609: Pumpkin Spice Edition

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Warning.

On this podcast, we tell people to fuck themselves.

Who should fuck themselves?

This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Factor and by the new Christian Wright comic book series about the virtue of hating people who are different.

The adventures of Maganito.

The adventures of Maganito.

No flux to give.

And now, the scathing atheist.

Hello, people of America.

It's I, the ghost of John F.

Kennedy.

I fucking hate my nephew.

And we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey man.

It's Thursday.

It's October 17th, and it's Mulligan Day.

And it's Mulligan Day.

Sports thing.

Did I do it right?

Yeah, nailed it.

Perfect.

I'm Eli Bosnik.

I'm Ethan Wright.

And from Burb Clave, New Jersey, and Ann Arbor, Michigan, this is the Skating Ideas.

On this week's episode, Michael Marshall will magically appear for some headlines.

Neil Stevenson fans will love that snow crash illusion just now.

And Anna Bosnik will join us to remind us that Christians have the worst version of everything.

But first, the Eli tribe.

So I'm teaching a full semester acting class this fall.

I'm absolutely loving it.

And last week, I get an email from the university mentioning that my class happened to fall on mental health awareness and screening week.

And would I mind passing along a brief video to my students?

And of course, I was happy to do it, but it got got me thinking about this moment here where I'd get a chance to talk to you.

I mean, I knew Noah was headed to QED, which meant another chance for one of these Eliah tribes.

And so I got to thinking about what I wanted you to know about mental illness, what I wanted to tell you.

See, we live in a very different world than when I was first diagnosed with depression.

The only depressed people I knew about or heard about outside of my own family were poets and writers who had killed themselves.

Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf.

I never heard of anyone living with depression, only dying of it.

And even the experience of those poets didn't match up with my own.

Their depression seemed so well expressed, so delicate, so grand.

Their depression seemed like one last poem they had lent to the world.

And mine,

mine was just pathetic.

Now, look, obviously everyone's depression is different, but to express to you what mine is like, or at least what it's like when it's bad, I need you to imagine the worst thing you've ever done.

A time when you got caught or maybe even just accused of something terrible and it felt like the whole world was against you.

Maybe a time when people in your life said and did unforgivably cruel things to you you that made you feel entirely alone in a pain that's so total, it's damn near physical.

And look, I hope you can't relate to that feeling, but most of us can.

And that's what depression is like all the time.

You wake up with that lump in your stomach, that feeling that you've done something wrong, that something terrible has happened, but the terrible thing is just

you.

And that's before the self-talk starts.

And it never really seems to stop.

Not a voice in your head so much as it is just a rising certainty that everything you do and say is stupid and shameful and just very obviously the worst.

I remember during a very especially bad bout of depression as a kid, sitting and eating a peanut butter and banana sandwich and crystal clear, like it had been whispered in my ear, I had the thought, that's right, you just eat your stupid fucking sandwich.

Which, can I say, in retrospect, is a pretty funny depression thought, but hilarious in retrospect or not, nobody else had depression like me, right?

My depression was not, as Susan Sontag put it, melancholy without its charms.

It was messy and ugly and

mean

all day, every day, mean, mean in a way that I believed and identified with in a way that I don't know that I'll ever be free of.

And add to that, that I have what was known at the time as refractory depression and is now called treatment-resistant depression.

Can I say I'm kind of glad they hadn't started using that term when I was diagnosed?

But the point is, the medications and the treatments available at the time of my diagnosis didn't work for me.

Finding medication that helped me was a years-long process, and the slips and slides along the way were painful and embarrassing.

It felt like I couldn't even heal in the way medicine intended, that I was somehow so irrevocably broken that even medical science had no help for me.

And in the middle of all of this, in a therapy session, a very good psychologist told me something that absolutely baffled me.

He said, one of these days, the idea of suicide will be completely reprehensible to you.

One of these days, you'll put the chance of killing yourself at 0%.

And I was like,

0%?

I mean, I laughed at him.

Like, when you're in the throes of depression, you feel like you're underwater and suicide sounds like coming up for air.

I mean, I'd been joking, thinking, or outright planning to kill myself since I was a child.

I'm not exaggerating.

I found one of my old journals this year, and the earliest entry I could find where I expressed the desire to kill myself was when I was seven years old.

