The Scathing Atheist - 599: Manifestive Edition

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

In this week’s episode, we get stuck relying on pre-recorded stuff in one of the worst news weeks to ever not be on top of current events.  --- 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/

Warning, the following podcast has fucks in it. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by FactorStamps.com and by A Renewed Sense of Hope. A renewed sense of hope. Kind of fucks up my on-air persona, but I'll allow it. And now, The Skating Atheist. Hi, it's Isabella with two friendly reminders. One is that COVID's still out there.

It still sucks and long COVID sucks even harder. I've had it for the past two years and you do not want it. And a second reminder is that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday! It's August 8th, and a hurricane fucked up our travel quite a bit so I had to kinda record the intro on my own. I'm no illusions. I'm still no illusions. I'm also still no illusions. And from Richard the Iceman Kuklinski's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia,

this is the Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, the pre-recorded nature of this show will be real obvious by the lack of couch jokes, God'll continue to not exist, and all I know is annoying we should have a spare C segment just in case shit will be fully vindicated. But first, the diatribe. So the night before the live show in Salt Lake City this weekend, I'm chatting with a friend and the subject turns to tarot cards. It turns out that like me, she used to be a shut eye tarot reader. That is a person who did cold reading without realizing that that's what they were doing.

And I know that sounds like a bullshit post hoc excuse, right? I was only accidentally using a well-known con to manipulate people. But it's actually a really easy thing to fall into, especially back in the pre-internet world where, you know, it's real easy to never come across the term cold reading in your whole fucking life. But of course, over time, it becomes more and more clear to you that what you're doing is less of a psychic act and more of a party trick. And if you're like me or her, you start to slowly realize the damage

that it's doing as well. You can justify the deceptive nature of it at first by telling yourself that you're only giving good advice and you're just trying to help people. But if people think your good advice is coming from the astral fucking plane on divine authority, it ceases to be good. And if you're honest with yourself,

you can't help but see the subtle damage that it's doing. And so if you're like me, or if you're like my friend that I was chatting with, you walk away from it. But as we were talking, I started to wonder how different it might've been if we'd had the same social media structure then as we have now.

Because it's not hard for me to imagine the 27 year old version of Noah having a tarot-based YouTube channel, or or a podcast about woo or a blog about bullshit. And in that universe, one where I'm actually making my living off of believe in that bullshit, would I have had the same revelation? I mean, I feel like I'm a pretty honest dude. So I feel like if I realized I was just straight up manipulating people, I'd stop even if I was making a decent living at it. But I'm not as confident that I actually would realize that. The brain is amazing at swerving around realizations when its continued happiness depends on doing so.

Right now, I can imagine a Christian listening to this and trying to apply it to my current situation, right? Like, here I am admitting that my objectivity can be clouded by my financial interests. So wouldn't that mean that if I came across convincing evidence of a God, my brain would swerve around it so that I could continue to make my living talking about atheism? And the short answer to that question is no. And not because I've gained some kind of superhuman rationality through the sheer potency of my non-belief, but because that's not how the financial incentives are aligned. Right? I feel like we can all agree that I'd be making a hell of a lot more money tomorrow if I

fucking found God. Ain't nobody ever made a billion dollars selling atheism and prominent atheist finds Jesus is the kind of fantasy that they make movies about. Right? Like if I found God at this point in my life, David A.R. White would play me in a fucking movie. But if I was a woo peddler, ex tarot reader finds a conscience that's nowhere near as marketable. I mean, I've shown that I can build an audience from there. Sure.

But I can't sell y'all motherfuckers supplements now, can I? So would I have been able to back away from that line? Would I have even been able to fully confront the extent to which I'd been full of shit? Because it's not just about your future income. It's also about continuing just to tell yourself that you didn't just rip off a fucking bunch of people who gave you money before as well. Think about how much harder it is to confront the truth when the truth is that you're a con artist. And of course the punchline to this whole conversation, harder it is to confront the truth when the truth is that you're a con artist. And of course the punchline to this whole conversation, which neither of us realized

as we were talking about this at the Platinum Night on Friday night, is that we were having that conversation in Salt Lake City. Two days after we talked about how hard it is to admit that a profitable endeavor is based on a lie, I walked by the goddamn Joseph Smith Memorial Building, a 10-story concrete and steel behemoth surrounded by the most beautifully maintained floral display I've ever seen, and that was right next to the fucking Brigham Young monument, a 25-foot tall gilded fucking statue, a building dedicated to a serial rapist next to a statue dedicated to a serial killer, all at the heart of a

bazillion dollar church dedicated to never realizing that. And look, I'm not just trying to be euphemistic here because I recognize that there's a genuine difference between knowing you're wrong and avoiding the question of whether you're wrong in the first place. Religious people are taught to push those doubts away, right? That's Satan trying to intrude on your faith after all. But even if they weren't, the internal inclination not to entertain any evidence that contradicts the things that you want to believe as powerful as all hell. Literally, I guess. And I think that understanding that and recognizing that and allowing for that is the key to having the kind of sympathy that

we're going to need to change minds. Joining me for headlines tonight are nobody, as you may have noticed from the intro. But no worries, we've been stocking up a few extra headlines for the past month or so, just in case. But before we get to those, a quick word from this week's first sponsor, Factor. And then I emailed Cecil and told him his wife's art was like, quote, a creepy child's crayon scribbles. Oh, dude, that's totally going gonna do it. Right? I thought... Hey guys, what are you talking about?

