The Scathing Atheist - 604: Progressive Parent Edition

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

In this week’s episode, we gather up some gently used headlines from the last couple weeks, God’s attempts to divinely interfere with our records go awry yet again, and Kavin Senapathy joins us to talk about the science of parenting. --- 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/ --- Guest Links: Pick up a copy of Kavin’s book by clicking here, or going wherever you get your books.  Check out the Dungeon Mistress Chronicles here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dungeon-mistress-chronicles-podcast/id1762268605

Warning, you know that part of the debate where Kamala Harris almost said motherfucker but restrained herself and said former president instead? Yeah, we don't have that kind of restraint here. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Stamps.com and by the new conspiracy theory delivery service, Hell No Fresh. Need some scary sounding bullshit to rant about during your presidential debate? Try Hell No Fresh. And now, the scathing atheist.

Hello. This is the Mistress from Dungeon Mistress Chronicles. Check us out on Substack, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. We run a D&D 5e campaign and release the story in chapter form, twice a week. As someone who deals with dimension door-esque misreading on spell descriptions and feverish points of order discussions, I can confirm we did It's Thursday. It's September 12th. And it's the National Day of Encouragement.

Right, and even if it wasn't, who could tell you it was? I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnic. I'm Heath Henwright. And from Carl the Pug-a-Peg-a-Corns, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll fill you in on the religious idiocy you missed. God will smite me right now if he's real.

And Covensonopathy will be here to help me step all up in dear old dad's turf. But first, the diatribe. When it comes time to take the temperature of America's commitment to church-state separation, my inbox can serve as a pretty handy thermometer. Given the position this show puts me in, I'm the first point of contact for a lot of people when they encounter unexpected violations. A listener's kid gets sent home from their public school with Christian propaganda coloring books.

A listener gets denied a promotion for not having proper Christian values. A listener notices a Christ is Lord plaque displayed at the county courthouse, and a lot of the time their first thought is to email me and ask what to do. Because of that, once I account for the growth of the show over time, I can roughly gauge the changes over time and how many people are being affected by Christian overreach. It's hardly a scientific measurement, but it's served as a pretty accurate shorthand in the past. And let me just say that as we move firmly into the school season throughout the US, that particular metric is off the fucking charts. See, I always have a spike in these types of emails around late August, early September,

but I have never seen anything like this. Every day I'm getting at least three or four more messages from people saying, hey, is this shit legal right here? Kids are being led in prayer, being assigned Bible readings, being given religious pamphlets, being taught that evolution is just a theory. Over the last couple of weeks, I'm drowning in it like never before. In fact, it's even slipped the bounds of my work messages altogether and spilled out into my regular life.

In the course of the last two weeks, I've received eight messages from people I know outside of work concerned about church state violations in their public schools. These people are not atheist activists. Several of them don't even identify as fucking atheists. One of them identifies as a Catholic. But their kids are being exposed to religious messages that make them uncomfortable. And I'm the only person they know

who knows what to do next, right? So it's basically like my thermometer ran out of Fahrenheit and had to start borrowing degrees from Celsius. Now, let me be clear about the contrast here, okay? So that number, those eight people, that's up from a previous record of zero Like as you may know when you tell people outside the atheist movement, you know that you do atheist activism

People are usually dismissive if not hostile to that Even if they're not believers You usually get a very like why not leave people to their beliefs and who are you to tell people was right kind of attitude About this it's seen as petty and arrogant to be an atheist activist by a lot of people. So a lot of these people that are calling me and messaging me now have to swallow a bit of pride to come to me for advice. Several of these messages contain some form of, okay, maybe you were right, which is a real hard thing for people to say.

But that's where we're at. Because if there's anything that's going to force a person to choke down on an oversized helping of pride, it's concern for their kids. Their kids are in the crosshairs of Christian nationalism. There is no question about that. You look at the focus on banning books from school libraries and stripping teachers' ability to decide for themselves what to talk about in the class. Look at this incessant rhetoric about kitty litter boxes in schools and trans girls and

sports. This focus on taking over school boards and getting chaplains into schools and forcing teachers to teach from the fucking Bible. This is all an admission that they lost on this generation, so they're going after the next one. They're giving up on us and going after our kids. And one of the themes of all these messages, of course, that I've been getting is this frustration over the inability to fight these battles on their kids' behalf.

Because of course, much of this stuff has an opt-out system, right? Kids don't have to read from the Bible. They just have to go before their peers and declare themselves godless is all. And as was captured so perfectly a few weeks ago in that Burnsworth quote from the dad in Oklahoma, that's not something every kid is comfortable doing. Because the campaign isn't just about reinforcing cultural solidarity among Christian kids, it's also about otherizing the rest of the kids. It's about reminding the atheist kid and the Muslim kid and the Hindu kid that they're

part of the out group. It's about bringing to bear all the pressure that places on a kid to conform. Y'all, we have a word for that shit. We have a word for people who take advantage of a child's natural timidity to strong arm them into doing what they want. The word is bully. That's what we're up against. We're up against the kind of people who would bully children when it's to their long term advantage and we should act accordingly. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news, Wilmington.

