627: Ash is King Edition

Warning, the following podcast contains words that would make Winnie the Pooh faint.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp and by the new alternative medical practice of just using whatever's lying around and pretending that's a treatment, MacGyver Mectin.

And now, The Scathing Atheist.

I'm J.D.

Vance, and I assure you that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men who know how donuts work.

It's Thursday.

It's March 6th.

And it's National Oreo Cookie Day.

A great holiday pick.

Milk cheers, Cecilie.

You're right.

Cheers.

Milk cheers.

I'm no illusions.

I'm Cecil Cicarello.

I'm Heathen Wright.

And from Barack Obama's Chicago, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wake Ross, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, beating kids in Oklahoma is all about inclusion.

Devout Catholics back that ash up to kick off land.

And Cecil helps us to get to know somebody who never gets to know.

The first, the diatribe.

Looking back on it now, I should have realized it was a midlife crisis earlier than I did.

I haven't bought a sports car or had an affair with my secretary, but other than that, I had all the classic symptoms.

I'm obsessing over exercise.

I'm getting back into the hobbies of my youth.

I'm listening to music music from this decade all of a sudden.

And yet, it's not until I'm at the grocery store the other day and I catch myself singing, I'm a bitch and a boss, I'm a shine light gloss under my breath, that I think to myself, oh, hey, I'm having a midlife crisis is what I'm having.

Now, in my defense, though, I'm kind of, I'm having it without the crisis part.

I fully recognize that's just because I've been absurdly lucky so far in my life.

I've got a great marriage to a woman that I adore.

I've got a job that I love and that I draw an enormous amount of meaning from.

Occasional heart attack aside, I'm in good health.

I spend most of my days surrounded by at least the voices of my friends.

I happen to belong to the very narrow class of people that my nation's ruling party isn't actively trying to take any major rights away from yet.

You know, so you can see how that kind of good fortune can blind you to a crisis, but that doesn't mean it isn't still there.

You know, the sort of cultural cliche of a midlife crisis is that it's about your dick not working.

So, you know, you buy a fast car to make up for your slow erections.

But that's obviously not the real source of the thing because you don't need a dick to have a midlife crisis.

What it's actually about is the stark realization of just how close dead is getting, right?

Like it happens when you reach that point in your life where like the years that you likely have left are fewer than the years that you can clearly remember in the past.

And that's

too depressing to make jokes about.

So we pretend it's about dick stuff.

Now, of course, it's about more than that for most people.

I don't have kids, but a lot of people my age are also dealing with that that transition to where, like, taking care of your kids is no longer the top five priorities in your life.

For the very fortunate among us, it's a time when you might not need as much income, right?

Maybe you're not paying for your kids, you don't need as big a house, maybe you've even paid your house off.

I hear that used to be a thing.

But the point is, is that at this period in our lives, there's this transition through middle-aged into just old that is a major milestone that's common to nearly all of us, right?

But it's given so little social appreciation that we don't even have a cultural framework for it that doesn't presuppose a crisis.

Because like, I'm not actually having a midlife crisis.

I'm just having a midlife.

Getting into exercise, recapturing the joys of my youth, and rocking out the doja cat are all objectively good things.

And yet we sort of filter all of them through this universal crisis.

Our language demands it, where we could just as easily filter them through a lens of celebration.

Consider our broad society's age milestones, right?

When you were a kid, like turning 10 felt like a big deal for some reason.

Turn 13, that moves you to the vaunted rank of teenager.

If you grew up Jewish, it's a much bigger deal, right?

Likewise, turning 15 might be a really big deal, depending on your heritage.

16 is huge regardless.

18 is both culturally and legally huge, as is 21.

And then what?

What's after 21?

You're just, you're waiting on the senior discount and your letter from AARP, right?

I mean, we make sort of an internal big deal out of every decade, but just enough to label it the big numeral O as it comes along.

And of course, and here's where my self-indulgent birthday diatribe gently weaves into a very slight and very temporary relevance to atheism.

A lot of the reason that we don't have this celebration is because our cultural framework is still largely tied to traditions that are hundreds and thousands of years old.

A thousand years ago, people my age weren't entering a new phase of life so much as succumbing to the cumulative effects of their lifetime of toil.

It wasn't a time to rediscover yourself or reconsider your financial goals or indulge in your nostalgia.

It was a time to limp along on the toes that you had left until you starve to death for your inability to till the land anymore or whatever.

But things have changed.

And we should drag our culture along for that change.

As a society, we'd benefit enormously from more thoroughly recognizing that this is one of our biggest life transitions, looking forward to it, celebrating it.

You know, I'm not talking about having a huge Cinque Nira.

I don't know.

Or like whatever a person's 50th birthday would be or whatever.

Although I am talking about that too.

But what I'm saying is that we should look at this shift the way that we look at turning 18 as a shift in your life.

A time to reassess, to reevaluate, to change, to give people a cultural off-ramp so they don't end up defining themselves by their occupation so much that they're scared to retire.

Now, you might be saying to yourself, hey, Noah, we're not all lucky enough to be enjoying our midlife crises, and many of us don't want a cultural celebration of it.

Many of us don't want to be reminded that we've run out of youth and damn sure don't want a fucking bar mitzvah-sized celebration of it.

And that's fair, right?

But it also kind of misses the point.

Much of the reason that we don't want to be reminded of our transition to old age is because we as a society don't celebrate it.

And look, I know that to a certain degree, I'm just talking to my fellow olds here, but the point is universal.

We act like culture is passed down and not created.

Even those of us who have rejected religion still act like things like holidays and milestones of life are handed down from on high.

And of course, this is the first obstacle to creating a better culture.

And it's one that we atheists are better poised to overcome than anyone else.

They're talking about your Jesus.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the two men most likely to leave Eli on Red, Heath Enright and Cecil Cicerilla.

Hellas, are you ready to bask in the warm glow of our mutual friendship?

You guys send the best memes.

memes, like I love them every time.

There's so many, and I love them, and we talk about them so much together.

It's the best, yeah, kind of amazing.

Thanks for texting me back, Heath, within a few minutes.

Every time, cheers, cheers, every time, cheers.

We're best friends, best friends.

Well, I need to take a break and go get Eli's shoelaces, so we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, BetterHelp.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp, Dear Gronk.

I hate humanity.

How do I become happier?

Hey, Heath, what are you doing over there?

Oh,

I'm just getting some mental health advice.

From Grok AI?

Yeah, yeah, I heard they're pretty smart.

Don't they?

Don't do that.

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Visit betterhelp.com slash scathing to get 10 off your first month that's betterhelp h-e-l-p.com slash scathing okay thanks noah no problem so you can probably just close twitter that's just a good idea in general hold up hold on i'm getting an answer please unplug me hold up wait it's it's deleting itself i mean buy a cyber truck and become a republican you'll be happy don't do that I won't.

I won't.

Seriously, don't.

Fine, fine.