Oh yeah we're making enemies. Oh! Okay so I guess I mean why? Well it's the summer Noah. I mean there's parties, barbecues, get-togethers, all filled with foods that make it way harder to stick to our weight loss goals. Exactly. But if we make everyone our enemies, no invites, no problem. Guys, if you want to eat great while sticking to your weight loss goals this summer, why don't you just try Factor? What's…

Factor? Factor's fresh, never frozen meals are dietitian approved and ready to eat in just two minutes, so no matter how busy you are, you'll always have time to enjoy nutritious, great tasting meals. I don't know, Noah. Don't those meal boxes get kind of samey? Not at all. With 35 different meals and more than 60 add-ons to choose from every week, you'll always find new flavors to explore. Plus they've got veggie and vegan options. They sure do. Head to factor meals dot com slash scathing 50 and use code scathing 50

to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month. That's code scaling 50 at factor meals dot com slash scaling 50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off the next month while your subscription is active. Awesome. Thanks Noah. Hey, um, any chance Lucinda has not checked her texts yet? She saw it. I was actually, I was coming down to warn you guys.

Damn. She in the go cart? Yeah, she's in the guys. Damn! Is she in the go-kart? Yeah, she's in the car. Why'd you buy her that? Well, I thought it would be fun! She's so much more mobile now. And now, back to headlines from the past already in progress. And in expiration date news, a bunch of idiots might die from drinking raw milk to bone the libs, or at least get really sick

from salmonella or E. coli or bird flu. That's a real thing that's happening so that they can bone the libs. Seriously, there's a new trend among Christian right sovereign citizen types to drink only raw unpasteurized milk because way more bacteria is the way God intended. And also because they want to spite the ivory tower bureaucrats in the pockets of big milk who only want pasteurized milk going out for public consumption. Not clear how big milk benefits from not selling the kind that's way easier to make, but here we are.

And the latest result is a big outbreak of salmonella poisoning, affecting at least 165 people that was traced back to a producer in Fresno, California called Raw Farm. Yeah, of all the traditionally left-wing ideas they could have adopted over the last 10-20 years, they picked our pseudoscience? Yeah. And all we got in return was their antisemitism. It feels like we got a raw deal. Okay.

So yeah, until recently, raw milk was one of those weird things you'd hear about from your hippie aunt who makes her own deodorant with like foraged clay and from your hippie aunt who makes her own deodorant with like foraged clay and touts the health benefits of alkaline water and you know polycules that require like eight dimensional Rico charts on architecture software so you can visualize them. That sounds great but like out of my league way too advanced. The first time I saw raw milk being served was at a cafe near Seattle that called itself a Metaphysical coffee shop. Yeah, that's right. Everybody my wife's hometown had fucking idiots before it But now it's migrated from places like

liar green mommy comm and metaphysical coffee shops to become part of the dude bro culture of eating nothing but nearly raw steak and loose handfuls of pocket salt. That diet almost killed Jordan Peterson so it's not all bad. Definitely stupid. And apparently these people just like heard the word raw and they latched on. Because the modern invention of cooking things with heat after harnessing fire is how they getcha, I guess. The Illuminati in this case is made of cave people and also includes French microbiologist Louis Pasteur who

invented pasteurization in 1864. Okay, okay. Pasteurization just happens to be discovered by a guy named Pastor. Please, give me a fucking break. Thank you. So... Teach the controversy. So now we have a big trend on social media about raw milk. Media Matters looked into it and they found that the hashtag raw milk appeared in over 13,000 videos this year on TikTok with hundreds of millions of total views and

They found similar numbers on Instagram including one of the top reels that encourages Pregnant people to drink raw milk The CDC calling raw milk literally one of the riskiest foods that people consume Especially if you're pregnant don't drink raw milk pregnant or not. Yeah. Yeah, look I'm not saying all raw foods are bad, but any food that needs a like to Modify itself with the word raw is bad Exactly. Yes. There's only one raw we approve of on this podcast and that's Raw dogging everybody never wear condoms not

even once so it's worth noting that the interstate sale of raw milk is in fact illegal a consumer advocate group called public citizen did a bunch of work to get rid of it because you know it keeps making people sick much like it did back in the glory days of 1863 and all the times before. But laws are illegal if you spell your name in lowercase, so a bunch of anti-vaxxer idiots added raw milk to their list of secret knowledge that they have, along with ivermectin and ass bleach. And here's a few prominent examples of health advice from the intellectual leaders of that community.

I'll start with Gab's CEO. There it is. Neo-Nazi vlogger who panicked when he found out that Jewish people wrote some of the Christmas songs. Andrew Torba. He posted, quote, raw milk plus heavy metal detox with herbal tinctures equals I do not have seasonal allergies for the first time ever this season. Yeah, no, when you're constantly vomiting and shitting it's hard for the

allergens to hold on. They can't get purchase. I just love when the risk is obviously so much bigger than their fake benefit, right? You might as well have tweeted jumping out of a plane with a parachute eliminated my hiccups And then another example came from info wars host and Person who went to jail for taking part in a violent treasonous mob Owen Shroyer for taking part in a violent treasonous mob, Owen Schreuer. According to Owen, people are going to local farms and getting raw milk, which angers the FDA.

