The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 147: Gross Point Blankenagel Edition

Episode Date: December 10, 2015

In this week's episode, Bryce Blankenagel of the Naked Mormonism podcast returns to remind us that some of the scariest religious terrorists our country has ever faced were wearing magic underwear; Donald Trump suggests we give all the Muslims a Syrial number; and David Smalley of Dogma Debate Radio joins us to learn that he'll always be David Biggie in our hearts.

Warning, if you took out the offensive parts, this podcast would be 8 minutes long and consists mostly of propositions and pronouns. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new encrypted wireless service provider for Islamic terrorists, Sleeper Cellular. Are you looking for a phone company with terrible puns and the Taliban bandwidth to to get you more Akbar's in more places, then search no further. We detonate better than a TNT. Sleeper cellular. Can you fear me now? Legal disclaimer, sleeper cellular is not a real thing. Donald Trump, if you're listening, there's no need to ban all cell phones in the United States.

And now, the scathing atheist. This is Kyle, the Facebook Napkin Pope, and the divine napkin has revealed to me that we have, in fact, evolved from filthy monkey napkins and sanitary napkins. It's Thursday. It's December 10th. And it's only 15 more days until Jesus wasn't born. And a very merry unbirthday to him. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Henright. And from black and white and redneck all over Valdosta, Georgia,

this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Bryce Blankenagle returns for some more morbidly morose Mormon memoirs. Donald Trump considers branding refugees with a serial number. And David Smalley will learn that he'll always be David Biggie in my heart. But first, the diatribe. I get inordinately bent out of shape over grammatical shit. You know, not so much the, oh, you ended that sentence with a preposition, which is a style choice, not a grammatical rule,

but more when people say stuff that just doesn't make sense. You know, like when they say something is very unique or that they could care less or that they're an agnostic atheist. That last one especially drives me batty. Unlike the other two examples, that one matters. You know, it's not just a pedant cringe that I have to subdue in polite company. It's a detrimental perpetuation of a myth that benefits theism. There is no such thing as an agnostic atheist, or a gnostic one for that matter, and I'll concede up front that I'm going against the grain on this one. I'll freely admit that plenty of prominent secular voices far more respected, far more educated, and far more intelligent than myself would vociferously disagree, but I just so

happen to have every dictionary of the English language on planet Earth in my corner, so I still feel confident enough to make that claim. So before I get to why it's wrong and why that matters, let me back up for anybody who isn't familiar with the term. You see this in one very specific instance, usually in conjunction with a little chart, and when you see it and when you hear people making the point associated with it, they're usually making a valid point, but they're making it using the wrong words in a consequential way. Usually starts when somebody will say to them, you know, oh, you're an atheist. Oh, well, I'm an agnostic because neither side knows for certain. So it's more intellectually honest to just admit that you don't know and you can't know. Now, clearly, this is fallacious logic, right? Theists are making claim X based

on evidence Y, and atheists are just saying evidence Y is insufficient to justify claim X. That's not the same as making the claim negative X, but for some reason this is a really hard concept for some people to get their heads around, so we're forced to develop little teaching aids like seven-point scales in the chart that I'm bitching about. And you've probably seen this chart, but for those of you who haven't, the Y axis is like atheism to theism, the X axis is gnosticism to agnosticism. You just google agnostic atheist, it'll be the first image that comes up, I'm sure. Now, the short form of the argument breaks down the word agnostic into its Latin roots,

a as in without, and gnosis as in knowledge, without knowledge. And then you do some rhetorical hocus-pocus about the difference between knowledge and belief, and voila, you've created agnostic atheists. Because we're talking about what we believe, not what we know, and agnostic refers to knowledge. Which would be fine, I guess, if etymology was synonymous with definition, but it isn't, and that's not what that word means. So let's turn to the dictionary and see what the verdict is. According to Google, the word agnostic means, quote, a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence of God or of anything beyond material phenomenon,

semicolon, a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. Disbelief. Notice that the entire definition revolves around belief and nowhere in it is the concept of certainty or level of certainty introduced. But wait, there's more. Merriam-Webster defines it as, quote, a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality as God is unknown and probably unknowable, colon, one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or non-existence of gods or of a God. That could not be more damning to the concept of an agnostic atheist. The friendliest definition to that usage I could find was at dictionary.com, which said, quote, a person who holds the existence that ultimate cause as God and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, end quote. So like, you know, you can shoehorn the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, end quote.

So, like, you know, you can shoehorn the four-point chart into that one, sort of, but you've got to wriggle it a bit. Central to every definition I could find was the concept that one neither professes nor denies a belief in God. In fact, I couldn't find any non-Wiki references that even give a nod to the definition you would need to concoct that little chart. But you know what? Maybe you don't trust all the dictionaries. Maybe you want to act like Neil deGrasse Tyson saying he's not an atheist by claiming that usage defines the word, not the dictionary. It's not a good

argument, but I would win in that case too. Because when you look at the Pew religious survey and you see that like such and such a percent of people self-identify as agnostic, what do you think they mean? Are they saying that they've taken no side on the God question? Or are they saying they lack certainty in the side that they have taken? What do people who self-identify as agnostics mean by that? Or hell, let's move this outside of the religious landscape altogether. You know, the word was coined to describe a position on the God question, but even the dictionaries recognize that the usage has expanded beyond that. In all of the entries that I quoted above, they include a second definition for uses like politically agnostic. So what does that term mean to you? You know,

if somebody described themselves as politically agnostic, would you assume that they meant, well, I lean one way politically, but I'm not absolutely sure that I'm right? Of course not. You'd assume that they meant that they weren't taking sides. Or if you and your buddies were arguing about like which Indiana Jones movie was best, and one person said, hey, I'm going to remain agnostic, what would you assume they meant? And if I still haven't convinced you that agnostic does not refer to a level of certainty, consider how damn near useless a word it would be under this alternative definition. If agnostic meant I have an opinion on this subject, perhaps even a strong one, but I'm not absolutely certain to the point where no amount of evidence

would convince me otherwise, what in the world could you be gnostic about? Maybe a few moral precepts, I guess, but other than that, one would be agnostic about everything. I'm agnostic about whether a lion's going to rape me before I finish this sentence, and if that's what it means, why would we bother having the word? And look, this is not just some pedantic word geek thing. Set aside the fact that anybody convinced by this chart needs to do nothing more than look up the definition of the word agnostic to refute it, and think for a second what an amazing concession atheists are making when they propagate this fiction. We're saying that the question of God's existence somehow belongs in a separate category of knowledge, one that exists on these multiple sliding scales of