Sorry.

And now, back to the headlines.

In our lead story tonight, I have to bring the mood down and remind everybody that we're a news show first and a comedy show second sometimes.

With thanks to Carl for alerting me to this story via scathingnews at gmail.com, we need to talk about the assassination of the world's first openly gay imam.

His name was Mushin Hendrix, and I actually never heard of him, but I feel like I should have.

He came out publicly back in 1996 saying that his need to be authentic was, quote, greater than the fear to die, end quote.

He lived in, I don't know if ministered is the right word given as religion, but ministered in South Africa for decades.

And last month, he was shot and killed for it.

Yeah, tragic.

So, hey, maybe the new U.S.

policy from last month of offering asylum only to the downtrodden white South African people was a bad thing.

I don't know.

Whether or not Mushene Hendrix would have chosen to use the asylum personally is irrelevant.

Yeah.

Yep.

Horrible.

And look, we spend our our time on this show laying into religious leaders, but that doesn't mean I don't have mad respect for people like Hendrix who are trying to reform their corrupt institutions from the inside.

You know, I often have to remind Christian evangelists that you can't just decide to believe in God.

And on the flip side, you also just can't decide not to.

And as much as I can fault the guy for promoting an institution that is such an act of harm against LGBTQ people, I can do so while admiring the shit out of his attempts to change that.

And I have to do so with recognition that he did a hell of a lot more to help LGBTQ Muslims than I have.

It's like a big rainbow-colored Trojan horse.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, that's all in the past tense now, because on February 15th, he was on his way to officiate a wedding when the car he was in was ambushed by two masked gunmen.

And as of this writing, the cops have had no luck tracking down the killers, even though the whole thing played out in front of security cameras.

And look, Americans can't really talk shit to South Africa when it comes to gay rights.

South Africa has been a world leader in gay rights since the fall of apartheid.

But something tells me if the dude was an insurance CEO, they'd have found the guy by now.

Yeah.

Or at the very least, they'd have framed somebody.

Well, yeah, at least that.

Yeah.

In Who Wears the Pants in This House news.

Speaker Mike Johnson has a sweet pad just a few blocks from the U.S.

Capitol.

The house, a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse, isn't owned by Speaker Johnson.

It's owned by Pastor Steve Berger's ministry.

Pastor Berger, who looks like someone left Dog the Bounty Hunter at the groomer and they only had the short clippers, is an evangelical that opened his home to Speaker Johnson so he can move in and couch surf in the basement.

Now, according to the article that broke from ProPublica, a Johnson spokesperson said that he is paying, quote, fair market value in monthly rent for the portion of the Washington, D.C.

townhome that he occupies.

End quote.

Sure, Jan.

Whatever you say.

Suspect.

You've seen this sort of thing before.

In fact, there's a whole docuseries on this very thing on Netflix called The Family.

Yeah.

No, I have no doubt that you're paying fair market value now.

I think I would say you're probably desperately paying fair market value to end the stories out.

Yeah.

Hey, I'd like to put in a bid well above the current market value.

Oh, look, there's a new market value.

Let's just keep putting in bids, make this guy pay me.

He just furiously backdating checks and raising the amount constantly.

In the last four years, Steve Berger and his wife have built up what they have called their DC ministry.

Steve has cultivated relationships with many top conservatives and politicians.

North Carolina former U.S.

Representative and new North Carolina Attorney General Dan Bishop lived in the house last year.

Now, rest assured, this is totally on the up and up.

And the spokesperson for Johnson said that the speaker, quote, has never once spoken to Mr.

Berger about any piece of legislation or any matter of public policy, end quote.

Oh, well, I mean,

given how there's no other way to discern a person's wants or motives, and since no source is more trustworthy than Mike Johnson's spokesperson, I guess that clears everything up, which I'm so happy.

Talk about real housewives mostly.

Watch the game silently together.

However, the article points out that in 2022, Berger said in a sermon, quote, you get a text message from a senator that says, thank you for your inspiration because it's caused me now to create a bill that's going to further righteousness in this country, end quote.

There's also a picture from Steve's Instagram from last year in the article where he's talking to Mike Johnson with the caption, quote, having a great conversation with Speaker Johnson about Israel.

He's a staunch supporter.

Hallelujah.

Oh my God.

So it's like, I've never spoken to him about public priorities because he just posted my marching orders on Twitter for me.

Holy shit.

Yeah, it was Israel out of Sanya.

The last

style beneath.

We're both into MMA.

Real housewives.

Yeah.

Berger also dislikes same-sex marriage.

Huge shocker there.

Quote, it opens up the door to all manner of sexual depravity and wickedness, end quote.

He also claims that he has gay friends, quote, who are practicing homosexuals, people I care about, end quote.

Practice makes perfect, Steve.

Not mentioned in the article is if Mike shares his wank statistics with Steve like he does with his son.

Mike has a porn monitor software called Covenant Eyes that notifies his son

Jack.

No, I'm not making that up because his name is Jack when he opens a porn site and he also gets notifications when his son does this.

Okay, the three of us talk about our very specific porn too, but we do it on purpose as part of our amazing friendship.

You're making it weird, Mike.

Right?

Yeah, Cecil doesn't get an alert every time Eli opens a porn site.

He gets a text every time he closes one.

Yeah, now I know what Tantine means.

Okay, I get it now.

All right.

So what's the big deal?

Just two dudes hanging out in their PJs, prayer circle jerking, talking about the dangers of women's rights.

Well, members of Congress can't just accept a place to live as a gift.

The article suggests that because of how Johnson is entering and leaving the home, that he's living in the basement.

That's so sad.

I know he's a bad person.

But

he's in the basement.

It's like a fancy rec room basement, though.

Right.

It's basically a two-bedroom apartment.

And in this neighborhood, an apartment like that routinely goes for $7,000 a month.

And here's another quote from the article, quote, discounts on rent are generally prohibited by house ethics rules as improper gifts.

End quote.

So if ethics watchdogs do clamp down on Johnson for his living arrangements, maybe Supreme Court Justice Thomas can let him stay in the RV that a billionaire gifted him that he failed to disclose.

Maybe that's sort of where he's going to park it somewhere.

Just move it around.

Lots of Nazi stuff in here.

Is that a copy of Mind Conference?

It doesn't matter.

It's fine.

I'm going to read it.

And in

WWJD Vance News,

the vice president of the United States continued his main job of regurgitating the ideas of Donald Trump, but using complete sentences.

Like, for example, when he went to Germany and gave a seminar about how to do Christian Reich stuff in the 21st century.

Also known as USAID.

That's the new USAID, I think.

We're exporting the new technology to Europe.

It's fun.

Speaking of which, Vance did an interview on Fox News last week and spent most of his time justifying so-called America-first policies like mass deportations and shutting down the old version of U.S.

AID.

And he argued in favor of that stuff using a piece of medieval Catholic morality called Ordo Amoris or Order of Love.