And when I told him that, this doctor looked at me and he shared the only thing about himself that he would ever share with me.

He said, I get it.

I was there.

And now I'm here.

And now,

here I am,

almost 20 years after talking to that doctor.

And he was right.

I'm at a zero.

Now, look, a lot of that is my kid, right?

I think before I had my kid, I had gotten my offing myself percentages down pretty low.

But now that it's something I would do to my son, yeah, it's zero.

There's no set of circumstances, no feeling of waking up that sends me that direction.

I don't think about suicide seriously, and I don't think about trying to fly seriously.

That's how certain I am.

And look, it took a lot of work, messy work, therapists, and pills, and mental health walks and meditations, all the shit you see on brightly colored posters.

But it also took setbacks and failures and patient friends and family and also not patient friends.

People I lost, people who didn't want to stick around till I was better.

That is their choice.

And I still don't know that I can bring myself to blame them for it.

In fact, I wouldn't hear anyone talk about depression in the way that I felt it until well into adulthood on John Green's podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed, in an essay called Harvey.

I send people that audio and that text quite a bit.

You should check it out if you haven't.

The image John Green conjures of lying on his kitchen floor, unable to do anything but stare at the world through the bubbles in a leader of seven up.

That was a depression I could identify with.

That was a depression like mine, but more importantly,

someone who I admired had been through it.

And so, like Harvey helped me, I hope

this

gives you some hope wherever you are.

Maybe your depression isn't as bad as mine.

Maybe it's worse, but maybe you've never heard someone describe looking up from the bottom the way you see it.

And maybe hearing that there is, in fact, a way up from that bottom helps you.

Maybe it sounds as absurd to you as the doctor sounded to me, but here I am and there I was.

It's so hard not to sound stereotypical when you talk about this stuff.

It's so easy to feel inauthentic and trite because beautiful language, by the very nature of beauty, lies about the experience.

Poetic flourish betrays the prosaic reality.

So,

I guess what I wanted to tell you is just what that doctor told me:

that it's possible.

I was there,

and now I'm here.

they're talking about your jesus the interrupt this broadcast bring you a special news moment

joining me for headlines tonight is the me to the myself and i me

hello today me i'm heath and i'm here in the podcastiverse we've got some headlines from the last couple weeks that we didn't get to share with you quite yet but first we're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsor Factor.

Okay, what if I just stand outside on the street?

Like we could watch the same TV show at the same time.

What do you want?

Cecil, you're being unreasonable.

Okay, can I say that?

Hey, Eli.

I got you some takeout.

Oh, thank you, Heath, but no, thanks.

I appreciate it.

Really?

Sure?

You don't want any?

Yeah, I'm kind of on a special diet right now.

It's a little embarrassing, but I'm only eating meals that are

full of fall flavor.

Sorry.

Full of fall flavor.

That's right, Heath.

The diet.

Full of fall flavor.

Pumpkin spice, birch, warm sweaters, that kind of thing.

You're only eating warm sweaters mostly?

Warm sweater vibes, Heathelton.

Okay.

You wouldn't understand because

you don't have Factor.

Oh, hold on.

What's

Factor?

At Factor, their chefs do the shopping and the chopping to bring you fresh, never-frozen, fully cooked meals right to your doorstep.

All you have to do is heat and eat.

All of their meals are dietitian-approved, so you know you're getting the nutrition you need along with the fall flavors you crave.

So wait, no cooking or cleanup?

Nope.

Factor's fresh, nutritious, chef-prepared meals are ready to eat in just two minutes.

All right.

That sounds great, but does it come with variety?

I don't want to eat like sweater vibes every day or whatever you're doing.

Oh, Heath, Factor offers 35 wholesome meals every week, including gourmet plus, keto, calorie smart, vegan, and veggie.

So you'll always have something you love that suits your lifestyle.

Okay, I'm sold.

Where do I sign up?

Head to factormeals.com slash scathing50 and use code scathing50 to get 50% off your first box and 20% off your next month.

That's code scaming50 at factormeals.com slash scathing50 to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month.

Good stuff.

Well, more Chinese takeout for me, I guess.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Is it pumpkin spice Chinese?

What?

No?

Oh, well, then you can have it.

And now, back to the headlines already in progress.