Joining me for headlines tonight are nobody. With all the travel last weekend, we had to record a few headlines for you in advance and we'll get to those in just a minute. But first a word from this week's sponsor, Stamps.com. Hey, Podcast Lister. I'm Eli, Stamps.com. Hey, podcast listener. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm No Illusions. And I'm Heath Enright. Here at Puzzle and the Thunderstorm, we know you love the occasional behind the scenes

peak. So, did you know that before each and every record, we just sit at our computers? That's right. Sure, I tell myself I'm looking over my notes and setting up for the record, we just sit at our computers. That's right. Sure. I tell myself I'm looking over my notes and setting up for the record, but I mostly just open the tabs I'm going to use and then kind of sit here and try not to send the Skype link too early. Exactly.

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No long-term commitments or contracts. That's stamps.com code scathing. You know, we could just hop on a little earlier. I mean, but then I would start sitting in the chair that much earlier. Ridiculous. Yeah, me too. No, that's fair. And now back to headlines from the past already in progress.

And in Oz some news like the HBO show. You'll get my reference in a moment. Oh yeah. Great. An Oregon federal district court rejected religious discrimination claims brought by a county jail guard who objected to required LGBTQ community training this week because while bigotry and Christianity might be synonymous in modern practice, they're not supposed to be. So we're going to go ahead and talk about it. Okay. I'm not a legal scholar, but was the ruling by any chance, do your job or do a different

job gavel? Because it feels pretty simple. Yeah, well, it was. So so let's get lost amidst the normalcy of their ever-shifting definition of religious discrimination but what genuinely happened here is the guy had to stop being a bigot for eight hours at a time so he sued them yeah so much less than that you'll see it's so much less than stop being a bigot. He didn't even have to stop being. No, he's short enough about what that would look like. Yes. Yes. Yes.

So the plaintiff in this case is Mason Goodnight, a former deputy sheriff at the Douglas County Jail. And thanks to the Federal Prison Rape Elimination Act passed in January of twenty twenty three, Douglas County implemented jail policy six 620, or JP620, which required all jail employees to use LGBTQ-friendly terms when addressing adults in custody who identify as LGBTQ, house AICs according to their self-identified gender rather than biological sex, and conduct non-emergency pat-downs or strip searches of AICs based on their self-identified gender, which I can say is pretty basic stuff that acknowledges the human decency that LGBTQ folks deserve. AIC is adults in custody.

Okay, adults in custody. So that was obviously way too far for good night, who refused, saying that the policy, quote, demands sick. We deny sick. God, science and the common sense verified by our very own eyes. This is a Pandora's box of perversion I refuse to help open. I appeal to you one last time. Please repent of this sinful path for the sake of our country, inmates and my fellow deputies and actual crime.

I'm picturing him on his knees saying this to his boss. Absolutely. I feel like judges are having fun with these. Somebody being like, you must repent of your mortal sins. And then just like, um, no. Yeah. So yeah, so just to be clear the Christians are opposing the What was it the federal prison rape elimination act? Yes, what this is. So that's where we are now

That's right where they are. They're on that side of the side. They're not on right So obviously since he wasn't a person of color dying of thirst the jail did its best to respect his rights offering for good night to review the training materials without completing the tests. But he rejected that proposal. Oh, really? Arguing that even acknowledging the training would violate his religious beliefs. Okay, but you're acknowledging it by having a lawsuit.

That is what I said. Yeah. Just like reading a biology textbook would violate a religious doctor's beliefs. But that's ridiculous. Oh my god, sorry I can't do that. I need to be an illegally actionable snitch. So no. Yeah, so yeah, he refused to look at a training book while still being a bigot and he he got fired. And as I said this week, the Oregon Federal Court ruled that, no, freedom of expression does not cover the right to discriminate against people based on their gender. And even though Goodnight was making a claim of private belief, he was trying to enact that belief as a public employee because, and they never really seem to get this part,

so let me explain it. When you enact your private beliefs as an employee of the government, that's the government doing a private belief. Because the government doesn't have its own people except the employees of the, yeah, right. We are the people in the government. Okay, Mr. Goodnight, you still seem confused.

Religion is like, how do I explain it? Okay, religion's like a contagious virus. It's okay to be an anti-vaxxer by yourself in your house, and I lost you again. Yeah, right, yep. Never mind. You're fine. Now, unfortunately, among the people who never get that bit, Eli was just explaining, are the majority of the ones on the Supreme Court.

So let's cling to this victory and celebrate it while we can. Don't hold that drink for very long is all I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. What Noah's saying is if Joe could hurry up with those term limits and that code of ethics, I'd be super, super grateful. I hear his schedule's a little clearer than it was. All of that's unconstitutional according to the Supreme Court. So, fun.

Next up in headlines, in transaction news. It's got to be a rough time to be a transphobe, what with so many social institutions expressing such progressive views on trans issues. I mean, think about it, you've got the Girl Scouts, you've got... Ah, shit. A substantial portion of the atheist podcasting world. Some. Small sliver of women's sporting organizations and of course, the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints. Well, that last bastion of trans-progressivism is finally doing something about it by enacting a series of policies to make sure that trans people feel less welcome in the Mormon church. Okay, let me guess. Trans men do get their own planet in heaven, but it's not one of the cool ones with like rings and stuff. So first of all, quick thanks to Lilith for sending us this story to scathingnews.gmail.com. Lilith for sending us a story that we used on the show.