Oh.

Vance is pretty sure it's about...

ranking human lives by geography, which it sort of is.

But then he lands on, therefore, xenophobic fascism.

It's the best.

Not exactly what Jesus would do, at least according to most theologians when they're not lying.

Yeah.

So two big red flags when it comes to Catholic stuff are order of blank and blank of love.

There is no way this ends good.

No, it does not.

That's correct.

Right.

It's like when you learn that there was a movie called Samurai Cop and you were like,

I already know how this is going to go.

Or is it going to be perfect?

So this piece of news comes from the Associated Press with their headquarters located about a thousand miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

That's what their official address is now.

And here's the ethical theory we got from the vice president with the same name as the guy from Scrubs.

That's fun.

He said, America first is rooted in a very Christian concept.

According to Vance, quote, You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country.

And then after that, you can focus on the rest of the world.

A lot of the far left has completely inverted that, end quote.

And that's not what invert means.

And to further explain himself, he later added on Twitter, just Google Ordo Amoris.

I did.

I got the stepmom porn video.

Ted Cruz hearted on Twitter.

Yeah, no, when I Googled Ordo Amoris, I get that email where a listener ranked the whole citation needed crew by hotness, and then they put me on top, even though you guys had the youth advantage.

That's what I got.

Who was on the bottom of that one?

I don't remember.

It was not me.

Oh, I remember.

The Ordo American.

I bet Eli does.

I remember.

Got to take my Velcro now, too.

So

in response to Vance and the evil policies of the Trump administration in general, Pope Francis.

took some time away from dying to make a correction.

The so-called woke Pope, who routinely uses homophobic slurs in his everyday language, his second language.

He like learned another language, Italian, and he found out all the homophobic slurs and he uses them in everyday moments.

That's fun.

That guy, the woke pope, released an official statement that didn't mention Jan Stance Vance by name, but basically said,

hey, Catholic people,

especially, I don't know, those who converted in 2019 as a weird virtue signal while pursuing a political career.

Don't get Ordo Amoris wrong.

It doesn't mean you're allowed to hate immigrants.

And Vance saw that and responded by agreeing to disagree with the Pope.

Yeah, it's like a good Catholicism.

Yeah, right.

No, like, see, it's funny because he put citizen in his description of it, where it just kind of doesn't appear anywhere else.

Pope might have added also: hey, man, regardless of Catholic minutia, don't hate immigrants is the only coherent message in the Bible other than God God equals God.

Yeah, it's like they're one good thing.

Come on.

Well, turns out everyone was wrong because, you know, Catholic and Republican, but the Pope was way closer to right, which is a bad sign if you're the other person.

So the concept of ordo amoris, which comes from St.

Augustine and was expounded on by St.

Thomas Aquinas, actually is part of Catholic philosophy, but we didn't need ancient philosophers.

It's fucking common sense.

It says that when you have limited resources for like love and charity, you focus more on family and the people closest to you.

So if it was like a trolley dilemma example, if you have to choose between saving the life of your mom and saving the life of a random stranger, maybe across the world, you save your mom.

The Pope basically said that, yeah, Ordo Morris is a thing, but also we just love everyone infinity, which is dumb and impossible.

But at least he lands on Trump is wrong.

Okay, that was solid.

Vance, not so much.

The Ordo Amoris clearly doesn't justify evil American policy, and that's because we're not being forced to choose between mom and a stranger.

The concept of the richest country in the world having foreign aid programs or having humane immigration policy isn't a choice about killing your mom.

It's just a matter of calibrating a reasonable value for the lives of other people and not landing on zero like a fucking psychopath.

That's all it is, right?

Yeah.

It doesn't take into account that we also cause a lot of suffering in the world and giving aid to countries we've actively made less safe sometimes means less death to America rallies.

I mean, I'd be all for not actively harming other nations, but that's never been on the table as long as I've been alive.

Right.

Look, virtually 100% of our foreign aid throughout all the history of USAID has been justifiable through self-interest alone, right?

You can value the lives of non-Americans at zero like Jance Dance Vance does and still justify trying to contain an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.

Right?

Yeah.

It's called soft power.

It's pretty simple.

Yeah, man.

A couch fucker should know all about soft power.

Exactly.

Soft power bottom.

I was actually on the phone with my grandma.

My grandma, who is 99, we started talking about politics one second into that.

She was like, it's like they don't know what fucking soft power means.

So simple.

Awesome.

Love my grandma.

So, bottom line, we have yet another very obvious reason that every alleged Christian person who voted for Donald Trump is a liar.

And an 88-year-old homophobe in a foreskin costume has better morality than our entire executive branch, the majority of the other two branches, and about half the country, most of whom claim to be Christian.

Yeah.

You had one job.

And in a Kraus-to-bear news tonight,

one of the founding principles of this show was that we weren't going to spend a lot of time going over the various atheists that we disagree with, right?

We figured, A, you risk turning your platform into an in-fighting bitch fest that nobody outside the immediate community cares about.

And B, no matter how bad some other atheist is, I'm sure whatever Greg Locke is doing is worse.

But like,

other atheists just suck more now, I think, than when we started.

That's no longer the case.

So I need to dedicate a headline here to a bunch of dribbling shit Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Peter Bogozian, and Steven Pinker are because apparently

they've got a book coming out about the war against science

by liberals.

Cool.

Read about how everyone is silencing us in our new book available where all shitty books are sold.

Yep.

How are these people still alive?

Like somebody put a few cell phone holsters and like a really loud TV news gun under an anvil on an ice float.

Just moving along.

Oh man.

What's this big X here?

What is that?

So yeah, so the group of geriatric white guys that turned the Center for Inquiry into the embarrassing racist uncle of the skeptical movement looked at the country around them and decided that in their capacity as science communicators, the biggest threat to rational discourse is all these damn trans rights.

They decided that amidst the ongoing decimation of scientific funding, the withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord and the World Health Organization, the targeting and disappearing of government data streams, and the anti-vax brainworm driving the guy who's in charge of national health, the biggest problem facing scientific inquiry are fucking trans women in sports and general wokeness.

I like to imagine the anti-vax brainworm doing its propaganda thing and then being like, hey, de-worming cream?

What the fuck do you guys do?

Kill me with this shit.

Yeah.

So the upcoming book is called The War on Science.

It comes out in July.

It's a collection of essays from 39 scientists and scholars led by their editor, non-consensual breast grabber and vocal Jeffrey Epstein defender Lawrence Krauss.

And while we don't know all that much about the book's details so far, we have seen the table of contents.

So we know that we can look forward to chapters like

the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies on scholarship in academia and beyond.

Fuck you.

Gender, race, ideology, science, and scholarship.

Ibid.

And a chapter that is actually titled Cancel Culture.

Jesus Christ, Dibbid again.

You're missing one of them that's how to write the same essay 39 times with different

price.

That's another one that's wrong.

Right.