certainty or whatever, or at best we're just confusing the subject by being way more specific than the people that we're talking to. God claims are just like regular unjustified claims and I'm no more agnostic about them than I am about Lamarckian evolution or the green cheese theory of lunar formation. I can't rule anything out definitively, but theistic claims are no less silly than those ones and deserve no more consideration or agnosticism. Now, look, I don't want to throw the baby out

with the bathwater because there are times when this visualization can be useful in making a very particular point, but only if we're very clear that the whole construct of a Gnostic atheist is just there to fill out that corner of the chart. That's not a real thing that exists in the world. And if you're standing there saying to yourself, no, it is a thing that exists because I'm a Gnostic atheist, that's only because this chart has fooled you into thinking that that's a thing. By its mutant definition, being Gnostic about anything at all would be a

gross error in intellect. An essential part of the definition of agnostic is unknowable. That's what the word means. And if you want to be all solipsistic about it, sure, nothing is knowable, but clearly that's not what we're talking about here because that would make it a useless word. And this is not an argument to mad absurdum because in order to get to the point where God claims to man agnosticism, you already have to be at the point of maximal absurdity. To say one is an agnostic atheist is a contradiction in terms at worst and a redundant modifier at best. Agnosticism is the middle ground. That's what the word was coined to mean. That's what the dictionary says it means. That's what the common usage and understanding dictates. And that's what makes sense from a perspective of lexical necessity. All that being

said, I look forward to hearing how wrong I am. They're talking about you, Jesus. I look forward to hearing how wrong I am. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the jolly bearded man who sees you when you're naughty and raises Heath Enright. Heath, are you ready to rip your fucking eardrums out over the Christmas music yet? Oh, fuck those carolers and the one-horse open sleigh they rode in on. God damn it.

And also, I wish someone told me when I was a kid that they were not saying, Seeds you when you're sleeping. Because I heard seeds you. Seeds, yeah. It made the whole Santa thing way less creepy if I knew the real words. It's a common mistake. It's a song about Santa Claus coming. What are you supposed to think?

Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong. I was definitely willing to get jizzed on by a fat man for a ping pong table back then. Well, sure. But that image still cost me a lot of sleep. Yeah, it'll probably cost me a little now, too. Before we start off the headlines, too, I should note that there won't be a This Week in Misogyny this week. Looks like nobody did anything sexist since the last episode. So we decided to give Lucinda her first week off all year.

She's earned it. In our lead story tonight, from the prayerified air file, the New York Daily News ran a front-page headline last week following the tragic shootings in San Bernardino, California, that read, quote, God isn't fixing this. Cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes, end quote. Mike dropped. And by cowards, they mean a whole bunch of politicians who are terrified to suggest any sort of gun control because that would require giving up large amounts of money from the National Rifle Association. of money from the National Rifle Association. And by meaningless platitudes, they mean sending tweets to massacre victims that suggest hoping really hard is the best thing we can come up with to cut down on gun violence in this

country. That's it. And as is often the case with brutally honest headlines, it sparked a large media controversy about so-called prayer shaming. And what a bullshit phrase that is. Prayer shaming. If you try to solve national problems by talking to the voices in your head, you should already be ashamed of it.

You shouldn't need the fucking New York Daily News to get you there. And if you actually think some dude up there with magic powers needed to fix gun violence if only you prayed hard enough, you should be ashamed what a shitty prayer you are. Right? One way or the other, the shame's already there. We're just pointing it out. I'd like to think so. Okay, so just to give everyone an idea of scale here, in 2014 alone, the NRA spent about $30 million on buying politicians.

That's a lot of politicians. Which means the American gun industry stands to profit more than 30 million dollars a year by preventing any kind of regulation. Clearly. Yeah. And it's certainly no coincidence that last week the Senate voted against. I'm going to say that again against a bill that would require background checks for suspected terrorists looking to purchase guns. suspected terrorists looking to purchase guns. In case it's not clear, the only people to benefit from this vote are suspected terrorists and gun manufacturers. Right. Yes, exactly.

And, of course, politicians that get campaign donations from the NRA all the time. But getting back to the issue of prayer, if prayers work, I reject my premise. Prayers don't work. But if they did, then why the fuck weren't all the religious people praying to prevent mass shootings before they happen? Right. If prayer works, then this is all their fault. And if it doesn't work, big part of the problem is people arguing against common sense gun control measures, which is a group that has lots of overlap with that prayer group of people. So if prayer works or doesn't work, lots of blame for religious idiots who blindly support the NRA.

In all other cases, it's up in the air. But again, there are no other cases. No, it's A or not A. It's one of those two things. And in all of the fuss about all the news tonight, the evil sentient head fungus that animates Donald Trump's long dead corpse through a parasitic connection to his brain stem finally discovered the too far for mainstream republicans to follow line when he called for america to close its borders to muslims trump's campaign officials detailed his plan with reluctantly straight faces

explaining that would apply to both immigration and tourism but muslim americans who are currently serving abroad in the military would still be allowed to come home because the shit he's saying is so fucking crazy that you honestly have to clarify that he doesn't want to just leave the american-born muslim troops wherever we have them now that's the level of insanity we are now dealing with here yeah and this was clearly a compromise to his original plan some advisor definitely told him plan be a lot more palatable if muslims in the military are allowed back in right and trump said well i was against letting them enlist in the first place but fine fine let the muslim killing muslims come back i guess that's fair they've already sold

their soul confident that he was proposing at worst the sixth most racist thing America has ever done, Trump took to the cable news stations to defend his suggestion by repeatedly comparing himself to FDR. Because the best thing he could think of to say about his xenophobic bullshit is it's no worse than Japanese internment. Meanwhile, every person in the Republican Party that might ever need to be elected to anything ever moved with equal haste to distance themselves from Trump's proposal, insisting that there's a right and wrong way to frighten the electorate with imaginary and exaggerated threats based on the innate fear of the other. And this is the wrong way. Yeah. And even though a bunch of Republicans disagreed with him, it was less of a less of a hard no and more of a let's go ahead and hold on to our trump cards for a bit longer let's yeah