Heath and Marsh will now reenact the You Had Me At Hello scene from Jerry Maguire whenever you asked them to. And you get to choose who's Renee Zellweger. Yeah, we've been rehearsing both ways. So, whatever you want to do. We're off book. We've got it. There is a right answer, by the way.

I'm not going to tell you which one it is, but there is a right answer. But yeah, so on Monday, the LDS issued some new proclamations about magic underwear, the role of teens in the church and their firm commitment to transphobia. See, until now, some less bigoted congregations were allowing some trans people to have some involvement in the church. Now these new guidelines are an attempt to tamp down on that and make it clear that there's no bishop or stake president that has the authority to accept trans people. Yeah, they state that biological sex is quote, an essential characteristic in Heavenly Father's plan of happiness. Yep.

So it's like their God has a specific number of dicks that need to be on the earth at any one time and anyone who gets bottom surgery just ruins his whole day. Really fucks it all up. And if any religion should be aware that vaginas can outnumber penises in a group of people having sex together, it's Mormonism. So for example though, in Mormon services there's a point where everybody splits off by gender which is already problematic for all kinds of reasons. Yeah, starting with the fact that it's a Mormon service.

Yeah, really, honestly. But the new guidelines make it clear that under no circumstances should that division be based on anything but genitals at birth. But it also goes way beyond that to reinforce dangerous transphobic stereotypes. Like for example, any church member who has transitioned in any way, including socially, to any degree is now forbidden from working with children by the standards. Those individuals are also now restricted to single occupancy restrooms only when those are available. They're also forbidden from receiving a temple recommend, which is, you know, magical bullshit, but it matters a lot if you're a Mormon.

Right. On bathrooms, apparently, if there's no single occupancy available, they need to, quote, counsel with leaders to find an alternative solution. Yes. And if that isn't called for, leave a massive turd on the leader's desk. It sure as fuck should be. Yeah. It sounds like a negotiation version of that.

Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like a negotiation version of that. Yeah, I'm definitely folding up my shit and sliding it across the table. Now, critics of the move call the new dictates dehumanizing, to which Mormon leaders replied, quote, and end quote, because of course they're dehumanizing. That's the point, right? The point is to make trans people feel so uncomfortable expressing themselves that they either hide who they are for their entire lives or commit suicide, both of which serve the purpose that the Mormon church is after here. But don't worry, it wasn't all regression from the LDS leaders this week.

On the same day, they issued new guidelines about the magic underwear that says you can still go to heaven even if you have a medical device that prevents you from always wearing your temple garments. So that's pretty good. What? Right? Yeah. We're pretty much even now. Cool. Tied. And on that pre-recorded note we're gonna take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife Lucinda. A man wrote in the Bible? A horse, which one? If it's a legitimate race. If it's a slut, right? Cooking can be can be fine hey i'm proud of a man this week in massage so trump's assignment the thing that they wrote on the fucking whiteboard during debate prep was to woo women voters keep that in mind as you think

back over the debate and how it played out keep in mind that one of his main goals was to improve his standing with women. I feel like the full extent of his failure at the debate can only be understood when you look at it through that lens. I mean, the thing that stood out to me most throughout the whole debate was the way he wouldn't even look at her. The whole debate, she's just staring daggers through him. She's looking at the inside of his fucking soul. And what's he doing?

He's looking down and to the left like a grumpy kid who's looking at the book but refuses to read it. He can't bear to look at her. Because if he did, he'd have to contend with the fact that the two of them were being put on the same level. He wasn't being automatically elevated above her because of his gender or his race. And that fact pisses him off so much.

I mean consider this, a couple weeks ago I saw a story about Trump rally in Pennsylvania where he's talking about how much women love him. He's talking about how all the pollsters are telling him he needs to improve his standing with the female voters then he starts pointing to women in the fucking crowd going see there's one right there. Anyway, as he's doing this, he singles out one group that I guess goes to a bunch of his rallies. And while he's talking about them, while he's supposedly trying to woo women voters,

he starts openly wondering why these women's husbands let them travel to his rallies. He says, quote, their husbands are great, but they let them go all over the country and quote He even returned to this theme where these women's husbands let them go later in his rant That's what he says when they tell him to go out there and woo female voters y'all he basically calls them property of their husbands while trying to complement them and Here he is sharing a stage and a ballot with somebody who he sees as a husband's to command

So a fucking course he can't look over there. And let me just say, I think Kamala Harris knocked it out of the fucking park. I mean, the ground abound she delivered on the abortion question was so brutal, you could see Trump physically squirm. When she sort of conjured the image of a pregnant person trying to navigate this uncertain legal landscape to get health care, you could almost see that theoretical woman in the fucking room with them. But Trump couldn't because he would have been too frightened to look in her direction. And on that note, I'll wrap things up and hand you

back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines in slip of the tongues news as a fun prank on myself I decided a few years ago to sign up for the email list at Christian post calm I love it so much and have them send me updates about their amazing journalism So I get these absurd articles in my inbox with titles like the Sun based apocalypse And what it means for your weekend and this week inbox with titles like The Sun-Based Apocalypse and What It Means for Your Weekend. And this week, I got one that said, how important is speaking in tongues? And just on the outside chance that one single person at the Christian Post was honest and had a sense of humor, I clicked on the link hoping for an article that just said, none.