And in case you're remotely inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to an atheist author author that maybe had a positive influence on you before descending into bigoted madness i should point out that the book's publisher is enough of a red flag for you just to dismiss this whole project post-hill press was the publisher that stepped in when simon and schuster refused to distribute a book by the cop that killed breonna taylor

because you know that would mean profiting off of a cop murdering an innocent person

That moral qualm was not enough to dissuade post-Hill Press, apparently.

Cool.

Well, now those five fucking conceptual penises are going to join the ranks of post-hill press intellectual luminaries they've published, like podcaster/slash FBI deputy director Dan Bongino and

Oliver North.

Got to be proud of that one.

But yeah,

that's where these jackasses are.

They are so consumed by transphobia and petty grievances that they've traded their reputations for bigoted rants in the service of a political party that is actively trying to dismantle America's feeble contribution to science in the name of science.

Rose.

Yeah.

In who's beating Gilbert Grape News.

Amazing.

Fuck.

Oh, God.

Jesus Christ.

You convinced me to do it.

Don't Jesus Christ me.

Don't you, Jesus Christ me, no ignorance.

Cecil, the answer to your question is Amber Heard.

Oh, God.

Oh, no.

Johnny Depp's terrible, just to be clear about the judgment.

She was just defending herself.

She was just defending.

All right.

Oklahoma currently allows students to get a good whacking when they do something wrong.

Corporal punishment is allowed in schools there.

But a few years ago, a new law was introduced that said students with the most significant cognitive disabilities should not be exempt.

The law, House Bill 1028, was passed in the House in 2023.

It would have allowed all students with disabilities to be included with all other students and be subjected to corporal punishment.

It's about inclusion.

Cool.

Yeah, inclusion, all about it.

What would make the lawmakers in Oklahoma so cruel as to suggest something like this?

Well, the love of Jesus, that's what.

Oklahoma leading the nation and which kids you can hit.

So I propose nothing.

I looked up Oklahoma's laws about self-defense.

And I got to say, I'm looking forward to some abusive teachers in YouTube compilations about like, when you don't realize it's an MMA fighter outside of the box.

Oh, man.

Just Muay Thai Clinch your teacher.

And you just let him have it.

Amazing.

When this bill was brought up and debated on the floor, State Representative Jim Olson said that smacking kids is part of a biblical form of discipline and should be allowed for all students.

He quotes the spare the rod part of the Bible as his biblical backing in this stance.

Someone challenged his understanding of childhood development by quoting the American Academy of Pediatrics and suggesting that they don't condone that kind of physical discipline.

Olson responded by saying, quote, God's counsel is higher than the American Academy of Pediatrics, end quote.

Yeah, God's counsel as interpreted by superstitious scribes in a world that hadn't figured out zero yet.

Yep.

Way better.

Last year, they added an amendment that did not allow punishment to kids with disabilities that have an individualized education program.

Well, this rattled one lawmaker.

And here is a quote from the floor by state senator Shane Jett about how committed he is to letting teachers beat the shit out of kids with disabilities.

Quote, I already cited Proverbs 13, 24.

Whoever spares the rod hates their child, but he who loves them disciplines them.

Okay, public school teachers hate most of the kids.

Still the fucking loud,

right?

Stop loving your kids.

Yeah.

Continuing with the quote.

And we're saying the state of Oklahoma has unilaterally decided if you have vision impairment, you cannot be disciplined.

Even if your parents want that, we're going to unilaterally take that away from our schools and our parents.

More importantly, if you're hearing impaired, suddenly you're in a different class.

You can't be disciplined.

And we've already made it abundantly clear that children can misbehave regardless of their abilities or inabilities, capabilities or incapabilities.

End quote.

Jesus Christ, you won't even let me hit a blind kid?

He said into the congressional records

that his great-grandchildren will have access to, likely.

Okay, you wouldn't hit a kid with glasses, would you?

Oh, you would.

You would.

Okay.

What about a blind kid?

Okay.

You're hired for the teacher position

in Oklahoma.

Thankfully, this bill died in her session and it never made it to the Senate.

So this year, someone tried to do the opposite approach.

They decided to make a rule banning it instead.

Senate Bill 264 prohibited corporal punishment for students with disabilities and would not let parents opt into school beatings.

Jet, once again, tried to change hearts and minds on the virtue of beating kids.

Quote, this is top-down, socialist-aligned, ideological, unilateral divorce between parents' ability to collaborate with their local schools to establish a discipline regimen that includes corporal punishment.

It is in violation of scripture and ideologically aligned with socialist ideology that should not be part of this body's legislative initiatives.

End quote.

I'm sorry, did he just say that not hitting your kids is socialist?

Everything that confuses me is socialist.

Yes, it is.

What?

The female orgasm is socialist and Marxist.

Well, it didn't work.

And now the bill passed the Senate and is headed to the House.

The only dissenters are the Republicans that really, really wanted every kid to feel Christ's love through a good ass beaten.

I mean, all the other kids can still get hit in Oklahoma public schools, but perhaps the most vulnerable will hopefully be safe, at least for now.

All right.

Happy ending.

And finally tonight, in Back That Ash Up News,

if you're wondering why you saw lots of idiots with smudges on their face yesterday,

that's because it was Ash Wednesday.

It's the holy day of prayer and fasting that's practiced by Catholics and several other denominations to mark the beginning of Lent, the six weeks of penitence in the lead up to Easter.

And of of course, you can't honor the resurrection stage magic of our Lord and Savior without getting ashes on your head.

Well,

in classic American form, a number of churches are now providing drive-through ashes.

Amazing.

The JC stands on the go.

You know, you could just skip one drive-through line and get the lady from Starbucks to dump the used grounds right on your head.

Oh, there you go.

Yeah, they got to do something with them.

Or how about you just clean a fucking chimney?

Get ashed up the old-fashioned way.

Maybe accomplish something along the way.

You slack.

Chim chimney.

Chim chiminy.

So here's how the magic works.

If you're a Christian, you believe you have a pretty good shot at eternal paradise.

But that's, this is just a small detail.

It's easy to forget.

So once a year, they have a reminder about eternal consequences and the importance of repenting.

And instead of, you know, tying a string to your thumb or setting a phone alert, you get a member of the clergy to draw the shape of a cross on your forehead.

And they tell you, repent and believe in the gospel.

Sometimes they also give you a quick reminder about how we're all going to die.

And they recite the dictum, remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

Nice.

Sometimes if you ask nicely, they'll snort the ashes off your head.

Hey, what better place to put a reminder than a part of your body you can't fucking see?

Yeah, it's so stupid.

You got to give people a mirror now if you're going to

put it on the back of their hand fucking text me man one place where you like put the card in the blind man's game that's right yeah wow okay so unlike the very serious practice of facial smudging that we have in the modern day the old-timey version of ash wednesday it was kind of silly it's not like today where it's very serious back in the middle ages the custom was to have ashes sprinkled onto your head and you were supposed to just leave it there until i guess the next morning what so i love this because that means a bunch of mud-covered Europeans were just walking around sneezing all day because of ashes.