right no bad ideas you know just bad timing let's table that for now circle back to it for the mid terms in a couple of years yeah exactly don't want to blow your wad already now the proposal also drew condemnation internationally and from every democrat who still can't believe the you do know he's donald fucking trump right argument doesn't persuade people on the simple veracity of its interrobang. In fact, about the only people who didn't condemn Trump in the wake of this nonsense were Ann Coulter, who snaps the necks of undernourished puppies with her vagina, Ted Cruz, who was basically only willing to say he liked Trump's enthusiasm, and Jerry Falwell, who was happy that Trump distracted everybody from the shit he said a couple of days earlier

about how we should all grab guns so we can shoot Muslims to death. And speaking of the Donald and his nuanced understanding of immigration policy, freelance hate speaker Brian Fisher weighed in on this issue as well. of his Focal Point radio show, Fisher explained that Trump's plan to ban all Muslims from entering the United States is way too progressive, way too naive, because that still leaves millions of Muslim people here in the country, and our internment camp infrastructure

just can't handle it at the moment. And that's why we need a more realistic strategy, like, for for example his idea to buy all the american muslims a one-way ticket back to uh islamistan where they all came yeah right yeah what not not a real place that currently exists persia doesn't matter not here well i mean i'm sure if you forced him to guess, he'd say Camelstan, but that doesn't invalidate his proposal. I mean, all those people flee in Syria have obviously created a buyer's market. So this is probably the best time to do this.

Jump in now. So clearly suffering from debilitating swamp crotch at the time, I'm guessing Fisher had this to say about his plan to pay for shipping and handling about three million people to Muslim Liberia. Let's use American resources to help these people find a home in the Muslim world. They can be at home. You know, don't have to chafe against our liberty. Don't have to chafe against our Judeo Christian value system. End quote. have to chafe against our judeo-christian value system end quote so uh point being fisher sees the united states as less of a melting pot and more of a chafing dish a chafing dish full of

mussels marinara that closely resembles the current situation in his genital area of course and that's a serious problem it's going to require major expenditures plus um exporting all the muslims is going to be expensive too yeah right right yeah exactly and believe it or not i checked creams that's the first time that brian fisher's swamp crotch has ever come up on this show i was surprised and apparently the 50 refers to iq news tonight the supreme court of hawaii has decided against bringing 1.4 billion dollars in construction jobs to their state and furthering the vanguard of human knowledge in order to appease the mighty volcano gods who threaten to step heavily upon their villages. This decision to retard scientific knowledge comes in response to a relentless effort to

halt the construction of the 30-meter telescope due to a strong objection to whatever the fuck the protesters have to object to to get them to stop building the fucker. Because when these anti-intellectual dirt-munching hippies failed in their 79 efforts to get construction halted on environmental grounds, they switched to, oh, well, then this was all about respect for the native culture then, the whole time. That's what we meant to say. Apparently, ancient Polynesians were big into Scientology. They're sensitive about fucking with the indigenous Caucasian volcano demon. Well, right.

about fucking with the indigenous Caucasian volcano demon. Well, right. You might recall us talking about this story back on episode 113, when construction was temporarily halted by a bunch of people literally standing in the way of scientific progress. According to the petition circulated by the anti-telescope activists at the time,

the Mauna Kea volcano is a sacred place that, quote, the native culture has held in reverence for millennia, end quote. Which means that those forward-thinking Polynesian islanders were worshiping this fucking particular volcano at least 12 centuries before human beings first set foot in Hawaii. Millennia? Are you sure about that, guys?

Maybe we were worshiping from afar with a telescope. Wait, never mind. I didn't say anything. So the multinational conglomeration seeking to build the TMT hasn't given up of course though they admit that the legal wrangling makes it very unlikely that they're going to meet their goal of having the telescope operational by 2024 for their part protesters celebrated this latest victory by throwing rocks at a windmill and wondering how magnets work meanwhile the american scientific

community has to go tell the rest of the world that we're not going to be able to know shit like we promised because we don't want to piss off the decorative statue outside of a cheap tiki bar and in salt and prepper news tonight got a couple new updates about disgraced televangelist and apparent result of rick moranis getting raped by a goblin jim baker we've covered this guy a few times before but but just in case anyone's not familiar, he was a prosperity preacher who was forced to resign from his so-called ministry due to a sex scandal. Then he was convicted of felony fraud, spent some time in jail, and now he's back on TV selling buckets of dehydrated doomsday food, hoping to pay back millions of dollars that he still owes the IRS. That's all true.

Well, unfortunately for his creditors, that's us and everybody else in the country, by the way, who pays taxes, Baker's business took a hit last week when somebody actually reviewed the food in the buckets. And suffice it to say, it was not a rave. No Michelin stars for him. And then to make matters even worse the apocalypse did not happen again again well i mean but what a stupid business model i mean don't the people watching jim baker think that they're gonna get raptured i mean is he just hoping they'll buy it for the heathens to murder each other over once jesus unleashes the demon locust so they'll have

something to watch from heaven i just i don't get how this is supposed to work. Yeah, and neither does Kylie Moore from NPR, who decided to buy a small sample of Baker's prepper buckets to share with some co-workers and review them. And here's what she had to say about the impressions of their panel. Quote, We couldn't agree on which was worse, the thick potato soup that felt like eating wet cement,

the strong chemical overtones in the chocolate pudding, or the disturbing radioactive orange of the macaroni and cheese. End quote. Not great for business. But in fairness to Baker, when the real end times happen, you're not going gonna be focused on the flavor of your shitty food very much what with uh all the rape scorpions right yeah getting

raped by scorpions well now all that being said i might have to talk to my lawyers about kylie more lifting my yelp review of cracker barrel though it's pretty pretty much word for word and uh by the way just in case you were wondering if Mr. Baker's an awful human being that deserves all the punishment he gets, and then some, he is. You're wondering correctly. However, the reason this all happened to him isn't God's wrath, according to Baker. No. Nor is it felonious activity, which was my first guess. My second after God's wrath.

It's actually demonic witchcraft. I had that at five. According to his story on a recent episode. Years back, Baker heard from a very reliable source that, quote, all the witches, all of them, they're all agreeing they're going to destroy the television ministries, starting with Jim Baker. End quote. That was the problem. Underachieving witches.