And in X Fox Live News, Fox News host and man who dresses like a middle school art teacher going through a bad divorce.

Glenn Beck appeared on former Fox News host and man who dresses like a history teacher going through a bad divorce, Tucker Carlson's Twitter show this week to talk about how it was actually him that broke up with Fox News back in the day.

Was it?

And he did it.

He did it for Jesus.

Cool.

So we're going to talk about it.

I heard his audience was actually too big for Fox News.

That's it, right?

No, I also, he ended their relationship with Welsh's because those grapes were sour to begin with.

That's what it is.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So little backstory here.

Both Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson were forced to resign for being too racist for Fox News, which is a fucking achievement on its own.

That's right.

It actually confirms general relativity.

It does.

And can we just say it's been going great for them ever since, right?

Glenn Beck started the household name of conservative news media, The Blaze, and Tucker Carlson is now hosting an interview show about Jesus in the only place more racist than Fox News.

Twitter.

Yeah.

The social media website.

And pretty much since the moment Tuckum's hit the Twitter timeline airwaves he's been rewriting his own story but this week they took a crack at glenn's let me guess his sweaters are actually too stylish and women think he isn't mushy enough pretty much is what it is yeah so glenn starts off with a series of insane claims right Beck alleges that Fox News hired someone to sift through his garbage in an attempt to find dirt on him, that Roger Ailes had personally threatened him by implying they had information that he had somehow hurt his own wife and that he was told not to talk about God so much on air and that his bosses were keeping count of how many times he mentioned him.

Really?

Okay.

Well, this is fun.

If anybody out there happened to create a remote control raccoon with a big flashy red light on top, it would definitely be insensitive and mean to deploy that robot near Glenn Beck's trash cans

a whole bunch.

Yeah, but Glenn,

the shit you say out of your fucking face is dirt on you, right?

Nobody needs to go through your garbage.

You sucking is plenty.

Yeah, it really is.

Now, you're probably thinking to yourself, wow, Eli, that relationship at Fox News sounds a lot like Satan's temptation of Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Well, good news, Tucker Carlson agrees with you, interjecting, all this can be yours in reference to Matthew 4.

Hold on,

what's the low, low price for that?

That can be yours.

Like, I'm genuinely on board for funding this.

Okay, so well I subsidize Satan's Temptation to Jesus at the rate of about 45 bucks a month, but it depends on how many different people you subscribe to sure like individually.

You got to be careful.

But what about the moment where Glenn finally decided to call it quits?

Was it because he called Barack Obama a racist and a bunch of their advertisers pulled out?

No.

No.

I heard it was that.

No, it was at the same time as that,

but it's unrelated.

Oh, I'll let Glenn tell us in his own, may I say it, poetic words.

Quote, I walked to the window and I could still feel the cold glass on my forehead.

And I leaned against the window.

You're looking out the window wrong then, you fucking.

You doing Windows head first, like I'm being weird.

And I put my head there.

They work from a distance, too.

Yeah, timeline.

The technology is good from a distance.

And I'm looking down at the city, which is just intoxicating.

If you like that kind of stuff, it's intoxicating.

And I look down and I'm like, how can this be your plan?

And I heard, internally, I heard, if you don't leave now, you will not leave with your soul.

The next day, I went in and tendered my resignation.

Okay, quote.

So just to be clear, Glenn Beck left Fox News in 2011, which means A, the god of the universe was cool with Fox News until 2011, apparently.

And B, Tucker Carlson definitely got super scared about his eternal soul based on that timeline timeline when he heard this.

But most importantly, if you're ever feeling a little sad, a little down, think about Glenn Beck pressing his weird middle school art teacher in a divorce face into his pain of sadness glass that he has as a single tear rolls down his cheek.

That's fun.

It's fun.

It also works if you're ever feeling a little ED, whatever.

It does the work a lot.

It does the work, yeah, for sure.

I was just thinking that.

And in the N D is 9 news.

Fantastic.

There's nothing that alternative medicine practitioners love more than the chance to appear credible.

Because, like, sure, they'll give the big talk about other ways of knowing and embracing new paradigms, but crack open that door of legitimacy even a little, and they'll be up in your august institutions faster than you can say white lab court.