That's nothing. Yeah, that'd be great. End of article. But sadly, that is not their answer. I saw a full article, so I dove in out of morbid curiosity expecting to learn just how crucial it is to be, you know, linguistically possessed by a jabbery spirit. Yet somehow they landed on the dumbest possible answer to an already

extremely dumb question. That answer was medium. It's medium important to speak in tongues. So fun fact, I first learned about speaking in tongues when my high school girlfriend took me to her church and I got more and more terrified the longer and nobody said, nah, man, we're just, we're just fucking with you. Yeah. I think speaking in tongues is important because it's a valuable first line of defense against aliens ever wanting to talk to us. So yeah, that could go wrong. Okay.

So the article is written by an evangelist pastor whose mission is to travel the world and introduce Jesus Christ where nobody's heard of him. And here's the narrative we got about the exact importance of nonsense talking. The author explains that he grew up in a Christian environment where he was told the only visible evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. And all the beginner Christians like him were having trouble doing that so they couldn't prove they had the Holy Spirit inside them. Okay, so first of all, it's not visible unless you're in a comic book.

But secondly, how can you have trouble doing that? Flibber, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I just did it. It's like that's your it's it's a complaining that somebody doesn't know how to fall down or something. That was nonsense just now those words you said that didn't make any sense. It's like an orgasm. Nobody minds if you fake it. They mind fighting out that you fake it. So from there, the author tells the story of a friend very clearly himself who tried so hard to speak in tongues, but he just couldn't do it.

The friend even attended special Holy Ghost services offered by his church, which was basically like remedial tutoring for people who didn't learn how to lie and make the noises right. And the friend would get all frustrated during the class and stomp out in a huff every single time because he couldn't do it. Oh, it's all right. All right. So it's the one kid who still thought the plan shut moved on its own. It was just like, why does the Ouija board hate me? Okay. So I, I reject my question. I get it. So based on that tongue failure, the author decided to really do some research and get

some answers. And he started and of of course also ended, with the Bible. Here's the line of thinking. He starts with the obvious part that we all agree with. We all know that speaking in tongues is the first visible evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that took place in the upper room on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2, 4, Obvi. But where does tongue speaking rank in terms of godliness evidence?

Well, the answer lies in Corinthians 12, where it says that God actually gives out nine different gifts, only one of which is the tongues. So if we're being fair to the people who never got the talking yips from a ghost, they should be allowed to prove their piety with any of the other eight. And he listed them. Other than speaking in tongues, the gifts are the interpretation of tongues, prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, discerning spirits, healing, working miracles, and faith. I love that interpretation of tongues is one of them, right? Like so that you can just go like, oh, no, but what that guy just said is that my

thing counts too. But, but on the other end of the spectrum, though, faith is on there. Like that's just there. So somebody's little brother can play too. Right. Donatello. Yeah. Faith guy and discerning spirits guy are hanging out at the back with the kid from

monkey with Captain Planet Planet smoking weed. Sure. Also if interpreting tongues is a valid thing, my new life goal is to be like, yeah, my gift is interpreting tongues. Wait for people to start and then be like, that guy just said the N word. And then what are you going to do? Yeah. Yep.

The idea that you can't speak it, but you can interpret it is the best. And he concludes by arguing very angrily, quote, any of these nine gifts can attest to the presence of the Holy Spirit. Why the singular emphasis on speaking in tongues? What happened to the other gifts? For example, I believe that it's possible for a believer to have the gift of prophecy and not speaking tongues. The same applies to other gifts, which have been relegated to obscurity. The gift of speaking tongues should not be prioritized

over other gifts of the Holy Spirit." End quote. end of article. All right. Well, so as to that last sentence, I agree. Yeah, tie. Zero. Yeah. It's like reading a cookbook for my toddler's fake plastic oven. So you're ever wondering, what are those Christian leaders working on? You know, when you're not actively spreading bigotry. It's stuff like this.

Ranking the God gifts is actually one of the best case scenarios about what they're spending their time doing. And in here's your sign news. This coming November, our nation will choose between electing its first woman of color for president or committing itself to theological fascism. We will vote between progress and regress, hope and fear. And with a decision that important, Americans are turning to dumb star racism.

Because this is America. And even if we vote correctly, the fact that we're here in the first place means that we are completely and totally fucked. Yeah, that sounds about right. But listen, if you can get your dumbass hippie aunt voted for Jill Stein in 2016 to vote for Kamala Harris this time, and you need to use Earthday racism and the fucking location of Mercury 70 years ago. Just do what you got to do. Whatever works.

100%. Explain how astrology is dumb on November 6th. Yeah. Shut the fuck up until then. That's exactly. We have we have a fucking skepticism hall pass. We can loan 100%. I'm sucking dicks.

That's what I'm doing. So this thrilling and important journalism comes to us from USA Today, which listeners will remember for being that thing near your hotel door that you assume is trash. And then if you think about it, it kind of is. And it's filled with terrifying context, this article. Like did you know that roughly 26% of US adults think that, quote, spirits or spiritual energy can be an item such as crystals jewels or stones He's okay. I mean other than

Societal progress the real victims of articles like that in USA today I'd say the victims are the puppies that have to shit on that when it's lining the floor in their little area Yeah article I'm shitting on when it's lining the floor in their little area. And they're like, this is a dumb article I'm shitting on. Right, USA Today, if it can't be expressed with stick figures and pie charts, it's not worth knowing. Yeah, truly. The original boomer meme.