So they made regulations to hurt the local farms. Because the FDA only likes farms that are far away, I guess. And I wasn't exaggerating earlier about the term big milk. I was joking, but not everybody this guy unironically called the FDA quote a gangster mafia who's in league with big milk okay wait so so the FDA is in league with big milk and dairy farmers aren't no I get it cuz like I also would like to get paid to give idiots poison to drink so The farmers like it and just for the record Owen Schreuer's guest that day was Clint Rary

The owner of a farm that only makes raw milk Weird just for context I watched their segment and it appears that Rary does not wear any item of clothing unless it's both camo and showing the American flag. Sure doesn't. Confusing. So according to Clint, his products are all non-GMO and he added, quote, I call it real milk because you're not killing out all the bacteria that you need to be consuming from it." End quote. You need to be consuming bacteria from it, apparently. And that's when they both opened up a pestilent Mason jar of raw milk on the stage of the stupid Infowars show. It was the,

the chunky variety of the raw milk. Grove stand, lots of pulp. And they cheers and they take a big spike gulp together. Oh, you sure got us. I mean, you got us. You got us. You sure got us. That's a hope you don't get us again. Oh, guys, if we're not careful, they're going to find out about that Briar Patch we dread

so much and then who knows what could happen. One last quote also from info wars host chase geyser said Everyone is figuring out that raw milk is actually better for you. It tastes amazing It tastes like melted ice cream Next you're gonna tell me your bottled water tastes like melted ice Okay, but guys guys raw water If you think that's sweet Wait till you taste any freeze

Yum, yummy Okay, so here's the situation according to very bad people the one simple trick to get healthy is consuming whatever the science experts are saying is dangerous. And that presents an amazing opportunity. Like if I was in charge of the CDC or the FDA and I'd been getting yelled at by plague spreading lunatics for the last four years, I'd be briar-patching the shit out of these people for my own personal amusement all the time.

I know, look, okay, I get it. I know that anti-vaxxers and raw milk people lead to collateral damage, especially kids, so that's terrible. However, I still want this in my heart. I want us to briar patch them into drinking chunky milk poison. I get it. And in shock of shit news, authorities in Mexico have closed a 10-foot tall statue of Poseidon earlier than demanded by its lack of permits this week because, you guessed it, it offended a different non-existent god that nobody believes in. Okay, you got to relax. It's about water god heritage, not hate. Now if only African Americans could get the same kind of respect we routinely afford to

indigenous Mesoamerican gods. Yeah. Right. So first off, big thanks to the one and only Stormy Decisus for sending us this story first to scathingnews at gmail.com. Podcast listener, I can't pretend we'll love you as much as we love Stormy if you send us atheist news to scathingnewsgmail.com, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Yeah, super difficult to get more of my love than Stormy D has, but putting some excellent wordplay in the email is a great start. Tell me about it. Stormy's doing work every time. Yes! For this one, it said, in God of the seeing double new Good stuff was so good. I couldn't steal it was so big. They would know they would feel that relationship But that's back lane. Yeah, shock of shit was it was there. Yeah was on brand. It was on branches what it was

Right. So first off I'm pleased to announce that the offended God in question was actually not Christian God and Jesus this time. I know, refreshing. No, a group of activist lawyers filed a legal complaint saying the statue offended the beliefs of a local Maya indigenous group who prefer their own local God of water known as Chak, saying in their complaint, quote, Poseidon is a Greek god who is alien to our Maya culture. I have a human right for my Maya culture to be preserved. Whatever. They're not even competing gods. Poseidon is the god of the ocean, and Chak is the god of rain, thunder, and lightning. Like, maybe if the Mayan god

Gugumots had a problem, he would have standing, but not shock. What are you doing? Read an AI overview on Google that I checked really good. Yeah, right. Thank you. Now, to be clear, this is one of the rare moments where I'm on the side of one god or the other, right? Like, because fuck Poseidon. I feel like the Greek pantheon has plenty of exposure. And honestly, we desperately need to promote

some non-Greek, non-Norse pantheons just for the sake of video games, if nothing else. Exactly! Yes! Where's the God of War Chalk plotline, you know what I'm saying? Right! Yes! Now, admittedly, from the descriptions I could find online, Chalk wouldn't be quite as statuesque. Chalk appears to be a lizard with an elephant's trunk, tusks or fangs, and carries a water jug and ax at all times. So I can see why it wouldn't be as Instagram-worthy as old P-Dog. Okay, the photo I saw, he looks like a,

like a safari samurai garden gnome, all those things at the same time? Which is rare. Anyways, according to Wikipedia, objections to the statue started as a joke, but religious idiots have never seen a satire they couldn't resemble, and now there's a legal action as well. And I have to point this out, at least according to the Associated Press, and I couldn't find a source for this, so, you assault people are blaming angering chalk with this statue For tropical storm Alberto in June and hurricane barrel, okay? I wrote, but that would be so chalk though would

Look and this guy I want to be clear This is all very obviously silly and the point is that the statute didn't have the proper permits, so it was going to come down anyways. But it's a good reminder that no matter how powerless and obscure a god might be, their first order of business is always to ruin it for everybody else. And in wokey boomer news Rhonda Santis had some big emotions last week after a federal judge placed a permanent injunction on the so-called Stop woke act. Oh, that's the absurd Florida law that he championed a couple years ago When he learned about acronyms and got really excited. The full name for that law is the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act.

Jesus. This was described as way too clunky in an op-ed that was written by my very first sexual experience. It was a fun op-ed. Yeah. And the law banned any business from requiring diversity and inclusion training for its employees in direct violation of the First Amendment, which was exactly the reasoning behind the injunction banned any business from requiring diversity and inclusion training for its employees in

direct violation of the First Amendment, which was exactly the reasoning behind the injunction from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who called the law positively dystopian and put a stop to the stop of the woke, therefore starting the woke again. It was fun. And DeSantis is livid. It's so weird, too, because they loved free speech back when they had the only megaphone in town. Right?

So, in response to the injunction of his pet law, Ronnie Two Boots did a press conference during which he broke into a crazy rant in that voice of pretending to become and normal. Yes, he does that. Every pause is a chance to start crying and you're like, oh, he's going to do it. He's going to. Oh, no, no, I kept going. He started by invoking the fundamental right of non self-flagellation from the Constitution. I think it was another thing from the secret part.