Which is why it's so important that we, as skeptics and rational thinkers, remain alert to any opportunity to strip Wu of even the slightest unearned token of officialdom.

Okay, yeah, lots of great ways to do that.

I feel like the white lab coat needs to become fully restricted, like a licensed thing.

Like if you see a naturopath wearing one, it's like a stolen valor situation.

You know what I mean?

Like real doctors putting up videos about how they deal with that.

Yeah, 100%.

I would enjoy those.

So fortunately, I bring you news of one such opportunity to fight back today, courtesy of the skeptical writer and the only naturopath will ever have speak at QED, Britt Hermes.

So far.

So far.

Because Britt got in touch to tell us that the accreditation of the naturopathic doctoral program offered by Basta University is currently up for review.

And part of that review involves asking the public for comments about it.

Yeah, but I don't think they mean my comments, do they, Mark?

So Basta University is actually Britt's alma mater, where she studied the same naturopathic course that's under question here before realizing after graduation that everything she'd learned was a complete lie and that naturopathic doctors can't actually cure cancer and or anything like that.

And that the only real thing about her college experience was the massive student loan debt that she left with.

And sadly, fellow graduates of Basta, who I guess probably don't refer to themselves as bastards, but I think I'll refer to them as bastards.

Obviously, yeah.

They've not learned that lesson.

And many of them go on to be the same naturopathic doctors doctors that will peddle dangerous pseudoscience to sick people throughout their careers.

And look, I know some of you might be thinking, why should we care?

Why do we care about people who sign up for a course in bullshit?

But if you're one of the ones thinking that, you should remember lots of people believe in all sorts of woo ideas when they're college-aged, but then they go on to be the kinds of people that you look up to and respect and, you know, subscribe to their podcasts and things.

Yeah, to be fair, when I was 18, I would have majored in Ayn Rand objectivism if they offered a department for that.

Like, I was lucky enough to have those ideas just verbally beat out of me by smarter people, but I get it.

When you're 18, you're fucking dumb.

Yeah, and I was a 9-11 truther, but I only turned out to be one-third right about that.

Isn't that right, Marsh?

Moving on.

I'm not indulging that.

The Pennsylvania thing.

But fewer people do like figure out that it's all bullshit than we'd actually like, partly because colleges like Basta persuade them to go deeper into the bullshit, because when they've graduated, they'll be able to heal the world and get rich doing it, apparently.

And given that they don't have truth on their side, the marketing of these colleges heavily relies on the trappings of credibility that they get from things like accreditation.

So BATA's course in bullshit is currently accredited by the Department of Education, which allows them to charge $200,000 for a four-year naturopathic course, knowing that the fact that they're accredited means students can then take out federally subsidized loans to cover those costs.

Yeah, it's like if you could use FEMA funds on thoughts and prayers.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, or using PPP loans on thoughts and prayers.

It's like that.

Okay, we did do that one.

So accreditation of BASTA therefore sends millions of dollars of U.S.

tax money into the pockets of pseudoscientists while telling students that they're going to, quote, the Harvard of Naturopathic Medicine, unquote.

Okay.

I mean, I've said this before.

I'd say it's like the Rolex sundial, but sundials can actually tell time somewhat.

Right.

It's dumber than a Rolex sundial.

Yeah, it is.

Absolutely.

Like the Princeton Review actually ranked Basta as, quote, one of the 168 best medical schools, unquote, in the U.S., which, given that they said that in 2011, Britt Hermes points out, that might be their way of saying that the school came dead last, but that hasn't stopped Basta boasting about it and putting it in their marketing materials.

Yeah.

Can you imagine bragging about going to an overpriced and demonstrably worse school, those

fools?

So what we have right here is a rare opportunity.

Put it on your resume for podcasting, huh?

Why we hired you?

So what we have here is a rare opportunity to help push back a little against the spread of bullshit in America, stopping bullshit artists from getting richer and stopping unsuspecting students from being taught how to give fake medicine to sick people.

and therefore making it less likely that sick people will be given fake medicine at all.

So we'll call this a bit of a homework assignment for the listeners here, for anybody willing to spend even just a few minutes letting the accreditors know that the naturopathic doctoral program does not meet the standards of medical school education and that students and patients alike are being harmed by the misinformation disseminated by Bast University, as well as being burdened with major debt and then a qualification that just hugely limits their job prospects for life.