But that's not all. According to Harris Poll, 31% of millennials, it's you and me, Heath, say that they lean towards astrology to seek meaning, and 28% said they do it to seek direction. What? Okay, there's a weird line in the sand there. Some people are seeking meaning in random planetary ellipses, but they're not crazy

people who seek direction based on that kind of thing. What is that? Which is, which is doubly weird since direction is technically something stars can give you, right? Yeah, that's true. That's true. So what do the stars say about the fate of our nation? Well, I'll let the experts asterisk speak for themselves. Astrologer Katherine Urban of Cleveland, Ohio, told USA Today, quote, People are generally feeling more anxious about the outcome of this election because we're seeing two very different pathways before us.

And if astrology is worth its salt, it should be illegal to continue a sentence from that point. Then we should be able to see, you know, what's coming next, adding, I'm still kind of into formulating my prediction. What? For what happened after this election looks a little messy. You never know if the stars are going to juke. You know, the stars will juke sometimes.

You can't predict them. Never. Exactly years ahead of time. Okay. Well, here's the thing. If astrology is worth its salt, I've got some pocket salt for you. Make me an offer, for sure.

There you go. So yeah, it's nice when problems sort of eliminate themselves in their own sentence like that. That's neat. Though I don't know about you guys, but reading this article made me feel way less optimistic about our fate,

and it has nothing to do with the position of Pluto. Yeah, actually Pluto doesn't generally factor into astrology, Eli, because we didn't know about Pluto back when this bullshit was formulated and somehow the means of predicting the future that we're talking about never mentioned it either. So weird. Yeah, maybe that's why it doesn't work. They haven't factored in fucking Kuiper Bell objects. Like the science nerds you've ignored Pluto for too long.

Yep. Come back to bite you. And on that pre-recorded note, we're going to wrap up the headlines for the night. Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji! And when we come back, we're going to get this episode banned in Florida schools. And so I said, you can't fuck that, it's dead. The problem isn't that it was dead, Keith. I'm trying to get on his level.

Keith! Noah! Oh, I'm so glad I caught you. You have to stop me. Yeah, we were just talking about that. Eli, when you got to the zoo. No, no, no, not that thing. I'm so glad I caught you. You have to stop me. Yeah, we were just talking about that. Eli, when you got to the zoo... No, no, no, not that thing. I'm from the future. You have to stop me from inventing a time machine.

You invented time machine? Yeah, I'm trying to get tickets to the Godawful Movies Live in Nashville on December 7th, but they all sold out, so I had to invent a time machine, and I won't bore you with the details But it ends up with two super hitlers But Eli if you want to get tickets to the god awful movies live show in Nashville on December 7th Why don't you just go to god awful movies live calm? Exactly VIP and platinum tickets are sold out But we still have plenty of general admission tickets left and even a couple of iridium night tickets on Thursday

That includes a night and food drinks and fun and fun on us, plus a swag bag. And I can get all of that at GodawfulMoviesLive.com? You sure can. I mean, if you hurry, because the show is going to sell out. It is going to sell out, but I don't need a time machine, is your point. No time machine required. Fantastic! The future is saved!

Thanks, GodawfulMoviesLive.com! Yeah! So, about the zooMoviesLive.com! Yeah! So, about the zoo, did he tell you that the penguin was already dead? It's not about the death, man. It's about the other people at the zoo. Other prudes at the zoo. There was one lady who was into it. She was, yeah.

That's true. Doesn't matter. Okay, so, as you have no doubt noticed, most of the stuff on today's show was pre-recorded to free us up to go to Boston for that live-gam record, but at the risk of subtly changing the audio signature of the show for a minute, I wanted to cut in here and make a quick observation about Tuesday night's presidential debate, because I think it's a point that is in danger of being overlooked if we don't mention it now. Because let's face it, when one candidate starts

ranting about immigrants eating people's pets, it's easy to overlook the more nuanced stuff. But I noticed something missing from the debate, and I went back to the transcript to confirm it. See, over the course of the evening, the candidates talked about abortion and inflation and immigration and dog eating and whatnot. But one thing they didn't talk about was God.

He never came up. Not once was the word God invoked during the event by either candidate or either moderator. At no point did anybody trust in Him or call upon Him to bless America. Neither candidate ever made reference to their faith or their Savior or their prayers. In fact, the only time the word faith was used was when Harris talked about how rape victims could have abortions without abandoning their faith, and the only time prayer came up was when she mentioned couples praying to have a child through IVF without government interference. This is all the more striking when you consider the specifics of this presidential race.

Obviously, evangelical Christians are going to play a huge role in determining the outcome of this election. Motivating them is one of the most important keys to a Trump victory, and he never even threw them a bone. Meanwhile, think of all the hoops they made Obama jump through to prove that he could be Christian even though he was black and had a foreign-sounding name. Harris has certainly been otherized in racist ways but she didn't feel the need to name drop her church the way Obama

had to 16 years ago. Now I'm certainly not pointing any of this out to suggest that Christian churches don't still play an outsized influence in American politics. My entire career is dedicated to emphasizing the exact opposite but even as Christians become more and more important to the Republican political machine, their God gets less and less important. These days he can barely even get work as a shibboleth. With the possible exception of Trump voters, no group of people in this country are subject to as steady a stream of bullshit as parents.