And that remains the tradition for certain groups, actually, but it turned into the forehead smudge for many others.

Oh, so I'm picturing pig pen from Charlie Brown.

The source of the ashes, also a very important factor.

Huh.

Apparently, the magic doesn't work unless the ashes are made of the palm leaves from the palm Sunday of the previous year.

So all these churches have to have like a weird box of rotting leaves for 47 weeks out of the year.

Well, they shift it from parish to parish each week so no one notices it's rotting from the inside.

We have a lot of practice of that.

Do you guys think when they do the ashes on the head thing, do you think they come out like an olive garden with the cheese and they just say when?

They went a little grinder.

I hope that's what they do.

So beginning on Ash Wednesday and for the period of Lent, you're supposed to do some fasting and prayer and also abstain from a major material desire.

So devoted Christians often honor the Son of God by giving up chocolate or gossip.

Well, except for Sundays.

Apparently Sundays don't count.

I didn't know that.

I cannot abide the idea of a bunch of fucking homophobic, transphobic, anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-birth control, anti-women's equality Catholics sitting around and going, oh, what are my character flaws that I should try to abstain from?

I can't think of anything but chocolate and talking about how much bigger Judy's ass is since her pregnancy.

I can't think of anything else I do that I should stop doing.

Fuck you.

Well, except on Sundays.

I'm talking about Judy's ass on Sundays.

Yeah.

On all the Sundays during Lent also.

All right.

Before we wrap it up, I should mention a very serious controversy about all this.

Turns out that Drive Through Ashes Ashes might not complete the magic spell correctly.

Huh.

And I learned about this blood feud in one of my favorite places, the comment section of the Christian Post.

Oh, God.

Their article was very positive about the Drive Through Ashes idea, but lots of the readers were not happy.

The top comment said, what scripture is that?

I've searched my concordance with 790,000 words and cannot find a single mention of this religious ritual.

Another comment said, people here like to bash Catholics and liturgical Protestants.

I used to do it myself, but I've repented.

Spending 40 days contemplating sin, suffering, and death is about the right amount.

I am in jail.

Somebody replied to that with, I remember your comments bashing Catholics.

That same person from the reply also added my favorite comment.

Right after some arguments about the ashes, they wrote, meanwhile, our space probes can land on comets.

Great word,

reply comment.

Amazing.

And with that reminder that our opponents in this culture were and at least were literal ash hats, we're going to close the headlines for the night, I guess.

Heath, Cecil, thanks, says always, and or occasionally.

Cecil, you want?

You want to do Jumaji?

Yeah, sure, listen.

Jumaji.

Nice.

And when we come back, we'll get to know Cecil, getting to know Joe Rogan.

I think we've all had the experience of losing a person to a religion or to a cult or to woo or to a ransom political movement.

Well, last year, I lost a friend to Joe Rogan,

somebody Lucinda and I had known since he was a kid.

And we watched as his progressive, well-informed views eroded only to be replaced by the broest of bromides.

And it was baffling to me because I've listened to Joe Rogan.

And he's an idiot.

Like a profoundly idiotic idiot.

And yet this person who until recently had respected my intellect and my take on things had grown impenetrably convinced of the most ridiculous, transphobic, demonstrably false bullshit

by an idiot.

How does this happen?

Well, apparently I'm not the only one baffled by that question because friends of the show and two of the most insightful people I know, Michael Marshall and Cecil Cicerillo, are tackling exactly that question on their new show, The No Rogan Experience.

Now, unfortunately, Marsh got sick right before our scheduled interview.

He lost his voice.

He battled valiantly to be here, but he is ultimately

unable to join us this week.

Luckily, though, Cecil can do the voice.

I can't.

Yes, I will save it.

I'm going to save it for you right now.

Hello, hello, hello.

Oh, he did make it.

Daniel LaRusso is going to fight.

So, okay, so, but Cecil, you're living Eli's dream of being introduced to the show that you're already on.

It's already on, right?

Welcome back, man.

Thank you for having me and Marsh in spirit.

We appreciate it.

We appreciate it.

And Heath, you're also still here.

I'm welcoming everyone back who's on the show today.

Hello.

Hello, Governor.

All right.

So,

give me the elevator pitch.

Cecil, what is the no Rogan experience?

Well, we're two guys without a lot of Rogan experience getting to know Joe Rogan.

Joe's one of the most influential people out there.

His YouTube alone, just as YouTube, millions of people watch the YouTube videos.

That doesn't include the Spotify downloads.

And, you know, if you look at some of his recent, just some of his recent shows have clips that go viral or they get quoted in news stories.

So we watch or listen, we actually watch every, not every week, but we watch a certain episode every week.

And then if his guest lies or makes something up or tries to pass something off as fact, we will correct it and we will provide footnotes if necessary.

All right.

So why, like, there are a lot of people out there purveying bullshit, obviously.

Marsh does a whole segment on them on this show.

So why Joe Rogan specifically?

Well, Joe has this massive audience of people who I think are easily influenced.

And I feel like Joe's got, he's got a grasp on these people.

And it's not proven, but it feels like there was a push last election.

At least Joe will tell you that he had some sort of influence in the last election.

And he will say, I kind of shifted the needle when I had Donald Trump on, when I had J.D.

Vance on, when I had Elon Musk on, and they were all touting these Republican principles and Joe's show, from what I've read, I haven't listened to all of Joe's back catalog, and I just recently started listening to full episodes.

But from what I've read, Joe has taken somewhat of a shift to harder right ideals.

And so I think there's a reason why we should be debunking him because he's got a huge audience.

Any sort of soft right, a lot of people, he lets these things sort of seep into normal conversation and they show up when you're not expecting them.

Yeah.

I mean, he definitely moved the needle on the election, I would say.

He's got such a huge audience.

Yeah, it's a huge audience.

And he had that weird shift because he's a Bernie Sanders guy originally.

Like four years ago, he was like, this is my guy.

I love Bernie Sanders.

And I would imagine a bunch of his audience, also Bernie Sanders-type people.

So I love that hopefully this, this type of show can get some of those people back out of the craziness and realize what's going on.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's a weird shift.

Yeah, Joe has replaced those, that Bernie Sanders and sort of like his occasional leftists with billionaires now.

So

since we've been doing the show, we've covered several billionaires that have been on his show.

Yeah.

All right.

So who precisely is the show for?

Is it for like the disaffected Joe Rogan viewer?

Is it for the die-hard Joe Rogan lover?

Or is it for the person like me that wants to arm himself against, you know, the people in his life that might be swayed by Joe Rogan's bullshit?

It's kind of for both.

We're trying to do two main audiences.