Exactly.

Hey, apropos of nothing, how do you spell fraudulent douche canoes?

with pocket sand?

That's how you spell it.

Yes, that's a correct question.

Yeah, and so with a reminder that public comments are by definition public and that feedback is only ever going to be effective if it's reasonable, polite, and factual.

Polite, I'm going to emphasize very well.

Listeners, you can find the link to the consultation in this show notes, and you should definitely, definitely take part.

Factual pocket sand.

Got it.

Thou art.

And next up in headlines in resurrectile dysfunction news, we have a very troubling story about a disease that's been spreading across the country.

And it already has an alarming death toll that continues growing rapidly.

It's called the woke mind virus.

Latin name, Democratitis.

If you support democracy and vote against Republicans, you will

die 100% of the time.

But here's the good news.

There is a cure out there.

One man can save you.

He's a simple carpenter named Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Yeah, I had a feeling.

Also, a lying pastor is involved in saving you, apparently.

Yeah, it's redundant.

That's redundant.

And we got the first officially recorded use of the cure last week, thanks to Pastor Robert Henderson.

who managed to cure a dying man by making that man become a Republican.

Okay, you joke, Keith, but I'll have you know that thousands of Republicans who got COVID actually died of pneumonia.

So, you know.

Yeah, but they died with Jesus in their hearts, which was like a bit of a tight squeeze, what with all the COVID-caused myocarditis they were having at the time.

Right, yeah, exactly.

So we learned about the miracle cure during the Open the Heavens Conference in Iowa.

Just a reminder, in case you're not paying attention to the world, that's the event where the prophetic heart of God and the manifestation of his supernatural power are demonstrated to those in attendance and viewing online around the world.

And the general idea is to create a divine appointment of God's remnant to boldly release the sound of the roar of righteousness and justice.

That is all from their sight.

Exact words.

Huh.

I feel like if they did that, I'd have...

heard about it before our podcast, right?

I don't think we got the scoop on that.

Maybe it's just that their online streaming tickets were just far too expensive.

You know, they priced everybody out, unlike QED streaming tickets, which are just under $60 for two full days of skeptical content.

QDcon.org for more information.

Oh, I can buy a streaming ticket.

You can.

That's true.

I'm going to ban.

I'm going to get banned.

I'm going to get banned.

Block my IP address right now.

I'll text it.

Okay.

So the Open the Heavens Conference is run by self-proclaimed prophet and scathing atheist all-star.

Well, B-Team all-star.

He's on the roster.

Hank Kuneman.

I remembered his name, but I had to look back at old notes to refresh myself.

And I was reminded that he wrote an evangelical comic book series for kids about heroes named Milo and Mutzvy.

He totally predicted that Tucker Carlson was going to get fired by Fox News, and he he just never mentioned it until after Tucker got fired.

And he prophesied that everyone who's mocking Christianity is going to get leprosy.

Huh.

Okay, well, looking at the leprosy statistics, I guess our next live show should be in India.

Am I right?

But I mean, I guess it's a new spin on the old tactic of trying to turn everybody who has leprosy Christian, unless their plan is to give all the atheists leprosy and then cure them into Christianity using the old way.

Sure, yeah.

It's a roundabout plan.

Well, that guy, Hank Kuneman, was hosting an event, and Pastor Robert Henderson has pretty much the exact same resume of lying.

So Henderson got himself a slot.

You might remember Henderson for blaming 9-11 on Christianity not being unified into one single branch.

Or from that one time he personally killed Ruth Bader Ginsburg by praying.

He did do that, Army.

And this week, he told us that he cast a spell against Kamala Harris to destroy her campaign with, quote, the heat of God.

Yeah, but she ducked and North Carolina got a face full.

You hate to see it.

Yes.

So the claim about tanking the Harris campaign with a magic heat ray didn't go very well because numbers mostly.

So Henderson launched into a story about a guy in Kentucky who was at the hospital with a really high fever that doctors just couldn't figure out.

Had he been struck by the heat of God by any chance, it seemed like he's going around.

So the pastor did a little recon, and he discovered that the ailing man was a lifelong Democrat.

And that means his voting puts him in league with, quote, the spirit of death.

And the only way to save him was to make him switch parties.

