girl in the photograph was and how she died and things. Only for it to turn out that the lady had misunderstood the assignment and brought in a photo of herself as a young girl. So Sally was confident in connecting that lady to her own deceased spirit.

And then there was a show in Greenwich where Sally tuned into the photograph of a boy and his dog and connected with the boy's spirit and started doing a reading for the boy's parents, only to find out that the boy was still alive. It was the dog that was dead that they wanted her to connect with.

Wait, hold on. That was the burn victim from another show. What I meant to say was, oof, oof, er, er, splat. Did that ring a bell for anybody?

Right, well, I mean, in her defense, what did the family think the channel dog was going to have to say? Yeah, that is fair. That is fair. Most curious of all was a 2012 show in Edinburgh when Sally connected with the spirit of a man called Toby,

who died in an explosion. And someone in the audience had indicated to Sally that he was really keen to hear from Toby. So it wouldn't have been too surprising that Sally was able to connect with and communicate with Toby. Were it not for the fact that Toby Wren, in question, was a fictional character from the BBC TV show Doomwatch.

She was depicted by the actor Robert Powell whose on-screen death in that show was in an explosion. Hold on, you didn't let me finish and scene.

That's a wrap. Yeah. My spirit guide was doing a reading through me about a living guy. It goes the other direction too. I'm getting a reading about

a gunshot victim from dallas his name is jr and then in september 2011 sally's tour took her to the grand canal theater in dublin where according to the irish independent quote an audience member sitting in the back row claimed she overheard a man relaying information to Morgan, end quote, going on to report that, quote, an employee was allegedly disclosing details of people's lives, which were then repeated by the clairvoyant moments later, end quote. It turns out it wasn't just one audience member who heard this. It was actually three independent punters, two of whom actually confirmed their details of their experiences when approached by the Guardian to talk about this. And in response to the Guardian's coverage, Sally issued a statement denying that the two men who worked in the theater had been feeding her information. She said, quote,

I have never met these two boys before in my life. And more importantly, they've got nothing to do with my show. I have no communication with them and there is no way they would have been able to talk to me while I was on stage. To think that everyone at the theaters I perform in is involved in a big conspiracy is ludicrous, end quote. Everyone involved. Well, yeah, that would be ludicrous, right? Because if that was true, none of them would have told the Irish Independent about the fraud that they thought they were doing. Now, it is worth pointing out that Sally Morgan did used to wear an earpiece on stage because stills from her own DVDs clearly show her wearing it. She pulls an earbud from behind the ear of The Guardian reporter like a coin for a kid.

How could you hear those two guys with such dirty ears? It's also worth pointing out that Sally seemed pretty specific in her denial to The Guardian that the theater staff were not in contact with her and that she'd never met those employees of the theater before. Which does make sense because I agree with Sally. It would be ludicrous for anyone to rest their entire career on the complicity of whichever strangers happen to be working as staff at any given venue on any given night. Spirit guide calls are up from heaven. If you're not going to take it seriously, I'm going to quit. You got to take this serious. This is ridiculous. Now, it is also a pointing out that when the Daily Mail published an article suggesting that

the voices heard by the audience were the theater staff, Sally Morgan sued them and actually won a settlement of £125,000. So I want to be absolutely clear at this point. I don't for one minute believe that Sally Morgan was receiving messages from employees of the Grand Canal Theatre in Dublin when Sally and her team brought her show to Dublin that night. Libel laws of the road, folks. The only thing Americans are on the right side of. Sally Morgan, by this point, had become the most famous and prolific touring psychic in the UK and was gathering the attention of skeptics wherever she went. In October 2011,

we actually challenged her in The Guardian to take place in the Million Dollar Challenge, a challenge that she sadly declined. She said, Sally Morgan has better things to do than to take part in any challenge. Then get a million dollars? Yeah, exactly. A few years later,

her husband and son-in-law were filmed threatening and homophobically abusing an activist called Mark Tilbrook, who turned up to some of the shores to hand out leaflets outside the theater, explaining very basic cold reading tactics. The story actually made headlines right across the media and garnered Sally Morgan and her team a huge amount of backlash, especially amongst her gay fan base because of the homophobic abuse from Sally Morgan's husband. It turns out Mark wasn't actually gay. It's just that what we think had happened was

they've Googled him and he had a rainbow on his profile picture and they just assumed from there. And it was actually not a rainbow. It was the Atari logo he painted on his face at a party. But that's by the by. We think that might be how this came about anyway. But as a result, Sally released a statement sacking her husband and her son-in-law

from their management roles in her team. Though how much of that was just for show is genuinely really unclear because her son-in-law was working for her just a few months later when I saw her performing in Liverpool. Also, just a reminder, James Randi's million-dollar challenge to prove your paranormal ability, it wasn't a bet. You either got a million dollars or not. And if you're keeping score at home, You either got a million dollars or not. Yes. And if you're keeping score at home, it's reality, a thousand, wizards, zero.

From 1964 through 2015, over a thousand wizards gave it a shot. Exactly zero got the win. Ah. Now, all waves must eventually crest, however. And the waning interest in touring psychic shows seems to have hit Sally Morgan at least as hard as everybody else. Before the pandemic, she seemed to be struggling to fill some of those big venues.

She actually downsized to smaller venues, and even that didn't seem to halt the lower audience numbers. In 2018, her company went into voluntary liquidation after being hit by a £2.9 million fine by the tax office. And since the pandemic, Sally continues to tour, albeit to smaller audiences, as the world apparently moves on and big touring psychics seem to have had their day, for now at least. But while the rest of the world seems to have largely forgotten about her, we'll always have a place for Sally Morgan in Who's Woo. All right. Well, Murs, thanks again for sharing your expertise with us. And we're already looking forward to the next installment of Who's World. Before we put her to a stop tonight, I want to remind you to check out the new season of D&D Minus. If you've been meaning to check out the show, but you didn't want to have to listen to

a big backlog to follow what was going on, there's never been a better time to hop in. Check the show notes for a link anyway that's all the blast we've got for you tonight we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more if you can't wait that long be able to look out for a brand new episode of our sister shows hot friend got off movies debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half sister shows temptation needed debut at noon Eastern on Wednesday obviously

I've not yet begun to fight if I haven't thanked Heath Enright for his tenacity Eli Bosnick for his audacity and Lucinda Lusions for her sagacity I also want to thank Marsh one more time for his pugnacity and his perspicacity. Sorry, I had multiple acidy words left and there's no reason to take them with me. I also want to thank Nikki for her very insightful

Farsworth quote and a very viva Las Vegas to you too. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people whose names I don't know yet because we had to record this outro way in advance because we're going to Vegas for a live game show that you can still get general admission tickets for if you follow the link on the show notes. Anyway, sorry to keep you waiting. I promise I'll compliment you next week. And if you'd like to hear your name alongside theirs, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com

slash skatingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode. Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at skatingatheist.com. Also, hi, Nick. And if you'd like to help, but not in a money kind of way, you can also help a ton by leaving us a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media. And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer, Russ Morgan-Clark,

who also wrote old 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 content info on the contact page at scathingadeus.com. Okay. On second thought, the part where I whispered, hi, Nick actually comes off as super fucking creepy.

He asked me to do it. It's like, but he's the only fucking one that knew what I was doing there. So sorry if I weirded you out with that. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and the Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.