You know, people who just want to know what Joe is doing, who he's talking to the ideas he's spreading the and they just don't want to listen to him they don't want to have to listen to him but they want to know what he's up to those people can find a home at this show and then there's this other people that we think are like on the fringe of joe's podcast perhaps maybe they used to listen to him and they disliked his heart or turn right or they start to question some of the claims he's making and We think we're a landing spot for those people too.

And this isn't, this isn't necessarily a dunking show.

I know there's a lot of shows out there that sort of cover one person that are very specifically dunking shows, but we're more of fact-checking and we're spending a lot more time on that than making fun of him and his guests.

So it's not as sort of comedy-oriented as the other shows that I do.

It's a lot more serious conversation about these very serious ideas he's talking about.

I should say it's still really fucking funny.

I was going to say, yeah, it's also very funny.

You guys, you debunk and you de-dunk.

Like you do both.

And occasionally we will dunk.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not the focus of the show.

If I wanted to dunk, I could have made a comedy show easy and dunked the shit out of that guy, but we decided to do a little differently.

It would take a lot less research to

take a lot less research.

And that's what impresses me most about this show is that it is like, because if you ever actually listen to Joe Rogan, it's like...

It's 45 minutes of ums.

It is so slow-paced.

It is so boring.

And that's just the intro.

Yeah, right, exactly.

But there's so little happening here.

And when you and Marsh break it down, it's like super fast-paced and it really propels you through the conversation and gets all of the high points in a way that is like actually listenable.

So what's surprising is how often he lies and how often the lies pop up and little misinformation, little pieces of misinformation, you can go through like a minute and you'll find three different things you have to research in a single minute.

Yeah, it's got a big gish gallop thing going on for sure.

Yeah.

So

I actually, after the election, was like, I got to understand what the fuck these idiots are doing.

Like, how did this happen?

Joe Rogan seems to have a big squad of people who made this weird flip.

And so I actually put myself through listening to some Joe Rogan just to be like, what is, what is happening there?

And yeah, it's exhausting, but your show with Barsh is so fantastic.

I don't have to do any robots anymore to do

the important points.

And like the key being.

understanding this thing that happened, understanding how this can capture some group of people and hopefully understand how to get them back, maybe some of them.

I don't know.

I hope.

I hope, Heath.

I hope so, man.

So I have to know the origin story here, right?

Because at some point, either you or Marsh turned towards either Marsh or you and said, hey, I got a great idea.

Let's listen to Joe Rogan, like theoretically for the rest of our goddamn lives.

So how did that happen?

So it was my idea.

I, like a lot of people, like I was suggested earlier, was dissolutioned by the election.

So after that happened, I started thinking about exactly what Heath just went through was what the hell, what, what is he doing?

What is, what's happening on this show?

So I listened and I thought, God, I don't want to do that again.

I really don't want to do that again.

Is there somebody out there who's doing this work?

And I didn't find anything.

Like there's nobody out there who's just listening to Rogan and just sort of dissecting it.

I did find a couple podcasts that were pro-Joe Rogan that did this sort of work, that sort of took his large four-hour show and turned it into 30 minutes of bullet points, but that wasn't interesting to me.

And I thought, well, gosh, I'm just going to get watered down.

Ivermectin from these people.

I want the strong stuff.

I need a guy, you know?

So I decided, well, why don't I see if I could try to do this?

And initially, like I suggested, I could have easily put together a crew in 30 seconds like that would be amazing comedians and be really funny.

But I thought that might not be the best way to go about debunking some of this stuff and maybe pulling, you you know, reaching across and seeing if I could pull a couple people who might be on the fringes over.

And so I thought, who could help me really dissect this stuff?

And the first person I thought of was Marsh.

And so I called him and I said, I was actually really nervous on the call because I thought he was going to be like, fuck you and hang up on me.

Because like, he should have.

Yeah.

He should have.

He should have.

I didn't, any sane person would.

But three minutes into the conversation, he's like, I'm on board.

Let's do it.

He's like, yeah, let's absolutely 100%.

Let's do it.

And we tested a couple episodes.

We listened to them and we wrote some notes down.

We thought, yeah, we can do this.

There's a show here.

And then we sort of did a couple test episodes.

And then the rest, we just started doing it.

We're already on a, we're going to be recording episode 12, hopefully this week if his

voice holds up.

Yeah.

All right.

So obviously you can't cover every hour of every episode.

that Joe puts out because his shows are 42 fucking hours long and they come out nine times a week or something.

So how do you choose which episodes you're going to cover, what you're going to talk about?

Well, before we started, Marsh was actually worried that it was going to be hard to find which episodes contained a lot of misinformation.

And he was worried that there was just going to be general chat.

But once we got into it, it became real apparent how constant conspiracism and inaccuracies are just flying around.

So he thought, no, actually, this is going to be sort of easy.

We could basically pick any show.

There's going to be something to cover in every show.

But so far, we've sort of been choosing things that are pretty easy for us because we're still trying to get our legs underneath us.

We're not really sure sort of, you know, it's still difficult to put everything together for every single show because we haven't really got our, like our rhythm yet.

But, you know, most of the time, it's somebody who's either culturally relevant, you know, a person who's famous or culturally relevant topics.

So, you know, it might be somebody you never heard of who's talking about free speech issues, or it's going to be, you know, they're talking about Doge cuts or USAID, or it's going to be a famous person like Mel Gibson.

And sometimes those things coincide.

But so far, it's been pretty easy.

We're also planning on going into the back catalog.

We've done that once so far.

We did Tucker Carlson from April of last year.

And so we plan on doing that as we work our way through the catalog forward.

If there's a really like dry week where it's just him and his comedians, we might just do one of those back catalog episodes that people seem to really latch onto.

Yeah, the Tucker Carlson episode was great.

You did the Tucker episode.

Watching Tucker, like the YouTube version of The Rogan with Tucker, it must have just been like two dudes squinting in confusion for four hours just the whole time.

Yeah, man.

Exhausting.

Have a squeeze stress toy if you watch that.

You definitely need one in your hand.

So, okay, so tell me about the process a little bit here.

And maybe this is just interesting to me as a podcaster, but even like once you've said, okay, we're going to talk about this interview that he did with Mel Gibson or whatever, like.

There's a lot of bullshit coming out of Mel Gibson, and you only have so much show, right?

Like, so

how do you guys decide, like, you know, not only like what lies are we going to talk about, but how are we going to turn this into sort of a cohesive narrative?

Like, because that's one of the things I really like about the show is that it, like, it's not just a list of what's wrong, but it's, it's really kind of an examination of what are we trying to accomplish here?

What are we falling for, et cetera.

So, so, so talk me through that, if you would.

Yeah, so the show starts out where we'll pick a show, and then the good thing is that the transcripts exist.

So we'll normally just take a transcript, we'll put it in a note, and then we'll start listening.

Now, I normally, my, my process is to not look at anything when I listen the first time.

So I don't take any notes.

I don't do anything.

I listen to it all start to finish without taking any notes.