So people tried, I guess, arguing policy with the man on his deathbed, but somehow that didn't work.

Yeah, I mean, to be fair, if I was on my deathbed and you told me the only way for me to survive was to be a genuine Republican, I'd probably start getting my affairs in order, you know.

Yeah.

And I'm pretty sure at that point, if instead you choose to switch to third party, the hospital just shoot you themselves.

It's like a back door to getting good assisted dying legislation into America.

You've either got that route or just be wrongly convicted of murder and then the state will carry that out for you.

Right, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so Pastor Henderson continued the story and he explained that he organized a praying sesh and everybody was like, G-O-P-G-O-P, turn Republican.

And it worked.

I'm not joking.

And that phrase, I'm not joking, it's actually part of the quote.

Henderson said, quote, I'm not joking.

Oh, there you go.

Five minutes after we finished that prayer, someone got the call and said his fever just broke.

And the man was spared and he was back at services the next day.

I want you to hear this.

His vote connected him to something in the spirit world that had to be undone.

Hopefully, he repented.

Hopefully, he's a good, solid Republican now.

Okay, so to be clear, he's not even claiming he won the debate.

Nope.

He's saying he lost the debate and then the guy got better.

So he probably won later because, you know, there is one other possibility of the outcome there.

So yeah, the dying Democrat switched parties because of praying in a different building and his liberal death fever went down.

And if it goes back up, hopefully they can find him an election before November so he can vote Republican and make the, you know, the magic spell official.

I worry it's not official until he votes.

So they just got lucky.

Right.

Yeah.

Does he have to re-register?

A lot of questions.

And in Jesus Take the Steel news, you know, as a podcaster, it's not easy to be judgy of other people's career choices.

But as Christians are so fond of saying, through God, all things are possible.

And such is the case this week with first-round draft pick NBA player A.J.

Griffin, who explained that he's retiring from basketball this week to follow Jesus.

So first off, big thanks to Michael for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Michael, thanks to you sending us atheist news at scathingnews at gmail.com.

When we throw paper into a container successfully, we'll say your name instead of Kobe's.

But yeah, it's provisional.

If you keep sending links to Fox News, I think we're going back to Kobe or

Okay, to be fair, I'm the one who found the Fox News.

Oh, that wasn't Michael.

It wasn't Michael's.

In the show notes, it's now like

something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

I say Bortles, by the way.

I know it's the wrong sport, but when I hit, you know, hit a basket with the rolled-up paper, I say Bortles food or stuff like that.

Gretzky?

I have no idea what Bortles is.

Blake Bortles.

Is that a game?

He's a quarterback,

but it's from the Good Place.

It's our version of Jenga, but it's got guts.

It's a reference to the Good Place, which is one of my favorite things.

Yeah.

So if you're not a sports person like myself or prefer more international sports like Michael Marshall here, A.J.

Griffin was very good at basketball in college, which meant when NBA teams were choosing players, he got picked first.

Kind of like middle school volleyball, but with tens of millions of dollars instead of social dread.

Well, first round, 16th overall, but still,

yes, in college.

Yeah.

Like, as an external observer, it is genuinely hilarious to me how much of American sports seems to run on the solid foundation of dibs.

It's all dibs, basically.

We have a giant annual dibs convention for every major sport.

Dibs thing, people attend.

Yeah.

And since then, he's been fine at basketball.

He played in 92 games, averaged seven and a half points and 17.1 minutes per game, which ChatGPT informs me is good, but certainly not the kind of performance you'd hope from a first-round pick, which is probably why he was traded from the Hawks to the Houston Rockets in the offseason.

And look, I'm not saying that's why he's switching to a job with no qualifications or metrics for success.

But yes, I am.

He's a quitter and quitting is Jesus.

Right.

Yeah, because being an American sports star and being religious is otherwise apparently entirely incompatible, which is why Jesus and God get so little mention during every single fucking Paul interview you ever see.

Yeah, just to be clear, he's not quitting his multi-million dollar career to be a minister.

He got to the NBA and he was like, meh, and got traded to the Houston Rockets.

And then the Rockets told him to play in the Extra Help Summer League to get good, hopefully, and he didn't.

So the team was like, hey,

any chance you, I don't know, found Jesus and you want to just like take off?

I did find Jesus.