Will too much screentime scar your child for life? Can this superfruit boost their IQ? Will your failure to potty train on the correct schedule turn them into a serial killer? Those are just a few of the fears that corporate greed foists upon new parents. So how do you navigate this minefield? Well, my guest tonight will be happy to help. Coven Sinopathy's new book, The Progressive Parent, Harnessing the Power of Science and Social Justice to Raise Awesome Kids, attempts to guide parents through exactly these types

of questions. So first of all, Coven, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. Yeah, I met you at FreeFlow several years ago and I've been looking forward to having you on the show ever since. Thank you for giving me that excuse.

Ha ha ha. You're welcome. So my first question to you is, there are approximately 14 times 10 to the 23rd parenting books already on the market. Why did the world need one more? Yeah, you know, I love this question because there is so much unsolicited

bad advice and unsolicited potentially reasonable advice in the world of parenthood. So the last thing I want to do is give a whole bunch of parenting advice. So I call this more of a book on scrutinizing the prevailing parenting wisdom and guidance. And at the same time, the book, I would say, is an expression of parenthood in this in this century so far with a focus in America that, as we know, is a country that's overrun by people who claim to be pro-life, yet do everything to make life harder and more oppressive for parents and for children. So I would say that the book, you know, it's in the parenting section. It has some prescriptive parenting, but that only takes up a fraction of the pages. And the rest is really more

about how we can position ourselves as parents and other adults in any given situation based on our varying set of values and with the resources and the information and the bandwidth at hand given all of the available information facts and science where we're applicable. Okay, so it's more of a like a meta parenting book in that sense. Yeah, you could say that. So normally when I interview authors, I open with a question about the intended reader, but this time I actually want to start with the author. So for people who aren't familiar with your work, what qualifies you to write a book about parenting? Sure, I would say this question has layers because I, you know,

and I find it really interesting because I tend to wonder what qualifies anyone to write a book about parenting, right? Whether it's a doctor or an economist or an alternative medicine proponent or a psychologist. I've read my fair share of parenting books over the years, and I talk about a couple of those books and a lot of that advice in this book. Regarding my qualifications or why I should be the one

writing this parenting book, I'm pretty upfront in that I approach all of the issues it covers as, I gotta say frankly, a mentally ill parent. And I talk about my mental health issues and about mental health overall. So I'm a mentally ill parent of two kids who also happens to be a science and health writer and journalist. So that's what I love to do. I'm lucky enough to write about science professionally. And I'm also someone who cares about the truth

and about science and about justice for humans, especially children. I also bring, my lens also includes that I grew up in the 80s and the 90s. So for all that means, I'm a product of that era. And that also comes out in some of my work. So again, there's very little prescriptive parenting advice in the book. I mean, a lot of I talk to friends and peers, and they'll sometimes ask me for advice.

Sometimes I have it because it's really simple, but usually I don't have the answer. So the book, I would say, does two main things. First, it walks people through how to think about and approach various parenting challenges and questions from a justice and science centered lens and given, you know, the reality of each person's or each parent's situation. And then second, it highlights the stories and work of activists and researchers, educators and doctors and other folks who are really fighting for justice for all children in their

own ways. Awesome. who are really fighting for justice for all children in their own ways. Awesome. So, okay, so let's take a look at the title. And I actually have two questions about the title, starting with the title and then one about the subtitle. So the book is called The Progressive Parent. You lead with that word progressive.

What does that mean to you? And why did you choose that title? Yeah, I get this question from people fairly regularly because I know people have feelings about the word progressive. So fun fact for some folks, journalists don't usually write their own headlines. And in many cases, especially with a traditional publisher, authors don't write their own titles. So the concept for my book, I can explain, was roughly 80% sort of a big picture take on the connections between the issues I've covered in my years of work as a blogger and then a science writer and journalist, and also my experience as a parent. And then

20% of it is assignment from my, you know, assignment from my publisher to talk about a few things. And so when my editor proposed the progressive parent as a title, I had, I would say I had complicated feelings about the word progressive, but I also took the assignment as a challenge in that parents who identify with ostensibly progressive values, including science and justice, are pretty diverse and not at all a monolith. But there are a few threads that tie them together. And so that common ground is what my editor was asking me to follow. Okay. All right. So let's look at the other half then because the subtitle is harnessing the power of science

and social justice to raise awesome kids. So what makes a kid awesome? What is like the win condition for a parent who wants to raise awesome kids? So I would say that the biggest spoiler in the book is in the dedication. I write the dedication to my own two kids and I write that they were born awesome. So okay, and just a caveat here, like, parenting can be very annoying and children can be very annoying and or boring as much as you love them. So I'm not here to say that everyone's kids are awesome to be around all the time. But as biased as I am, as much as I adore my own kids, I don't think that my children are more or less special than anyone else. So sort

of do the math and you realize that the book's premise is that all children are born awesome and they all have this sort of brilliant, prismatic universes of perception and experience inside each of them. And our job is largely to help them grow into their most authentic, expansive, and thriving selves. And that's a huge task. And the book does not purport to tell parents how they can achieve this. Instead, the book is questioning what parenting can really accomplish given the systems that we're all a part of.