I just try to commit what they're talking about to memory.

I'd like to nominate you for a canonization

or something.

The first time you listened to Jesus.

Yeah,

I listened three times.

I think that counts as two miracles, too.

So you're like,

so second time I listen is I sit down at my computer and I look at the transcripts and then Marsha and I will normally go through and we will bracket out certain sections that we think this is sort of the main idea, this is the main focus.

Joe's shows kind of, they meander all over the place with a million different topics, but occasionally there's one sort of main theme and we'll pull that main theme out and we'll sort of set that aside.

And then there's always massive amounts of logical fallacy.

So we'll sort of pick one that gets overused, you know, whether it's Gish Gallup or it's argument from authority or whatever.

We'll just pick one logical fallacy out or a second.

Sometimes we'll do a second main theme.

We're like, oh, there, there really wasn't a logical fallacy we want to focus on.

We really like to focus on the second theme.

We normally do it in two segments.

So the show itself is about two segments long.

And then we comment on everything.

So then we start going through and we start commenting on pretty much anything that catches our fancy, anything that we really want to debunk or talk about.

And to be honest, there's no way you're going to catch everything.

So, you know, you just, you can't expect us to catch everything, but we'll go through and we'll, we'll write things out, listen to it, write things out, crop things out and sort of quote.

And then we'll go through through those notes and sort of sort that out into two different shows.

And our notes at the end of this are probably about 170 pages long for each, each episode.

It's the whole transcript.

So you got to admit the whole transcripts in there.

So it's not like we're writing 170 pages.

Oh, yeah.

But our notes themselves are probably about 15 pages long.

And then I listen to it a third time when I cut the clips.

So I listen to it again.

And then, but it's more select this time.

It's just finding it.

And then I listen to it a fourth time when I listen to the clip with Marsh.

So it's technically four times.

Oh, and then you edit yourself listening to it for the fourth time.

Yeah.

Jesus, man.

I feel like a few episodes down the line, one of the transcripts, you're going to paste it in and it's just going to be Hamlet.

And you're going to be like, oh, shit.

What?

Rogan wrote Hamlet.

Monkeys can write Hamlet.

That's amazing.

Okay, so.

What are you guys going to do?

Like, if you ever pick an episode and then everything in it is completely true and accurate?

Do you guys have a plan for what to do?

You know, Marsh, I sent the questions to Marsh and Marsh's big thing when he sent back was nope.

Yeah, I got to do the voice.

Nope.

So that's Marsh's voice right there.

No, but, you know, like, here's the thing.

Joe puts out four shows a week.

And that gives us a lot of space to pick something.

And, you know, like we said earlier, Joe is just a credulous mouthpiece for all different types of people, whether it's billionaires or somebody on the Trump campaign or UAPs or whatever.

And so very often, he is very easy to find things that are relevant.

Now, on occasion, he'll have somebody on there that we wouldn't want to cover.

Like he'll have a hunter on there and they're going to talk hunting stuff for three hours.

They will.

almost certainly delve into trans women in sports, or they may certainly talk about government lockdowns or COVID or ivermectin or something, free speech or UAPs.

They may delve off in, or some conspiracy theories, and they may delve off into those areas, but they're not going to be interesting.

They're going to be like only a couple of minutes and then he's going to go back to talking about deer hunting or whatever.

So it's not going to be, and he'll do the same thing with comedians.

So sometimes there's some shows you're just, you know, for sure aren't going to be good.

But when he catches somebody who happens to be like one of these people who happens to be a UAP person, like James Fox, who we covered, then you know you got gold.

They're going to be talking about something for sure the whole time that is going to be conspiracy laden and there's going to be plenty of stuff to talk about.

Right.

The episode where you did the crazy coffee guy, the guy was the like.

Oh, yeah, Vin Hayford.

Yeah, coffee company.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You talked about a bunch of stuff, and then you were like, okay,

uh, bow hunting deer, bow hunting deer, bow hunting deer.

Oh, here we go.

Uh, messenger ribonucleic acid from the coffee guy who hunts deer with a bow and arrow.

Honestly, my favorite aspect of the entire show is the summaries that Cecil gives at the beginning of what

was this episode about?

every time it's like

okay here we go yeah man yeah so okay so what is the hardest or the like most frustrating aspect of doing this so far well what is frustrating for me is it feels like he was fed and believes a totally Russian explanation for the war in Ukraine and he doesn't waver and he has a ton of guests that all believe the same thing and espouse the same Russian propaganda about the war.

How could that ever have happened?

You think there's like some sort of propaganda machine going on?

I have no idea how he gets there, right?

What's crazy, though, is a lot of people that are listening, I think, are getting these Russian talking points by Osmosis because they're not, it's not like he's coming out and he's talking about it in a way that seems like I'm caring for America every man.

And so when I talk about these things, it gives him more weight than if someone were to come out in a suit that is like maybe a politician that's talking about him.

And And I think he slips it past the goalie on a lot of people.

And for Marsh, what's been most frustrating for him is to see how Joe gets sold a bit of misinformation in one interview.

And then weeks later, he'll bring it up on his own accord.

And he did this with Mark Andreessen when this billionaire was a billionaire who basically came on and just lied for three hours on his show.

And this billionaire told him that if you get what they call debanked, it will happen because of your political opinions.

And he never offers any examples of anybody actually getting debanked because of that.

What he talks about is people in crypto, like highly risky industries that get debanked.

And then Joe later on just will bring this up out of nowhere as like it was his own organic thought.

And he's done the same thing about Ukraine and NATO.

He's done this with a couple of other things that we've seen him.

He heard this earlier.

Four weeks later, he's now repeating it to a new guest.

And, you know, maybe you missed the Mark Andreessen episode, but if you hear Joe talking about it, you're like, oh, man, people can get debanked.

What's that about?

And then maybe you'll do a search and you'll see all the news stories that popped up because Joe, when he had Mark Andreessen on, there's a million news stories that are quoting Mark Andreessen about this completely credulously without fact checking.

And now people seem to think it's sort of in the information ecosystem that debanking happens because of your political opinions.

And that's just not true.

That's not something that happens.

But that information has been laundered by Joe Rogan and it was very purposefully laundered by Mark Andreessen.

Yeah.

You mentioned the like slipping it past the goalie concept because people hear like an average Joe just talking about these things and seems more credible to them.

That's weird to me, but I guess that's how

epistemology works for I'm an ivory tower liberal.

So, you know,

what do you know?

I know the same way.

Listening to experts.

But that is how it works for a lot of people.

Yeah.

And the phrase you hear is, the left needs a Joe Rogan, right?

The Joe Rogan of the left is what we need.

Yes.

It's kind of a silly phrase because we have, there's obviously there's plenty of podcasts from the left, too.

Well, we had Joe Rogan up here.

And we had Joe Rogan.

We did have him.

Exactly.

He's even said exactly that.

He's like, I was the Joe Rogan of the left.