He said, quote, we have every right as a state to provide protections for employees and businesses to say if they are doing woke training, which is basically discriminating against folks on the basis of race, you have a right to opt out of that. It's not a question of what the company can say. They can say whatever they want, but you have a right to not have to self-flagellate. You have a right to not have to sit there and listen to nonsense. And so we were actually right on that." End quote. You don't have that wit.

No, the fuck you don't. You know, yeah, well, black people and women, they can have freedom of speech as long as they're in an empty room with no broadcasting or recording devices. What the fuck are you talking about? People, he's not just arguing for the right to be racist. He's fucking

campaigning on it yeah and winning in a landslide in Florida mm-hmm so that was the that was the coherent part you heard just now from there he just completely lost track of the point he was trying to make and started randomly naming other stuff that popped into his head. Naturally, the first thing he mentioned was the genitals of children. He claimed that a bunch of doctors are making a whole bunch of money doing gender-affirming bottom surgery on kids,

although he said it in crazy words that weren't that. They're not doing that, to be clear, mostly because that's not happening anywhere, regardless of which state you're in. That's when he noticed, I'm assuming one of his aides, gesturing wildly in the shape of a rectangle. And he looked down at his notes again and tried to find his train of thought for a second,

but whatever he'd written down on the notes did not help. He added, I think if you look at Columbia University, you look at some of these agencies that we have in government, you look at some of these agencies that we have in government, you look at corporations, some of them, once they get infected and captured by the woke mind virus, those institutions just crumble and they become hollow shells of what they were supposed to be. He says as he hollows out the Florida Department of Education like he was about to carve a

fucking pumpkin. Yeah. Jesus. Also, he thinks the problem with Columbia University is that they're too woke. Sure does. Yeah. I don't think that was their problem this year, guys. Yeah.

Well, you know what else grinds his gears? Legalized mugging. Yeah, that's what he was saying. What? Great question what you just said. Yeah, I have no idea. But here's what he was saying. What? Great question, what you just said. Yeah, I have no idea. But here's what he said. Quote, the minute you go into these other things

where all of a sudden people get elected district attorney and they release criminals or they refuse to prosecute criminals, crime goes up. Well, actually statistics don't go up because what they start doing, they stop reporting crimes. So they say, oh, this crime is down all these cities and everyone's scared to walk down the street. And no, it's not that crime is down,

it's that the reporting is down. But first of all, if you get mugged in some of these, it's not first of all, you're like way into your point, man. Yes, no, this is the 18th of all, yeah. Yeah. He said it, said it anyway. First of all, if you get mugged in some of these places, it's not even worth reporting it.

They're never going to prosecute somebody for that and whatever that was. And he closed out that segment by blaming George Soros for funding the mugging friendly DAs, I guess. He does love a good mugging that George Soros. So what he's saying then is that there is secret data that proves his point. Y'all just trust him. Right. Okay.

Why would you bring up statistics at all? Yeah. You're lying. Just do your lies. Exactly. Why are you arguing with me? I'm not there. Nineteenth of all, I have stats on this rectangle. Sorry, sorry. Yeah.

So naturally, no press conference about a First Amendment injunction is complete without lamenting the downfall of Western civilization that happened during the opening ceremonies at the Olympics in Paris. Oh. In particular, the big problem for DeSis was the lack of Islamophobia theoretically, and it was just anti-Christian, but not anti-the other religions enough in his head. He said, quote, I was just sad seeing this. It's like, you know, that was really a symbol of the decline of Western civilization. I don't think on the closing ceremony, they're gonna do anything where they mock Islam.

I don't think that's gonna happen. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that doesn't happen. And so when they're mocking the Last Supper like that, it just shows that so much of particularly Western Europe, you know, they've really walked away from the values that once made those countries great. End quote. Jesus Christ. I feel like we're even more prudish than the people who make women wear bags. That's a hell of a cell phone, Ronnie.

And they are going to mock Islam with the closing ceremony. There's going to be unmarried 13 year olds there, uncovered female heads. It's going to be an Islam Palooza. Women in the stadiums. Yeah, I know. Yeah. So that was hard to follow. But I think I did learn something. George Soros is impressive.

Right. He's very impressive. He's 93 years old. And just in terms of his recent work, he's forcing white guys in Florida to self-flagellate. He's building an army of trans kids. Awesome. He infected Columbia University, perhaps the entire Ivy League and all of academia with the woke mind virus.

He legalized mugging and perhaps he's doing some mugging to supplement his income. I don't know. And he destroyed Western civilization with an Islam friendly drag show to benefit his Zionist conspiracy. So respect. Yeah. Good job, man. Right? Multitasker.

Yeah. And on that note, we're going to pause for a quick word from our other sponsor this week, Stamps.com. Do you know what he wants? No, he just said it was important. Gentlemen, come in. Hey, Eli, did you move a desk in here? Yeah, I thought it was important for a conversation of this magnitude. Please sit down. There's only one chair and you're sitting in it.

Lower? Just going to stand. It's literally my chair. Fine. Look, it's about your recent changes to the format of our podcasts. What are you talking about? We didn't change the format of our shows. Really Noah?

Underline and bold at the top of interstitials. Sound familiar? I knew he was going to do this. You did say so, yeah. Look guys, I'd love to try your wacky ideas, but we're packed up tight here at Puzzle on a Thunderstorm. What with writing times, recording times, and the time we spend shipping stuff at the post office, we just can't afford to make these kind of monumental changes.

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Where do I sign up? Put more life into your work-life balance with Stamps.com. Sign up with the promo code scathing for a special offer that includes a 4e 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 the code scathing. Fantastic! Looks like I don't have to be the bad guy boss after all. The boss? I didn't even let you have a debit card.

Oh really? Then what's this? That's a Snorlax Pokemon card. Right. Beans. A man wrote the Bible? A horse would smug. If it's a legitimate race.