Oh, you did.

Yeah, no, I don't.

Oh, it's going to be tough, but we will let you go from your contract if you want.

Oh, God, twist my arm.

Now, of course, if you have Christian relatives or Facebook friends, you have already seen this story multiple times as a courageous leap into faith instead of the quitting quitterism that it is.

With Griffin saying of the move, quote, I gave up basketball to follow Jesus.

And I know that in a lot of people's eyes, that seems like, it seems like a loss in the world's eyes.

But I just want to let you guys know that I'm super excited because I truly get to serve God, you know, with my full.

Yes.

And I feel like letting go of basketball is allowing me to, you know, go into full-time ministry and truly serving the Lord with all my heart, with all my time too, as well.

So

I'm excited to see where that leads me.

And exactly.

I mean, it's the same reason I ended my career as a professional model/slash actor and got into podcasting with my full yes.

I get it.

With your full story as old as time.

Heart and time.

Yeah.

So with that way of words, I am very excited for Griffin's first ministry.

Can't wait for his very first Sunday sermon.

God is like good and stuff, you know.

And on that note, we're going to close out the headlines.

Me, thanks as always, Jumanji.

And when we come back, the legendary Anna Bosnik is going to give Christianity another roasty music lesson.

Here at the Scathing Atheist, we spend lots of time taking down the terrible things that are done in the name of religion.

We like to focus on the negative.

because, well, mostly because it's fun, but we realize it's important to have balance.

And that's what we're going to be doing right now in a segment we call God

awful music.

Okay, so actually we're going to start with a whole bunch of negative right now too, because the music's bad.

But then a true expert is going to fix it.

And that expert is none other than Anna Bosnik.

Anna, welcome back.

Hey, guys.

You ready to get into it?

Ready.

Oh, this one's a bop.

I'm already dancing.

This is good.

I'm dancing.

And

Eli, you can hear him shaking right now.

Eli, you're still here.

So back in Mora, Dora more than ever, Heathen.

Write.

Thank you.

There was music, and I was worried that I wasn't in the podcast anymore.

What is your theme song in your head?

I'm just curious.

How does it go?

Is it like a...

Okay.

Okay.

Known.

He's never asked me to write him music.

So I'll have to write him.

Oh, I have to say that.

Because that's what she would write.

I would not write that.

I don't want the...

I thought it was going to be like...

I don't want the copyright problem.

I thought it was was gonna be a little jingle you know like a of gold coins perhaps in the pouch i always carry wow wow

wow you wow to you so anna yeah let's do the segment what piece of music what what piece of music falsely so-called are we gonna be breaking down today

we're breaking down get down

by audio adrenaline oh yeah imagine imagine the band third eye blind right you're imagining them i am i love that band.

Yeah, you've got like the beachy smell.

You definitely can smell.

Got the long hair.

They look like they've been living in their car for a week.

In a good way.

Imagine that they found God instead of Crystal Meth.

And there you go.

You have the vibe that we're picking up today.

Okay, I was smelling crystal meth when you asked about the smell.

No, no, no, you weren't.

No, you weren't.

That was

straight cheese.

That was God.

That was God.

You were smelling.

All right.

And Eli, how bad was this music?

Well, if you love the hop and beats of the 90s,

but you can't keep up with the lyrical genius of Ben Folds.

Wow.

You will love this music.

Shots fired on Ben Folds.

That's, we're in a fight.

We're in a fight.

We'll circle back up the end.

Ben Folds is like not the worst lyricist of the 90s.

Thank you.

No, he's not the worst lyricist of the 90s.

I agree.

It's almost impossible to be the worst lyricist of the 90s.

There's a lot of competition there.

Yeah.

But it's not Ben Folds.

It's not.

I enjoy him sometimes.

Okay.

Is there anything you'd like to nominate this so-called music for being the best at being the worst at?

Oh, God.

Worst, worst rebuttal to the song, I get knocked down,

but I get up again.

You're never going to keep it down.

Yeah.

I fucking, yeah, that song is poetry compared to that.

I love that song.

That's too, oh, man.

It almost fits like exact opposites.

Lyrics.

Oh, where's that DJ remix?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm transported right back to the 90s.

Semi-charmed life and tub thumb.

Oh, yeah.

I'm right in 97.