Holy shit. And in hateful 8 million news tonight, the 75% of Philadelphia residents that aren't Catholic are rightfully pissed after the mayor's promise that no taxpayer money would be spent on the recent papal visit turned out to be about as true as the cracker turning into flesh thing. a flesh thing. Despite assurances that the world meeting of families would reimburse the city for all expenses incurred by the Pope's visit, the bill the city sent to the WMOF represented only a little over half of the total costs, leaving Philadelphia taxpayers to pick up the remaining 47%

or about $8 million. Million with a mill. It's not like Philadelphia's residents have a bunch of extra time to put together all that cash. That's crazy. As I understand it, on the playground is where they spend most of their time. Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool. It's not realistic.

No, no, not at all. Philly's mayor, Michael Nutter, that's really his name, insists that this shortfall doesn't represent a violation of church-state separation because the money was being spent on police protection, not the promotion of the Catholic religion. Of course, the fact that it was police protection for a person who was just there to promote the Catholic religion kind of dampens the effectiveness of this argument.

A little bit. As does the fact that he's responding to the accusation of lying to his constituents and cheating them out of $8 million by saying, well, sure, I did that, but that lie probably didn't violate the Constitution. I'm almost sure. It's also fully compliant with the Magna Carta. Right.

Jives with the idea of manifest destiny just about right. It's approved by the corporate overlords and the TPP. It's all good. The things I say are relevant. I'm sure they are. And finally tonight, from the fecal matters of the heart file, former Malaysian diplomat Mohamed Rizalman pleaded guilty before the New Zealand High Court last week

for however many laws he broke by following a woman home, taking a shit on her patio, and then forcing his way into her house wearing nothing but a t-shirt. What? That's right. That all happened.

And it appears he's trying to claim this is a religious freedomshirt. What? That's right. That all happened. And it appears he's trying to claim this is a religious freedom issue. Is he? His argument went something like this. If Jesus took a shit on Mary Magdalene's porch

in the Bible, we wouldn't even be talking about this. That was basically his argument, which is terrifying because he's probably right. Well, I mean, we would be talking

about that i mean we probably have three skits a month about that bible story but yeah yeah no the point is about like christians wouldn't be they'd be protesting outside a waste treatment plant screaming about how life begins at porch turd or something so according to his testimony mr rizalman believes in black magic and apparently he was testing out a new spell that he had just learned in which you get a woman to fall in love with you by very literally shitting outside her house. He also claimed that in Malaysian culture, if a woman smiles at you, which I guess this woman did, that's her signal for you to go ahead and stalk her using fecal wizardry. Well, of course. Which makes me understand completely why lots of women wear the full niqab over there. Oh, yeah, good call.

It's either smile prevention to avoid shit warlocks, which is very reasonable, or this guy's a lunatic and also Islam is is stupid and misogynistic one or the other or both or both yes but like i mean even even if you had infallible shit magic is donald ducking your way into her bedroom in the middle of the night uninvited really step two because i've had women tell me they love me and i didn't immediately follow that up with an unannounced schlong helicopter and a home break-in. Not immediately. There were steps in between. Those things.

Bottom line, this guy may have had a sincere belief, but he couldn't hold it. No. Which is obviously a tagline for the movie based on his life, which will be coming out soon. Can't wait. Of course, we will need 30 seconds on the clock for the story of the Kiwi Leaks scandal. Titles for the fecal-themed romantic comedy, go. All right, all right.

Right up my alley. How about Gitchard Rear and Stulia Roberts in Shitty Woman? What about Branny Hall? The truth about scats and prairie dogs Google Prairie Dogs if you didn't understand

bonus jokes in there I love it okay I got another Stulia Roberts classic how about my messed ends bedding think about it what about

I'm going old school a little Clark Gable what about shit happened one night one fine bidet and of course spotting hill it's an international heart to shart it's a beautiful kind of it's a short topper what about a classic love story Romeo and Stouliat stools flush in of course um 10 things I defecate about you? Sex and the shitty.

What a girl wants. Right. In her cup. To share with a second girl. You knew it had to make it in here somewhere. Come on, people. Come on. Maybe Bridget Jones diarrhea?

There you go. Obviously. I got one more. What about there's something irregular about Mary? A.k.a. heepless in Seattle. There we go. There we go. And with the calm confidence that comes with knowing that we've reached our weekly poop joke quota with more than half a show still to come, I guess we can close out the headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always.

Marbles. And when we come back, Bryce Blankenagle will return to tell us about the massacre portion of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In January, I was fortunate enough to play a small part in an extraordinarily successful fundraiser organized by David Smalley and all the fine folks over at Dogma Debate Radio. Using a unique blend of altruism and masochism, the Dogma Debate team put together a 24-hour live broadcast event to raise money for the Foundation Beyond Belief, and in a single day, their indefatigable efforts netted an astonishing $51,000-plus for secular charities. Well, it's been 11 months, and apparently that's how long it takes David to recover,

because he's at it again. This weekend, the team's going to be gearing up for another 24-hour broadcast. From 2 p.m. Eastern on Saturday the 12th to 2 p.m. on Sunday the 13th, the Dogwood Debate team will once more take to the airwaves or the fiber optics or the Wi-Fi or whatever, this time in an effort to raise money for one of my favorite secular organizations, the Secular Student Alliance. To tell us more about the fundraiser, David Smalley was kind enough to take a few minutes away from his preparations to chat with us tonight. David, welcome back to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, you bet. You bet. Now, are you doing anything to get yourself physically prepped, like drinking raw eggs like Rocky, running upstairs, anything like that? You know, I figured out from last time, nothing works. So it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. You know i i since then there was this kind of this running joke that i was going to be doing you know monster energy drinks non-stop and um i i have since sworn off of monster energy drinks i don't drink them at all anymore um and i don't even drink that much coffee anymore uh i i have actually the one thing i've done to prepare to be honest is I've just kind of

tested myself. I've just stayed up for 26, 27 hours working. And then I would just crash for like 10 or 15 hours and then I would come back and do it again. So I've done that two or three times. That's the only actual prep I've actually done. So I know now that it's at least possible for me to do it without any chemical or drug enhancements. And for whatever it's worth, by the way, in solidarity with you guys, I've been staying up for 24 hours as well. I'm not consecutively, but I just try to do my part. That helps. So now if you don't mind, for those who aren't familiar with the work they do,

can you give us sort of an overview of the Secular Student Alliance, what they're all about? Yeah. So there are a lot of kids that go to school. They're at high school or college, and they can't really come out because there's not a safe place. There are tons and tons of Christian groups, and there's really no way to get speakers or if you want to have a Jerry DeWitt or a Dave Silverman or someone out to give a talk for your school. There's not really a lot of support in a lot of these schools, whether it be high school or college.