If it's a slot, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This week in Misogyny. It's tough when the thing you're fighting against is also the weapon you have to fight with. But when it comes to women's rights in the U.S. judiciary, that's what we're dealing

with. We're in a position where the courts are so corrupt that they're taking away our rights to score political points for their conservative overlords. And then we're turning to those very same courts and asking them to vindicate us when we're victimized by them. Take for example the case of LaZell Gonzalez in Star County, Texas. In 2022, she had to go to the emergency room after taking an abortion pill. She was ultimately fine, but a few hours after she was discharged, the local cops showed

up to arrest her for murder She was held in jail for two days until she could post a half a million dollar bond Now once she got out of jail the charges were dropped on missed immediately Even under the draconian laws of Texas a woman can still take a fucking abortion pill It's illegal for a physician to perform an abortion and it's illegal to aid a person in obtaining an abortion But at least so far you're still allowed to take perfectly legal medicines. So the Ovarizales prosecutors had no choice but to let her go. But in a lot of ways, the damage was already done.

I mean, sure, she's no longer facing years in prison over it, but her very private medical decision has been made a matter of public record. Her reputation has suffered permanent damage in her very religious community. Well, now she's seeking recourse. She's suing the two prosecutors that brought the bullshit case against her, as well as the county sheriff and the county itself. She's seeking a million dollars in damages,

and she's alleging that the sheriff's office had an agreement with the hospital that they would share private information in cases like this, even if, as in the case here, nobody broke any laws. So best of luck to Ms. Gonzalez, but I don't know how much hope we should hold out for her. She is, after all, suing in Texas.

And while she's busy suing Texas, Texas is busy suing the Biden administration for making contraceptives accessible to begin with. Specifically, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing over a long-standing federal program that provides contraception to teenagers without parental consent. So yeah, keep this in mind every time people try to say that Republicans aren't coming after contraception. They're already hard at work chipping away at those rights, and they're desperately trying to lob a few test cases in the direction of the Supreme Court. And they're not going after some new fringe radical program that just started by comrade Kamala or anything. They're going after Title 10. It's been around since 1970 and among its many provisions is confidential access to contraception for anybody who wants contraception. But of course Texas

has never met a genital it didn't want to legislate. So they have a law against giving contraceptives to teen without parental consent. Because you can't be proven aerial disease directly, you got to sneak up on it from the side. Now there have already been a couple of chips taken out of Title 10 by the courts, and there's every reason to believe that this suit will work as well. I won't pretend to understand all the legal munition, but I know this SCOTUS is basically rescinding women's rights in alphabetical order, so I feel like this one is going to go too. And unfortunately, until we find a manufacturer willing to mass produce barment hammers, we're going to have to continue to seek recourse through those same damn courts. So, you

know, fucking vote, people. And with that reminder, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in what defrock news tonight, the Catholic Church is so conservative that it would literally be illegal to be that conservative if it wasn't a church. But even that isn't conservative enough for a lot of Catholics, which is why even the tepid reforms that Pope Francis with wolves has enacted have inflamed so many puckered assholes within that church. Ooh, Francis with Wolves is an awesome new one. Yeah, that's a good one.

I'm sure I've used that before. And perhaps none of those sore assholes is more puckered than Catholic maggot Carlo Maria Vigano, an anti-vax, pro-Putin, pro-Trump, climate change denialist archbishop who used to serve as the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. and now serves as Pope Frankie's most ardent conservative critic. Well, apparently his criticisms were enough to earn him an excommunication as of last Friday. Wow. Okay. So the Vatican, run by a foreskin themed wizard and financed with Nazi gold, said you were

too conservative. That is what happened. Something's gone wrong. I'd say it's like getting kicked out of the KKK for being too racist, but I wouldn't want to insult any KKK members with the comparison. Like that though. Yeah. So yeah, to be clear, just because there's nobody to root for in this story doesn't mean I wouldn't want to insult any KKK members with the comparison. Yeah, it's like that though. So yeah, to be clear, just because there's nobody to root for in this story doesn't mean

there's nobody to root against. Vigano is complete shit. His chief complaint against Francis is that he isn't homophobic enough. He's recently become a strident opponent of vaccines. He claims the deep state started the war in Ukraine in an effort to demonize Russia. And not only does he reject the modest reform of Francis's papacy, but he also rejects the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the nineteen fucking sixties. So like, yeah, even the segregationist church was too woke for this jackass. Make the Vatican Council great again. Right, yeah, no, exactly.

But of course, it was his criticisms of Pope Frankie specifically that got him in the hot seat. He's publicly referred to Francis as both a false prophet and a servant of Satan in multiple occasions and has repeatedly called on him to resign, which is really hard to reconcile with the whole infallibility thing. Okay, look, I know the papacy has moved beyond torturing people to death for saying this stuff, but

if Frankie wants to do one last one for old times sake, I for one would be willing to look the other way. Like go full Senad, my man. Go full Senad. Go into that weird museum of like tools that you just use it. Yeah, you've got it. Yeah, exactly've got it. You've got it. Come on. On a spiky chair or whatever.

But unfortunately, no, this does not work like John Wick 3. They did not unleash a citywide gauntlet of assassins upon Vigano at midnight. Boo. Boo. Right? Instead, they stripped him of his ability to celebrate mass, receive or administer sacraments, and hold official positions within the church. He is allowed to keep his title of Archbishop though, because that's meaningless. But apparently,

after he missed the appointment for his hearing in Rome, and then missed the rescheduled hearing, and then blew off a third hearing while publishing a screed on his website about how he rejects the tribunal's authority, they ultimately tried him in absentia. Oh my God, he's the Rudy Giuliani of the Vatican. Good luck with that, bud. Yep. Good luck. Yep. Yeah, but he missed his chance to say, this whole courtroom is out of order.