So it's saying let's look at the situations where there's an outsized onus on individual parents to sort of take control of their kids' well-being when really good health and well-being largely depend on privilege or lack of privilege. Yeah, that's one thing that really struck me throughout the book is that unlike most of the stuff I've read about parenting, you don't put a hundred percent of the onus on the parent and act like they can overcome all of the systems and conditions and privileges, et cetera, of the society that they're raising their kid in. It also seemed to me that like, yeah, the message seemed to be more that

the kids are already awesome and our job as parents or as guides to these kids is to help them recognize that awesomeness and help them express it. So sort of on the same topic, when I first got a copy of your book, and you had to know I was going to mention this, I posted a picture of the cover online and somebody commented about how disgusted they were that I would be promoting a book that tries to force a parent's political views onto their children. So, there's a lot wrong with that, as my Facebook friends were quick to point out. So, I'm just going to throw that to you.

How would you respond to that criticism? I'm also in the still active on Facebook set of people. So I was watching that post or seeing some of the comments on that post and they were fascinating and I appreciated that you post about it. And you know, the cliche is to not judge a book by its cover, but it's only human, I would think, that you do judge a book by its cover. But on another level, that comment to me speaks to this fallacy, I think, that runs rampant in the world of organized atheism and secularism and skepticism.

And that's this fallacy that science and justice have nothing to do with each other. And so to many of my fellow atheists, raising a child to value science would be neutral and good, whereas raising a child with social justice in mind would be, you know, forcing political beliefs onto a child. And so I would encourage that commenter, of course, to read the book. Yeah, the thing that really struck me most about it is exactly what you're saying, that of course you raise your children with your political values, because your political values are your values.

I just, I try to imagine raising a child in a value free environment. I mean, you know, setting aside who would want to do that, but how would you do that? Right. It's like this idea of a frictionless plane and physics like right. That's not applicable in the real world when we're driving on the actual road. Exactly. So okay, so you've already touched on this a little bit, but I really want to drill down here. Given the role that the distrust of science has played in recent public discourse, especially with regards to the pandemic, but also with stuff like climate change, gender science,

the shape of the earth, etc. A lot of skeptics and science communicators bristle at the very thought of lay people doing their own research on scientific topics. But your book's starting point, the second chapter is titled, Healthy Scrutiny of Science, and emphasizes some of the times when the consensus of science was wrong. So why start there?

Yeah, as someone myself who loves science, I literally read scientific research for fun and like nerding out purpose of this. And I consider myself super lucky to get paid to write about science. I've learned that the concept of trust in science again has so many layers. So I've been, you know, at the March for Science with a megaphone. So if, as you mentioned, if trusting or believing in science means believing in certain findings, like that the earth is spherical and not flat, or that climate change is real and urgent, then, you know, I'm certain that all of my intended readers are already right there with us, right?

that all of my intended readers are already right there with us, right? But then as the book details, the consensus itself can get buried by ideology and opinion, especially when a specific bias is held widely among influential experts in a given field. And that happens more often than one would think. And I've followed that thread in two different areas of research in my work before. But in scrutinizing science as parents, I would say that it's important to remember that more often than not, the consensus on issues that affect children is more nuanced than it is with the shape

of our planet. So one of the examples the book delves into, let me give a couple of examples, oh yeah, epigenetics and the microbiome is an example, infant feeding, but then another one of the examples that the book delves into is gender and sex and specifically the sex binary. So anti-trans or transphobic ideologues would have us believe that it's scientific to say that biological female humans all share the same traits and X-X sex chromosomes. And they'll say that this is science and to oppose that is unscientific,

but the opposite is true. So interrogating this ideology, which really affects all children, no matter their gender, requires a scrutiny of the relevant science and the related discourse. And so that's what the book science and the related discourse. And so that's what the book argues and delves into. Yeah, I found your discussion, the sort of opening discussion on breastfeeding fascinating

because it's very obviously trying to, you know, getting a 30,000 foot view of it that the vast majority of the scientists working on this, especially early on, were men and they were bringing in these biases and these biases of, you know, around the ideal motherhood and women's bodies being created for motherhood, etc. And, you know, of course, as you pointed out to me in a separate discussion we were having the other day, you know, everybody can say their side is the science, right? If all we're promoting is trust the science, then well, you know, like you said, the transphobes say that their side is the science that the anti-vaxxers say their side has the science

So if we can't actually scrutinize that science if we can't Determine real from fake and we if we can't determine truth from the scientific evidence, then what are we even doing here? Yeah Yeah, so now obviously, you know parenting is something we've been doing for a while It goes back as far as the species goes back, but it's also always changing and it's changing faster now than it ever has before. So and again, I know that your book isn't as much about specific advice, but what are some of the problems that you see parents facing today that maybe their parents didn't

have to worry about? That's a huge question and I could just chat with you for a while about it. But I would say that the most prominent or obvious problems that parents face today, that previous generations of parents didn't have to worry about are, of course, social media and the Internet, as well as the constant fear of gun violence in schools in America, which I can say is petrifying. And then a potentially less obvious one is that, you know, long, long ago, people had relied on their community, essentially, to work together to protect and keep all children safe and essentially to raise children. So the idea that it takes a village didn't come out of thin air like it would. It would be a village, right?