And so a lot of people who are secular will just either attend the Christian groups or not be a part of any groups at all. And so the Secular Student Alliance allows students on campus to create these groups and for secular students to get together. Now, look, it's not to say that Christians aren't welcome to join these secular groups because, of course, we know secular is not the same as atheist. So, you know, I think it's a great concept. Students really, really need it. You know,

when I was talking to August, who is the executive director of the SSA, I just started asking him, look, what are your fundraising goals? How is this working? We had about a 40-minute conversation. He's like, you know, things are going okay, but it looks like we're going to be about $40,000 short of our fundraising. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean they're going to have to lay people off or they're going to have to shut down some of the groups? If there's a group somewhere in Kansas that needs paperwork to start but they don't have the staff to help the group get started, that's a group that needs to be started in a state that's going to be very, very religious. Let's get that student to paperwork. Sorry, we don't have staff available because we're short on our funding. We had to lay people off.

We don't want that to happen. So it's very ambitious. But I told August, I said, look, last year our original goal was $5,000. It doubled to $10,000 two days before the event. And we ended up hitting, we personally within our group raised $5,000. It doubled to $10,000 two days before the event. And we ended up hitting, we personally within our group raised $31,000 and then there was a $20,000 match. So it ended up being a $51,000 night, which was unbelievable. Yeah, no kidding.

But this year, it's even far exceeded that. And we're really going to have to step up if we're going to help them cover their $40,000 gap. Right on, right on. Now, I also think it's very important that I point this out. When all the atheists get together at the League of Sinister Secularists for a baby souffle or whatever, the primary bragging rights is who's hour earned the most money in David's latest 24-hour fundraiser. We did pretty good with our hour last year. We weren't quite at the top, but we were close. So I want to let all the listeners know that if you're planning on giving money to this fundraiser or to the Secular Student Alliance, or maybe you were planning on giving some money to the show this week, maybe you give it to this fundraiser,

maybe between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Eastern Time. I'm just going to toss that out there. Now, who else is going to be joining you? What is our competition this year? Yeah, the only one apparently that matters is the scathing atheist. Right, yeah, of course. Midnight Central. All times that I'm going to rattle off for Central. I know you do things on Eastern.

But I'll just tell everybody, if you're confused about it, go to dogmandebate.com slash SSA. Dogmandebate.com slash SSA. The entire schedule is there. There's only one spot left at 7pm. And we've been holding that for someone that we thought was tentative. And I may just take that and make it a David Smalley segment.

I don't know. But right now, it's, man, we've got, I'll go real quick. Unfortunately, we're starting off with Cognitive Dissonance, and that scares the hell out of Oh, no. I was hoping to bump them to about 4 a.m., and I couldn't make that happen. Cognitive Dissonance, Tom and Cecil, and apparently that segment's going to have to be about seven minutes long, because that's all i can take of those guys but uh they're starting us off at 1 p.m central saturday then we've got todd stiefel the guy who cheated last year oh right right yeah

yeah i i gotta give him credit because he he won last year but he won because he cheated he cheated in such a beautiful way and he's the one that i honestly give him the credit for launching us into that ridiculous amount uh he ended up doing a sextuplet match just because he wanted to say the word sextuplet on the show and he ended up donating a little over ten thousand dollars during his hour to match what everybody else had donated wow so yeah it was it was incredible uh right after him we have matt dillahunty uh nobody knows that guy. He's an up-and-comer. We'll make the change. Callie Wright from Gaytheist Manifestional Podcast. Peter Boghossian is going to join us. J.T. Eberhard. Mr. Deity, Brian Keith.

Oh, awesome. He's going to join us. Yeah. Actually, on my way to the studio, I got a text from Dave Silverman. He confirmed for that 9 p.m. Central slot with American Atheist. Stephanie Gattormson with the Richard Dawkins Foundation. We're doing something unique this year, too. At 11 o'clock Central, we're doing what we're calling Exmo Hour. David Michael and Bryce Blankenagel, who both host individual sort of Mormon-based podcasts, are going to be here in studio hosting an entire hour about Mormonism, getting as many ex-Mormons as possible to donate during their hour. Right on. Then there's a scathing atheist at Midnight Central.

Jerry DeWitt's going to join us, Joey Kirkman, the barroom atheist beyond the trailer park, Adam Reeks of the herd mentality. I know you know that, psycho. Oh, yeah. Shelly Siegel is going to join us, Andrew Seidel from FFRF, Brian Fields from Pennsylvania Nonbelievers, No Religion Required,

Chris Matheson, the writer of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and The Story of God. He's going to be with us. And then we're closing it out with Seth Andrews and Hemet Mehta. How cool is that? What a rock star lineup. Yeah, no kidding. Man, that's okay. So my work's cut out for me. So listeners, remember

you're not a Christian. You don't have to buy people a bunch of Christmas presents. You just take that money that you were going to spend on Christmas, toss it towards the Secular Student Alliance right around 1230 Central. All right. So now if our listeners want to tune in, is it dogmadebate.com that they're going to go to? Yes, it's dogmadebate.com. It's going to be live streaming right there on the side, on the main side. When you go to dogmadebate.com, there's a big blue thing at the top that says listen. You just click that and the thing rolls down and you can hit play.

Spreaker is also our broadcast partner. They're going to be actually broadcasting it from their main page as well. So if you for some reason do not want to go to DogmaDebate.com, you can also find us on Spreaker. And if you don't see it on the main page, search for DogmaDebate. Find us on Spreaker. And if you don't see it on the main page, search for Dogma Debate. And we don't have the link yet to where people can donate, but that should be ready Friday or Saturday morning right before we start. So there's going to be a special link.

So don't just go donate to the generic Secular Student Alliance thing. We're going to have a link that we're sending everybody to, and I think they're going to just put it on the main page of secularstudents.org. So we're trying to make this as easy as possible for people to donate because we really want to hit this $40,000 goal. And that's a pretty high bar, Noah. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. And, of course, we'll have all that linked on the show notes for this episode. And if you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, we'll be posting links as soon as the festivities get underway. Well, David, good luck, and thanks for being a part of the show tonight.