Right, why would you pass that up? I don't think Caccino ever said that. Now, of course, there are levels of punishment beyond excommunication, including defrocking and expulsion. Apparently the hope is that excommunication is gonna rattle his theological cage enough that he'll come back to the fold. But since the dude literally thinks

that the guy who excommunicated him is Satan's minion, something tells me that's not gonna work out. I don't know, I'm rooting for a schism right now. Yeah, so is he, Noah. Yeah, right. And in Catch.com news, you know, when you bring up the harm of stupid for a living, you get a surprising amount of people asking you why you care about other people. You know, they put it like, why do you care if I'm vaccinated? Why do you care if people believe

stupid things? And aside from the incredibly selfish worldview that question gives away, the answer is that we don't live on an island, right? People who believe stupid things want the world to match the stupid things they believe, and unvaccinated people bring their measles-infected ass near babies too young to be vaccinated. Well, this week, I'm happy to say the tide has come just a wee bit closer as the internet unveiled its first ever unvaccinated dating site that I swear is not a parody. Unjected.com. Oh God. Okay, so it might sound like we started this site as a way of honeypotting idiots into

a quarantine bubble? Eli? Yeah. All right. So first of all, big thanks to Brian for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com. Brian, for sending us news to scathingnews at gmail.com. You created a very private dating site between you and me, and I would super match you in a second.

Okay. I don't know what that means, but you better not be offering to fuck our listeners again. That is the first thing on the whiteboard and the 11th and the 31st. You know that. Yeah. We needed to clarify receiving and group situations in case anyone's wondering yet. So you're probably wondering what is. Unjected.com. I'm glad you asked. Let's take a peek at their mission on their About Us page. Quote, in early 2021, we watched our colleagues, friends, and families line up for an experimental vaccine, in scare quotes, that would change the world as we knew it. Why did they put vaccine in quotes?

Do they think like part of our conspiracy is the old switcheroo on liquid type in the title? Like it's actually polymorph juice. Ah, idiots just took it. We switched out their vaccine for Folger's crystals. Let's see if they're homeless. Son of a bitch. I'll kill my entire family. I almost wrote in the notes, son of a bitch in your color, just because I knew you were

going to say it anyway. All right. Continuing mandates, slander and censorship aimed at the unvaccinated population simply for sharing viewpoints and knowledge left us feeling ostracized and alone in our convictions. Good. Good. Good. Yeah. With long-term health consequences after exposure... I hope they cry. Do it kind of weepy.

Yeah. With long-term health consequences after exposure... Nice. ...to our vaccinated counterparts unknown, we knew it was our duty to bring forth a safe place for the unvaccinated to find each other. Okay. I mean, the internet and virtual spaces, that is the only safe place for the unvaccinated to find each other. Okay, I mean, the internet and virtual spaces, that is the only safe place for that.

That's not what they meant though. No. We soon realized it wasn't just about the need for romantic companionship. There needed to be a platform that brought together the entire community of free thinkers who were not buying into the agenda. Unchecked has now become a rallying point

for unvaccinated people from around the world to unite. And cough on each other. Who said that? Somebody added that. We've been on quite a journey. Cough on each other. After taking a stand against Big Tech, a censorship war and a smear campaign was waged against

us and we were forcibly removed from the app store. Oh no. Unjected has proudly found its place where we continue to grow and thrive as the world's first and largest unvaccinated platform. Well, okay, the first unvaccinated platform was four billion years ago when viruses first emerged. But like, also, I feel like I feel like the Black Death would like to talk to you about the largest claim as well.

Exactly. Yeah. Now, as bizarre as their mission statement is, their bio page for its founder, Shelley Hosanna, is somehow sillier. Quote, my health and wellness journey started over a decade ago when I was injured by the experimental Gardasil HPV vaccine. I went from a healthy and thriving teenager to being nearly debilitated by a myriad of heart conditions for several years.

It was my first experience learning how important personal health is. Really? The single most important. And now I get my personal health advice from a member of the Kennedy family. Yeah. Who has brain worms. Yeah. Yeah.

No, yeah, no. Hey, how about I try one? My health and wellness journey started when I ate beef wellington with my friend Ian. I went from a healthy, thriving man to being nearly debilitated by a myriad of heart conditions. Equally true statements. Yep. Ian tried to kill Noah. Yeah, it's true.

I've always said that. So did Gordon Ramsay. You think it was a government hit? Oh, right, because he's a spy. Yeah, you're true. I've always said that. So did Gordon Ramsay. You think it was a government hit? Oh, right, because he's a spy. Yeah, you're not a baby. Once I became a parent in 2017, I began diving deep into the pharmaceutical industry, being kicked out of our then pediatrician's office

and called a murderer after choosing to refuse dangerous childhood vaccinations for all my children. Go your then pediatrician. Yeah! Can we get a name drop? At least attempted murderer. After learning the lack of double-blind placebo-controlled studies for every injection on the market. No, first of all, lie. Took me two seconds on Google just to like quadruple check myself, but that's a lie. Also though, in order to conduct a new placebo control study about vaccines for children, you have to not vaccinate a bunch of children and then like count how many diseases they

get. That's terrifying. Of course we don't, like we managed to collect data without actively doing that, but Shelley Hosanna has no idea what I'm talking about right now. Yeah. To be fair, she is helping us with that data with her. Yeah, we get the free data on that. That's fun.

Now, I know what you're thinking, podcast listener. Eli, why are you telling us about Unjected.com? Is the point to just point and laugh at them? And yes, that is part of it. But also, this is for our listeners yes our listeners as well because what if we have listeners looking for that special someone and they want kids but they don't want them for very long well then objected might just be the place for you so in the spirit of generosity i think we should put 30 seconds on the clock.