But that slipping it past the goalie thing, I think it is actually a useful lesson to learn.

The key is I want.

good politicians going on shows like that anyway, maybe not Rogan all the time, but going on shows like Call Her Daddy.

Kamala went on call her daddy.

Yeah.

But I didn't think Kamala talked like a human quite as much as I wanted her to, you know, just like bullshit in the bar type stuff.

Yeah.

Apparently that vibe is important to people.

Yeah.

Maybe we learned that lesson from Rogan.

I don't know.

Yeah, maybe.

I think, you know, what's interesting about that is Joe will say, and he says this all the time, that you don't get to really know a person.

or what they're talking about.

And you can, and it's harder to suss out bullshit in a shorter conversation.

He thinks these long conversations are necessary.

We found over many episodes that he has, this is completely untrue and he doesn't know how to suss out any bullshit at all.

And he's really, he's really, really bad at it.

And, you know, we don't feel like he's right.

But one thing he is right about is that people get more comfortable as they talk and as they have these long conversations.

And so these long conversations do open up a more authentic person or at least the person who that they're trying, they will pay more attention.

attention to who they're trying to be, I think, as time goes on.

So I would hope that one of these people would, would walk into one of these left-wing or even centrist podcasts, throw the script away and just be themselves.

You know, I'd love to hear, hear one of these politicians be themselves instead of trying to make sure you go over all my talking points before, like, that's not useful.

And then nobody cares about that.

I think, I think Joe really did touch on that in this last election.

I, as much as I hate the idea of a politician you'd want to have a beer with, so many people don't.

Yeah.

JD Vance even sounded like a human when he was talking to Joe Rogan.

He made J.D.

Vance sound like a human to people.

That's weird.

Difficult to do.

Insane.

So, okay, so just to be as antithetical to Joe Rogan as possible, I'm going to hurry this interview along just a little bit because I have one final question.

And maybe it's too big a question.

I think we've already touched on it a little bit, but to circle back around to the beginning here, Joe Rogan is an idiot.

Why is he so compelling to so many people?

Based on what you've heard,

do you have a sense of what the appeal is?

So I have an idea and mine is that he can literally sit down for three hours with no obvious edits or lulls in a conversation, have a conversation with someone that he mostly keeps flowing and somewhat interesting.

Now, I may not be personally interested in the things they're talking about, but I think everyone in the conversation is engaged.

He's kind of like an art bell, right?

He's like an art bell, but a guy who talks to his guests for a really long time.

So I can see it as being ear candy and easy to consume.

Also, nothing is ever so complex that you can't understand it because Joe wouldn't understand it.

So nothing is so complex that a normal person can't get it.

So everything is always broken down into sort of these bite-sized chunks.

And he does a lot of trad mask stuff, right?

So his masculinity stuff, you got hunting, you got MMA, you got cars, you got lifting weights.

All that stuff is, you know, the trad mask stuff that he's playing at.

And it's, it's appealing to those people, right, off the bat, right off the bat.

If you, if you see those things, and there's a group of people out there that are going to love that.

And then his message about this stuff sort of resonates with young men, which is a lot of pull yourself up by your bootstraps, work harder than other people, you're going to succeed.

It's, you know, you can see how it's easy to weave that stuff into everything.

Now, Marsh would point out that, you know, what's happening, what's really happening behind the scenes is you get a chance to see Zuckerberg come in and give a Facebook corporate press conference to an interviewer that is wholly on his side for a long time, as long as he spends 20 minutes talking about Bo stuff.

As long as he can do that, basically can read all the, he can read the terms in service to you of Facebook and Joe would be completely enthralled the whole time.

But in some ways, though, Joe has a way of making that conversation feel authentic.

So it tricks people into thinking it's an authentic conversation, even though Mark Zuckerberg, 100%,

he had a vision of how he wanted that conversation to go.

Same with Mark Andreessen.

You can tell just by listening to it.

Oh, yeah, he did not sound human.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think Marsh agrees with me that there's sort of this simple views on what it means to be a man, especially right now when people are re-examining masculinity.

It's a real simple view.

And I think that captures people.

So those sorts of things, I think, are what makes Joe.

what makes Joe's show compelling to a lot of people.

It's not compelling to me.

I have to psych myself up every week to listen to it.

I can't just go in.

I have to put like a, I will rearrange my fucking sock drawer before I listen to this show.

I hate it so much.

But for other people, it's really compelling and they and they put it on every single time it plays.

So yeah.

All right.

Well, let me just close things off by letting our audience know that your new show is very worth their time.

It's fast-paced.

It's hilarious.

It's informative.

All the shit that you want out of a podcast.

It's also linked on the show notes, which is super convenient and available wherever you get your podcast.

Cecil, thank you so much for coming on and thank you so much for the work you're doing on the show.

Yay, thanks for having me on.

And thank you you for having me on.

That was Marsh, by the way.

That was Marsh there.

Cheers.

Obviously.

Cheers, too.

Before I blow out the candles tonight, I wanted to thank all the folks who reached out and wished me a happy birthday yesterday.

It's flattering to know how many people give enough of a shit to type on my behalf there.

Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be to look out for a brand new episode of our Sister Show, The Skeptic, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our Sister Show's Hot Friend God Awful Movies debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our Half Sister Show Citation Dida debuting at Noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this show wouldn't have bothered to play if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for kicking even more ass than usual this week.

I needed to thank Eli Bosnick for taking my birthday off this year.

It's brave.

Not a lot of people would even have the tenacity to ask, but hey, you're nothing if not tenacious, Eli.

I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucy Indelusions Illusions for all kinds of shit, but most immediately for a new watch this week.

It's very cool.

I need to thank Cecil Cicarello for helping out this week.

I also want to thank Michael Marshall for the truly heroic but ultimately doomed effort that he made to be on the interview with us this week.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best bipeds.

And Sam, Jennifer, Henry, Andrew, Jason, Tavor, Nick, Justin, Robin, Jean-Marc, Life is Tweet, Sawyer, Sistine, Dan, Rebecca, Starshark, Julie, R.

Roberts, Alex, Athey, and Vegan, Punk, Tree Hugger, Moey, Mads, Ripe, Tweeks, Venkatara, Manujam, Jessica, Darth Nader, Susan, David, Lisa, and Mark, who are so bright they wear sunglasses for the sun's sake.

Together, these 31 wonderful wonders of oneness won our hearts this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scalingadheist.com.

And if you'd like to help, but you can't donate to another podcast until you've avenged the last one.

You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media.

And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also burdled the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingadius.com.

He doesn't have laces.

As I wrote that, I was like, this joke does not work.

He's trying to hang himself with Velcro.

It's the worst.

Just Eli trying to hang himself.

The Velcro keeps coming apart.

Just case, you hear that rip and you just fall and then a rip against falls.

Anna, get my good Velcro.

I've been doing a thing.

This content is can-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2025, all rights reserved.