I appreciate it, and good luck to you and your listeners for your hour. Thank you, sir. I'm just dropping in post facto for a quick update on that last interview. The night before this episode aired, David got with me to let me know about a scheduling change. Tom and Cecil from Cognitive Dissonance will now be on at 7 p.m. Central to make room for, wait for it, Dan Dennett to lead things off at 1 p.m. Central. Again, the full schedule will be linked on the show notes at ScathingAtheist.com. In today's media environment, it's easy to think that the threat of Islamic terrorism is somehow unique, as though the idea of a theocratic offshoot of a major world religion is something this country has never faced before. But as we learned last week, some of the most serious threats from religious extremists our country has ever faced

came from terrorists wearing magic underwear. So rejoining us this week to cap off the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre is Bryce Blankenagle of the Naked Mormonism podcast. Bryce, welcome back. Well, thank you for having me on again. No, it's always fun talking to you. Oh, absolutely. Well, you can't, you know, not close off the serial.

Now, speaking of which, I want to make sure everybody knows that this is a continuation of a story from last week. So if you haven't heard that episode yet, like if you listen in archives and you listen backwards or whatever, we encourage you to go back, listen to that one for all the context, and then come back for this one. We'll wait for you.

Also, trigger warning, you will never look at a missionary on a bicycle the same way after hearing this gruesome shit. So with all that out of the way, Bryce, would you mind giving us a quick refresher, kind of remind us where we left off last week? Absolutely. So you had the Baker-Fancher Party that left Arkansas, and they passed through Utah, and there was a lot of social and political pressures that were going on at the time

that were riling up these people, the Mormons and non-Mormons alike in the area, and it all sort of came to a head on September 7th, 1857. And that's when a group of Mormons and Native Americans teamed up together to start sieging basically this Baker-Fancher party. Okay, this completely unrelated, just wrong place, wrong time group of people trying to make their way across Utah. Yes, very, very clearly. There's absolutely nothing that connects them to the death of Parley P. Pratt or of

Joseph Smith or Hiram Smith or anybody else in Mormon history. They were just victims of circumstance and that's it. Okay. All right. So with that out of the way, let's get to the blood and guts. So all of the sieging that came up ended on Friday, September 11th, 1857. Lee, John D. Lee, as we talked about in the past episode so he was leading this siege into the of the fancher party that was camped out in this mountain meadows um by this time the the train had circled all of their wagons

they had dug into the ground they were running low on shot and powder they were running low on any food or any water they didn't have any water left they were all starved shot and powder they were running low on any food or any water they didn't have any water left they were all starved and thirsting to death it was a very very horrible situation and very important to emphasize and of course we talked about this great deal last week is that they do not know who's attacking them yet it's just shots ringing out from the distance and the only people they've seen are native americans yes so what happened was lee and a few other mormons came into the camp and they were they were very convincing and they were flashing masonic and temple signs and they you know they they kind of convinced the camp that

they weren't the people that were sieging them so they they were able to negotiate over a two hour span, a truce between the party and whoever was out there in order to get them to safety quote before the Indians could renew their attack. End quote. This is the turning point. At any point, the Mormons could have just continued to lead them out, take them to Cedar city. It would have been done and over with rumors would have circulated,

but the church would have survived and they wouldn't have had to kill all these people. It would have been done and over with. Rumors would have circulated, but the church would have survived. And they wouldn't have had to kill all these people. It would have just been the 20 or 30 that were dead up to this point, and that's it. But they went through with it. So they organized them. They split up the men and the women and children. They had all of the women and children walking in a group a little ways ahead of all of the men. And they had all of the navu legion escorting the men of the the party in the back um so after they marched for uh less than an hour towards cedar city higby fired a shot in the air and then gave the damning order quote halt order, quote, halt, do your duty to Israel, end quote. Which I guess is Mormon for Allahu Akbar.

Exactly. Very, very well said. Yes. So at this point, all of the militiamen of the Nauvoo Legion turned their guns towards the men of the Fancher Party and fired. And they killed almost all of the adults, the adult men at that time. And this this first wave of onslaught and the next half an hour can be classified as nothing other than a bloody fucking massacre. And we fortunately or unfortunately, we have multiple firsthand accounts of it.

And everything that we talk about on this episode is either first- or second-hand accounts. So let's just keep that in mind for what we're going to talk about here. Right. And also, again, like I said, I wasn't fucking around when I said trigger warning. I know it's hard to imagine that those starched white shirts are so stained with historical blood. But the Mormons were some evil motherfuckers back then. So if you want to you know like you know like fast forward to the feedback or whatever i'll give you a time stamp on that

in post which is 50 minutes and 31 seconds all right we're getting into some first-hand accounts here this is from somebody that was named nancy huff who was four at the time quote they began killing everybody they came to captain jack baker who was you know the time, quote, they began killing everybody they came to. Captain Jack Baker, who was, you know, the Baker Fancher Party, he was one of the heads, had me in his arms when he was shot down and fell dead. I saw my mother shot in the forehead and fall dead. The women and children screamed and clung together.

Some of the young women begged the assassins after they had run out on us not to kill them, but they had no mercy on them clubbing their guns and beating out their brains. End quote. Wow. Jaws on the fucking floor. There's another firsthand account.

A six year old Calvin Miller. He watched his mother, father, two brothers, three sisters killed. And he Miller. He watched his mother, father, two brothers, three sisters killed. And he spent some time as his mother was dying, pulling arrows out of her back until she bled out from the injuries. That's a hell of a memory. Yeah. I was only six years old. Imagine that sticking in your mind for a while. And imagine that you know that kid and you have to try to find the right hallmark card for him you know they just don't make one for

sorry you had to pull arrows out of your mom until she bled out yeah i don't think you could even find those dispensers i mean that's a pretty fucked up card um next account is from a six-year-old named rebecca dunlap um she says quote I ran behind a sage bush when the massacre began. Two of her older sisters were killed right near her and were laying dead by her side. She heard her baby sister crying and ran to find her. She found her entwined in her mother's arms, but that mother was cold in death.