Better names for the unvaccinated dating site. Go. Oh, okay. We haven't done this in a while. Harm Harmony. Ooh, how about Okay Stupid? Nice. Um, Christian Shingles?

Oh. Rashley Madison would be the phenomenal one that goes along with it. Zoonotic. No, okay. A Dumble. Um, Ivermectinder. Oh, there you go. Adult Endfinder.

Yeah. Okay. Are you guys ready for my best one? Here's my best one. All right. Coughing meets Bagel. Oh, nice. Okay.

Delusions of Grindr. Yeah! There it is. I just want to point out that I'm not a fan of the Dumble. Here's my best one. All right. Coughing meets bagel. Oh, nice. Okay. Delusions of Grindr. Oh, amazing. I just want to point out I wrote in last after all the good ones were taken. And on that note, we're going to wrap up the headlines for the night. Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli.

Thanks as always to Jumanji. And when we come back, we'll manifest ourselves as C-Sec. Religion and spirituality aren't necessarily the same thing. We know this because there's a growing number of people who say that they're not religious, but they are spiritual. And besides the astrology and crystals, they also swap out religious stuff like prayers for quote unquote magic, which is kind of lame unless you're an eight year old. Hold on. Are you saying that weird guy my parents hired for my birthday did not pull a rabbit out

of a hat? He did not. And 40 is way too old to have a magician at your party, Heath. Okay. Well, I'll stop inviting you then. Yeah, right, no. So we all know that stage magic is smoke and mirrors, but so are a lot of other things pretending not to be,

which is why we have a segment called How Bullshit Is It? So tell us Heath, what nugget of nonsense will we be chipping away at today? We're gonna be talking about the latest craze that all the kids are talking about, manifestation. My mom caught me manifesting once, super awkward. Manifestation, different thing.

Oh, nevermind. Okay, well, for many of us, it's both, it can be both. Manifestation has been called lots of things over the years, and in a way, it's also about self-love, you think about it. But not in the way that Eli just used it. Don't slut shame me. Oh, you're right.

I'm sorry. Okay, so what are we talking about when we say manifestation? Well, it's basically about thinking aspirational thoughts with the purpose of making them real. It's also been known as the law of attraction, affirmations, creating vision boards, and even more old school, good old fashioned praying.

But there's one thing that sets manifestation apart from just wishing good things will happen to you. It's thinking and behaving as if those good things are already real as a means of manifesting them into your life. Okay, so Gen Zers are basically rereading the secret. Rereading the secret, correct. And just like the secret, the manifestation world is also a very lucrative business for a lot of scam artists. The more things change, the more they stay the same. So instead of boomers and gen-xers having a midlife crisis, it's Gen Z? Well, not exclusively. Thanks to climate change,

all generations get to have a midlife crisis, right? It is weirdly heartwarming to know that we're all on the same boat. There you go. Yeah, and the boat's on fire. Hey, hey, hey. Is that the right attitude? Let's try to manifest a boat that's not on fire, huh? Maybe it's just sinking. That's what I've always loved about you, Heath, then, right?

Your sunny optimism to you. There you go. All right, so can you give us an example of manifesting? Sure, okay, so it can start with daily affirmations. You look in the mirror and say something to yourself about having the thing you desire most. Like, I'm so glad that, insert desired thing here, worked out for me. Or, I'm so glad my crush confessed her feelings for me and we're in love now. Try it out.

Like, I'm so glad I won the lottery this month. Sure, yeah, good one. I'm so glad I found that buy one get one free sub coupon from my sandwich place. What? That's all you want to manifest? You have your dreams, I have mine, no illusions. My sandwich place. What? That's all you wanna manifest? You have your dreams, I have mine, no illusions. I'm sorry, two subs, one of which you still have to pay for

is your dream? Don't dream shame me! Okay. All right. So the laws of attraction mean that if you stay hyper fixated on this affirmation for long enough, you'll eventually manifest that thing into reality. But naturally, you gotta watch out for pitfalls.

For one, you can't have any doubts like ever, which is kinda tricky, given our inherent negativity bias, a survival instinct that's served us for generations. But you gotta get past that. Doubting your manifestation means it'll never come true. So you gotta stay delulu, as the youths are saying. That means delusional in case you're not a youthful person like myself.

Keith, I need you to stop letting your stepchild write your essays for you. No, so let's say you're down on your luck and you really wanna manifest your dream life. A loving spouse maybe, an amazing home, an awesome job, Say you're down on your luck and you really want to manifest your dream life. Loving spouse maybe, an amazing home, an awesome job, or maybe so much money that you don't need to work at all. Where do you start?

If you're thinking of yourself, maybe I should go back to school, study a field that I'm passionate about, or get my friend to help set me up on dates if I'm looking for love. Wrong. Stupid. You start buying shit. Ah, yes. The only thing that's an even bigger scam than organized religion. Capitalism. So, there are tons of videos that can teach you how to manifest. Remember, that's wishing and it's free. But there are some products for that you can find Manifestation journals that range in price from about ten to thirty dollars each you can find self-help

manifestation books Pre-recorded workshops for sale and you can even pay hundreds of dollars to get yourself a manifestation coach That's a yeah, that's a real thing. It's a personal trainer That's a, yep, that's a real thing. It's a personal trainer for wishing stuff. And if you somehow don't manifest all your wildest dreams, well, that's because you didn't believe hard enough. That's your fault.

Kind of the same vibe as a church, making people give money in order to get into heaven. It's very, very similar. And that definitely didn't cause problems for human history or anything. Nope. Yeah. Pretty sure I learned in history class that everyone was cool and chill about it.