So we don't, so many people and parents don't have access to that support anymore. So again, I'm really good at identifying and shedding light on the problems in a way that can be helpful or clarifying. And as for solving those problems, I can only give a few of, you know, what I've learned by following the activism and the research in that area. Well, and of course, despite JD Vance's insistence that you can just ask grandpa to watch the kid, there is no, as your book makes clear, there is no one size fits all answer to these questions. And so an honest discussion of the question is really the best we can generally hope for, I think. Right.

So, and I've already kind of spoiled this in sort of my gushing praise for the book, but is this book just for parents? I would say it's for parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, other adult family members, educators, researchers, and anyone else who cares about kids and the future of humanity. And I would say maybe even doctors, because it does talk about some of the problematic aspects of healthcare, and that's to say very little. So I would, my own kid started reading it recently,

so she just found it interesting. So it's a book that's kind of just like, it's me and my sort of neurodivergent, anxious parent brain being like, did you know about this? Did you know about that? And so people who are kind of nerdy and like to know about how science intersects

with people's lives, I would say, I hope find the book compelling and I've heard that it is. So I hope that parents and non-parents alike are appreciating it. Well, at the risk of making you hear about it again, I have to say as a as a gen X or I, you know, as a person who was raised in the winter school in the 80s and 90s with textbooks that still taught me about the three races of man, for fuck's sake.

Right. Yeah. So, no, I found this book to be an excellent plain language primer on sort of where the science stands now vis-a-vis race, gender, and a host of other topics that are relevant to social justice. So if you're like me and you just kind of want to know, all right, well, I know what I learned in biology in high school is outdated. What does the science say now? I think this book is a really excellent place to go and it's all written in a very accessible way. I think a lot of times discussions like that tend to get bogged down in technical language, scientific language, but I thought yours was very approachable in that sense as well. All right. So I have one last question for you. And it gets complicated, of course, because you've been emphasizing that

the book is not about giving specific advice so much as teaching people how to assess the advice they're being given. And so now I'm going to ask you to do the complete opposite here. If you could give an elevator's ride worth of advice to a new parent, and the advice couldn't just be pick up a copy of the progressive parent harnessing the power of science and social justice to raise awesome kids, what would you tell them? Okay, yeah. Well, let me tell you, like, so many times I'm asking other people, like my older kid recently wanted Snapchat because apparently all of the seventh and eighth grade friends communicate on Snapchat.

And so I was asking the other parents, like, oh, I hear that your kid has Snapchat. Can you tell me more about that? But if I could give advice, it's advice that is pretty well backed by science and by all the leading experts. I would say everything in parenting comes down to figuring out what you can and can't control and minimizing kids' exposure to knowing bad things. So having like, I've spent the better part of a decade as a science writer, covering children and health. And so everything we can do in parents, I've realized can be boiled down into a list, which I go over in the book.

It includes getting the best prenatal care, getting the best health care and mental health care for your kids, learning first aid and CPR, making sure to install and use their car seats correctly, strap furniture to the walls and televisions as well. Beware of batteries and small magnets. Feed babies sufficiently and safely, cut grapes into quarters and other safety precautions around choking hazards. Make sure kids eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, which is easier said than done. Avoid pollution.

Let kids be who they are. You know, surround them with safe spaces and trees and protect them from cops and teach them well. And again, some of these are so much easier said than done, but that's it in a nutshell, I would say. Yeah, I should say, I don't wanna undersell the amount of actual practical advice there is in the book. Each chapter ends with some suggestions of very actionable things that you could do

as a parent as well. All right, so once again, the book is called The Progressive Parent, Harnessing the Power of Science and Social Justice to Raise Awesome Kids. The author is Coven Sinopathy, and you can find a link to buy a copy in the show notes or wherever you get your books. Coven, thank you again so much for your time and for a great read. Yeah, it's been great.

Thanks. Great, thanks. Before we save and quit tonight, I want to remind you one more time that the website is godawfulmovieslive.com. If you want to see us live in Nashville on December 7th, our last couple of shows have completely sold out though. So get those tickets quick. Anyway, that's all the blast movie 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 able to the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's

hot friend, God of Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. I almost said that. Obviously, I need to thank Heath Enright for making me wiggle Eli Bosniak, for making me giggle and Lucinda Lujans, for making me jiggle. I want to thank Kamala for absolutely mopping the fucking floor with Donald Trump on Tuesday Did wonders for my anxiety? I want to thank Coven one more time for hanging out and I want to encourage you to check the show notes for a link To buy their book

I also want to thank the mistress from the dungeon mistress chronicles for providing this week's Farnsworth quote The show notes will also contain a link to their podcast But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most dashing diploids Morton, Matt, Teresa, Tyler, Loki, Doki Doodle, Stacey, Rocktoberfest and Shanae, the ether addict of Storm Vale. Morton, Matt and Teresa were so sexy, one million moms just follows him around and issuing formal complaints. Tyler, Loki and Stacey, whose IQs are higher than their zip codes, even if you include those four extra mystery digits and Rocktober and Shanae, who are so awesome, Taylor Swift endorsed them too.

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