End quote. Sarah Dunlap, who was an infant, who was Rebecca's younger sister, was then, quote, shot through her right arm below the elbow by a large ball, breaking both bones and cutting her arm half off.

End quote. It just gives me chills. Rebecca, at this point. Yeah, no kidding. I mean, and to those who are listening to this and saying, wow, this seems like, you know, pretty gruesome to dwell on. I ask you, how can you really portray, you know, the horror of something like this without these kind of details?

You know, I thank you for bringing them. And to those who would say, like, you know, hey, that's a little much. You know, I simply have to say, like, this is an account of history that is largely unknown, you know. Yeah, that's it. an account of history that is largely unknown, you know? Yeah. And the only way, the only reason it is, is because not enough people have heard these brutal, disgusting details of, of an army of,

of people turning against now just a group of unarmed women and children. Exactly. And I mean, let's be clear that all of the most horrible things that happen when, you know, one tribe of people takes over another tribe of people happened. Right. So at this point, bloodlust kind of seized upon the feeble minds of these men that were conducting this slaughter.

One account that we have is of a man named William Stewart. um one account that we have is um of a man named william stewart he commanded a younger mormon man that was part of the militia to kill a woman who had been hit in the you know really hard in the head and she was just regaining consciousness probably with a concussion or maybe brain damage at the point as she was you know kind of whirling her head around trying to gain her her surroundings and see all of the dead people in the blood around her the boy refused this order that stewart gave to him to kill this woman so stewart took it upon himself to quote plunge his bowie knife to the hilt in her side end quote and as hard as it as as it is to believe that's not the worst part of this story. No. Later, Stuart, this same guy, William Stuart,

an evil motherfucker, recounted, quote, he took the damned Gentile babies by the heels and cracked their skulls over the wagon tires, end quote. I mean, that's brutal enough to be in the Bible. Yeah, right?

But you start to see how evil these people were when a man named George Adair would later claim, quote, In his drunken revels, he would laugh and attempt to imitate the pitiful crushing sound of the skull bones of the children as they struck the iron bands of the wagon hubs, end quote. of the children as they struck the iron bands of the wagon hubs quote so he would you know hang around the bars telling his buddies about how he was cracking baby skulls against fucking wagon wheels what the fuck wow yeah no puts a lot of shit into perspective so now okay so women are getting massacred children are getting massacred but the plan was not to kill anybody who was too young to tell tale so I almost hesitate to ask, but what happens to the kids? I mean, their parents are dead.

Everybody else is dead. What happens to these kids who are too young to tell tales? Well, that's actually a fucked up and really good question. All of the children that were left alive had to be gathered up at the end of the massacre, right? You have 120 people laying around on the ground, these children's parents, family members, and their blood is soaking into the ground. There's just rivers of blood running out of this place.

from by Bagley. Quote, while many of the children were in the wagons of McMurdy and Knight during the slaughter, others were scattered on the ground near their dead mothers or were walking numbly about. So they were like shell shocked at this point. Klingon Smith chose which ones would live. Quoting Johnson, I was told at the time Klingon Smith selected 17 of the smallest children together and handed the older ones over to the Indians who killed them. When the wagons with the crying and bloodstained children reached Hamblin's ranch, Rachel Hamblin took them into her shanty and surrounding yard. She did her best, one woman caring for 17 children, in addition to her own.

Some babies were still nursing and wailed for the comfort of their mother's breasts. All of them were shrieking in terror and anguish. And this is quoting from Rachel herself. Two of the survivors showed outward wounds. Sarah Baker's ear was bleeding and little Sarah Dunlap's arm still oozed near the elbow. The bone being entirely severed. And then she goes on to say, the inner damage was

still worse. Young hearts and minds in terrible trauma. Though they had not had peaceful rest in days, the children cried all night. Yeah, right. And this is all coming after this siege and being dehydrated and being starved

and all of this shit which is coming after this long trip where nobody would trade with them and jesus all the psychological trauma being multiplied on these four five-year-old kids is just amazing to think of absolutely and what's even more fucked up beyond all of that so it said that there were 18 children gathered up, but there was only 17 that left. At the close of this massacre, there was one girl that was 10 or 12 years old that they decided she was too big and could tell tales. So they killed her and they did it in a really sinister and horrible thing. They brought her up in front of the 17 remaining children and they executed

her and said, this is what will happen if you talk about what's happened here today. So as if all of these children hadn't been traumatized enough, they take this 12-year-old girl up in front of them and shoot her in the fucking face and say, this can be you.

You don't forget that. I'm sorry. You just don't forget that. You probably try, but yeah, no shit. Now let's talk about the aftermath of this a little bit. Like, obviously you can't cover up 140 deaths. So what happened? That's a great question. Basically, the Mormons kind of copped to it in a roundabout way they said john d lee the guy who we've been focusing on for most of this uh him and higby were kind of the main guys that headed up this whole thing but john d lee was used as the scapegoat for the entire affair and he was sentenced to death by firing squad and brigham young keeps his hands clean the entire time not only that um brigham young he found the wound and he kind of

shoved his finger into it, you know, after dipping it in a big vat of salt. So what he did being chief of the Indian affairs in the Utah territory, he claimed that the Native Americans were responsible for everything that had happened. And he actually, this might blow your fucking mind here, but he billed the United States government for $2,200 for oxen and wagons that were lost to the Indians. And then $3,527.43 for an itemized list of 171 pairs of pants, 135 shirts, 39.5 pounds of gunpowder, 109 pounds of lead and 14,000 firing caps, plus other miscellaneous items. So we paid for this. The American taxpayers paid for this siege.

They paid for half. They got this bill that Brigham Young sent to them because that was what he did as head of the Indian Affairs. Anytime there was something that would happen, he would report to the government. The government would give money or support or whatever to help ameliorate the problem. Well, that's what he did. He built the American government for the Mount Meadows Massacre that was arguably perpetrated by Bloody Brigham himself. And beyond that, all of the belongings that were part of the Fancher Party, he seized them.

He brought all of them, and they were just absorbed into the almighty Mormon machine. And, I mean, you got to admit, this guy had some serious chrome-plated balls. Yeah, like I said, one of the best villains we've got in American history. All right, but again, like, I mean, okay So like there was already this tension and everything else going around. I mean, this didn't, this couldn't have just, you know, faded into the woodwork. Hey, whatever happened to all those venture people, you know? So what was, what was the reaction around Utah? Well, there was a lot of people talked about it and there was actually, it wasn't just in Utah. There were quite a few newspapers and magazines that were writing articles on it.