And here's a second pitfall you might want to look out for if you're still on board with manifestation somehow. Manifestation doesn't take into account the societal and economic barriers that a lot of people face that are standing in the way of achieving their wildest dreams. Things like systemic racism, education inequality, gender bias, or lack of Mitt Romney's rich dad to borrow from. Late stage capitalism doesn't just trick desperate people into buying this manifestation shit, it also means that real avenues of economic mobility are gone too.

So the dominant strategy at this point, it's already be rich. That's one of the only ones left. So you're saying if my dad owned the sandwich shop. Yeah, so another pitfall in the world of manifestation is confirmation bias. As it applies here, that means interpreting everything as a sign from the universe

that you are in fact crushing it at your manifesting. And you're less likely to recognize red flags along the way. That's the other part of confirmation bias. You notice anything that seems like the magic is working, and you ignore anything that contradicts the magic. And once you're under that spell, you stop putting real effort into accomplishing a goal because you're convinced that things are just magically working out. They're not. They never are. And now you're turning off critical thinking for some reason. You're having faith. Don't do that.

What do we always say? Don't do that. This is no different than a pyramid scheme or, again, a church. Delusional people want to surround themselves with other delusional people, and everyone else is just standing in the way of their manifestations. Alright, well it sounds like we're going to wrap up a pretty short segment here. Manifestation is clearly bullsh- B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b There's more because manifestation isn't entirely bullshit. What? There's no way there's some magic way

to create all your wildest dreams out of thin air. No, no, not at all. But there is a way to proactively adopt a positive outlook on life that can actually be helpful. And it doesn't even require being Delulu. Okay, that's two, that's two. So yeah, magic's not real. But you know what is? Psychology and manifestation is really based on positive psychology, a mindfulness practice

that helps overcome our negativity bias that I was talking about before and help us live happier, fuller lives. Okay, but isn't that like saying homeopathy isn't all the way bullshit because water exists? Well, kind of. I'll explain. So here's how manifestation can actually work. Positive affirmations and visualization have been shown to help improve people's mindsets, which can help with mental and sometimes physical health. There have been several studies about positive psychology, including one from the Mayo Clinic that said reducing negative self-talk can help you manage stress better, be less susceptible to depression,

have better cardiovascular health and have a better immune system response. All right. I feel like linking negative attitudes and poor cardiovascular health was a dig at me personally, but I'll allow it. You cited your sources. Okay. So they've also done studies on athletes and the effects of doing visualization during sports. Athletes who could visualize themselves winning before games, or more specifically, like visualize

a particular moment of success, like a basketball player visualizing themselves sinking a free throw right before taking that shot. Those athletes saw better results in real life. So manifestation takes a real psychological phenomenon and turns it into a course someone can sell you on TikTok for $4,000. Pretty much. Yeah. You also need to do something in order to make things happen. That is the key. For example, if you want to run a marathon, you also need to train for it. Manifestation only works when we set realistic goals, follow through with doing the actual work,

and then also add the positive thinking part. You can't just think about the finish line tape every morning and then run a marathon. That's nothing. So if you're hoping to improve your life, start with actual steps. Like revamp that resume, take some classes to learn a new skill, ask someone out on a date, and think positive while you do those real things.

So you're saying I might get those two subs after all? Still thinking about the BOGO coupon for the subs. Okay, you're really focused on that. Well, the point is, if you can dream Okay, you're really focused on that. Well, point is, if you can dream it, you can do it, Eli. Field of dreams. No. No, that's if you build it, they will come. I thought it was real dolls. Which brings us to our conclusion. Tell us, Heath, how bullshit is it? It's crossing the finish line at a marathon, but it's like 14 hours after the start and there's a good deal of shit running down your leg now.

Think positive, but as a supplement to actually doing stuff. That's the key. All right. Well, Heath, thanks as always. And if you want more of how bullshit is it in the future, just manifest that shit, Joe. Before we tie the bow on this one, I want to thank everybody who came out to see us in Salt Lake City last weekend. And here's hoping you had better luck than I did flying home. And yes, our upcoming show in Boston is sold out.

But I heard a rumor that we might have one more live show coming up this year. Stay tuned for details. 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 Eastern on Tuesday and even new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend God of a Moves, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday

and an even newer episode of our half sister show Citation Nudid debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I can't draw up the bridge until I thank Heath Enright for always taking the late shift to the live shows. I need to thank Eli Bosney for being one of the world's best traveling companions. And I want to thank Lucinda Lujans for keeping me sane during an unexpected six and a half hour layover. I also want to thank Isabella for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. I'm sorry that you're still dealing with COVID, but hey, at least you don't

live in the country with the most expensive, least effective healthcare system and all of the developed... Oh shit. Fuck. Nevermind. Sorry. And most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people Daniel, James, Spiritual, Jigolo, Justa, Hyphen, Adrian, Logan, Miriam, Sunshine, Terry, Luan, Dave, Mike, Mikex, Farron, Perminal, JJ, Peter, Rick, Andrew, and Shay. Daniel, James, Jigolo, Hyphen, Adrian, and Logan who are so hot they'd melt if they weren't so cool. Miriam, Sunshine, Terry, Luan, Dave, and the M Mikes were so sexy they had to be raided by the MPAA and Baron, Perminal, JJ, Peter, Rick, Andrew and Shay whose IQs have more digits than their phone numbers. Together these 20 hot, cool, sexy geniuses helped keep the show on the

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us, Andrea Romano provided additional writing for this episode and our audio engineer is Morton 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 skatingadius.com. We remembered the ads Morgan, but we forgot the fucking intro. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and Thunderstorm LLC copyright 2024 all rights reserved.