Like, what the fuck happened? How did 120 people just end up dead? What the fuck? So one of the most pervasive of all of these critical writers was somebody from the LA Star, which was, you know, Los Angeles newspaper that was close to what happened. I mean, LA was the biggest city that was nearest to Cedar city where this happened. So they were like, Hey, you know,

this is close to us. And everybody that lives in LA interacted with the Mormons at some point, this could have been any of us that got fucked over. Yeah. Right. So they kept writing these articles, asking very, very scathing questions.

And of course, bloody Brigham wrote a letter to the editor of the LA Star that said, quote, unless you cease publishing such infertile lies about Utah and her people, your lies may, to your utter astonishment, become truths, end quote. Oh, that's a clever way of saying

I'll bust a cap in your ass. Yeah. That's pretty fucking clever there again great villain here i mean i you know i don't want to admire a guy who like massacred 120 people and everything but as far as villains go that's pretty ballsy yeah at some point you have to sit back and say that motherfucker played it well i mean for everything that went down nobody should have gotten away with that well especially nobody should have got paid for it. Right.

I mean, yeah, he just he got off scot-free. And yeah, and he he walked away from the thing richer than he was before. All right. So now is that does the Mormon church still just like scapegoat this this guy and say Brigham Young had nothing to do with? I mean, obviously, they don't teach about this in Mormon Sunday school, but I'm sure Mormons basically know about it. scapegoat this this lee guy and and say brigham young had nothing to do with i mean they you know obviously they don't teach about this in mormon sunday school but i'm sure mormons basically know about it what is their sort of official apologetic for it well the mormon church has sort of addressed

it um not in the way that you would expect somebody issuing an actual apology but they did in i think it was 1990 they erected a memorial in Mountain Meadows that said, you know, here lie the bodies of 120 people that were slaughtered by the Native Americans. And it's this really PR friendly bullshit thing. And that's how they teach it is that the Indians were responsible for all of this. So here lies a bunch of people that the assassins we hired killed those bastards. bunch of people that the assassins we hired killed those bastards and what's even more fucked up about that is when they were erecting the monument they were digging there with excavators and they're like holy shit there's a lot of human bones here we should uh we should look into these so they sent them off to a couple of different research agencies uh through forensics uh forensic

studies they found that there were a lot of children with, uh, cracked open skulls. Wow. And, uh, yeah. So all of this,

when you attack the credibility of what happened and you have all of these firsthand accounts, and then you excavate the site and you find literal archeological evidence of people that have been killed by blunt force trauma to the head. All of this really kind of comes together. It's like, like yeah this really happened the way that it's described in the firsthand accounts this is fucked up dude yeah no kidding all right well i mean you know thanks for bringing such an upbeat story for the holidays for everybody you know something happy to do it i'll gather around the uh the campfire and chat about so but honestly though i want to say it's amazing to me that everyone in this country doesn't know this story.

And I really appreciate the light that you're shining on it and on all of Mormonism's skeletons with your podcast and the work that you're doing. Absolutely. I mean, thank you for coming on and for allowing me this podium to spread the, I would say the good word, but it really wasn't that good this time. No, not so much. And of course, if you want to learn more fucked up details about the Mormon church that they'd rather you not know,

you should definitely check out the Naked Mormonism podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or whatever you use, or just check the show notes for this episode where you'll also learn how you can support Bryce's efforts. Bryce, thanks again for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on, Noah. Before we relinquish your ear holes tonight, I wanted to remind you one more time that if you enjoy Bryce's spotlights on the darker chapters of Mormon history, you can help him expand his reach with a couple of books by donating to the GoFundMe campaign linked on the show notes for this episode. You can also, of course, check him out on his podcast, Naked Mormonism, which will be linked right below that. Also, while we're talking about

money anyway, remember, this coming Saturday at 1 a.m. Eastern time, tune in to hear me on David's 24-hour broadcast-a-thon. Remember, secular charities don't get as much love come Christmas time. With a donation to the Secular Student Alliance, you're going to be helping a great group that does great work, and you're going to be making us look pretty badass in front of all the other atheist podcasters. I mean, you know, not that I worry about shit like that. That'll be linked on the show notes as well, of course. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be sure to check out a brand new episode of Godawful Movies with Eli Bosnick on Tuesday at 8 a.m. Eastern. We're going to be doing a Christmas movie about

the Salvation Army this week. I should be spontaneously diatribing throughout. Obviously, it wouldn't really be an episode if I didn't thank Heath Enright for knowing his shit, both euphemistically and literally. I also need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions for providing this week's warning, and yes, she'll be back next week for This Week in Misogyny, and she misses you more than you miss her. I also want to thank David Smalley one more time. The dude is literally working 24 hours a day and still made time for us.

Also, one more big thanks to Bryce for dropping some knowledge on me, and while I've got the thanks train to roll, and I also want to thank Kyle the Facebook Napkin Pope for his combination of infallible Farnsworthian wisdom and menstrual blood jokes. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's best people. Timothy, Jonah, Corey, David, Alan, Andrew, Jackson, Omri, Chris, Gerardo, James, Douglas, Christopher, and Mike. Timothy, Jonah, Corey, and David, whose IQs are higher than a starving man in a Colorado bakery. Alan, Andrew, Jackson, Omri, and Chris, whose opinions carry so much weight American Airlines charges them for extra baggage, Gerardo, James, Douglas, and Christopher, whose ejaculations

make the Paris gun look like a Roman candle, and Mike, whose cock is so impressive that local roosters have started saying Micah Doodle Doo just out of respect. Together, these 13 thoroughly thermally thoroughing thoroughbreds made Thursdays more thirstful this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the exemplary genitals it takes to give us money, but if your balls and or vag are up for the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com Thank you. podcasts make you break out and rape locusts. You can also help us a ton by leaving a five-star review on iTunes, Stitcher, or your podcast rating vehicle of choice. You can also stroke our egos by following us on Twitter or liking our Facebook page. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact

info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly, and yes, I did have my permission. So you guys have heard the story of me shitting my pants at a bar mitzvah, right? You've heard that story before. I have not. No. Oh my god, this is my best story that I ever have.