Get some Shumba Wumba in here.

Yeah.

There are ads for the new episode of Buffy this Thursday night.

Oh, you remember TV on Must See TV?

Thursday.

Remember when TV would tell you about other TV?

You'd be watching TV and they'd be like, hey, if you want to watch some TV later, because it's literally the only fucking thing to watch.

And they wouldn't stop the show.

It would just pop up on the bottom.

Do you remember that?

Anyway.

so exciting okay so i'm gonna go with best worst

tucked in t-shirts oh yeah baby so this is a rock band or they're trying to be it's a christian rock band but they want to be you know third eye blind basically but the vibe of the whole thing is

christian people tried to dress up like a real band of youths with riz

and then they tucked in their t-shirts and they did the whole thing yeah

I still have to wear the tie.

Do I, do I, is that why I put it around my head?

All right.

And I'm going to go with best, best pug in the music video.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

This music video opens with a pug in the video.

Oh, my God.

I missed the pug.

By definition, it goes downhill from there.

Yeah, there's a pug, and I think there's a boxer next to it.

There is a boxer.

Yeah.

It's pretty great.

Not as excited about boxers as I am about pugs.

All right.

Well, we just hit the highlight of the video and song, but let's dive right into it.

Eli, do you mind being the lyrical navigator for us?

Indeed, I will, Heath.

And I want to start with this, even before the words on this music video, where we see our lead singer drinking his coffee, waving at his neighbors, which I don't know if I mentioned this, include a pause.

And then we get these lyrics.

Branny was robbed.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Lavishly, our lives are wasted.

Humbleness is left untasted.

You can't live your life to please yourself.

Spoken like someone who's never had a vibrator

i also have to point out that at this point in the video we watched the band go for a hands in the middle and they miss

so that's the level of caucasity we're dealing with in this particular like a one two three break my eye my eye we all hit ourselves in the eyes

yeah

so according to the lyrics here They're going for a commentary on like typical American life in the suburbs being shallow, right?

But they want Christianity instead.

But what we're watching is these Christian guys loving that life.

Yeah, just having a great time, right?

Like normally a rock band, they're supposed to, you know, shake up the burbs with counterculture, but they're just like, this is nice here.

Let's set up a neighborhood watch.

I don't know.

I understand why people want to.

Do you know what's great?

Lavishness.

We love a lavishness.

The property taxes are a little high, but you know, sure.

It continues, that's a tip from my mistake.

Exactly what it doesn't take to win.

You've got to come in last place.

You hear that?

Winning at sports is actually super sinful.

Olympians are all going to hell.

All of them.

Every single one of them.

Also, I'm just thinking how brave it is for them to admit that finding Christ Jesus is a participation trophy, basically.

Feels like they're getting there.

In the video at this point, they almost get in a car accident and the other guy in the other car gets out and threatens to kick their ass.

I'm not sure why they kept this in the video.

Yeah, it doesn't really fit.

I have a theory, though.

I think, okay, I'm certain actually.

One guy in this band believes he knows karate and clearly demanded at least one moment in this video to like do all my sweet karate moves that you all know that I know.

And this was it for that chicken down.

It's five white guys.

Of course, one of them thinks they know karate.

It's probably more than one, but one demand, the Jamie Kennedy looking guy demanded.

At least one of them thinks he knows karate.

Sorry, I should be more specific.

They all look like Jamie Kennedy.

Yes.

The one who most looks like Jamie Kennedy at age 25, that guy thinks he knows karate.

He does not.

Three of them think they know karate.

One of them pronounces it karate.

And that's the guy.

Let's be honest.

They all pronounce it karate.

Yeah, exactly.

One of them says Jojo instead of Dojo.

Absolutely no question.

Oh, no.

All right.

Next up, it says, to live your life, you've got to lose it.

And all the losers get a crown.

Lyrics written by the girl from 13 Reasons Why.

Yeah, that's a skin.

It's fucking terrible, man.

Now it's time for the chorus.

Get ready, everybody.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

Okay.

Now, this.

This is the thesis statement to why I had to write a song about this, because he has now gotten down.

Let's count with me.

Count with me, audience.

He's gotten down four times.

Yeah, I think.

And I believe God has lifted him up only three.

So either that's like that is an inconsistent measurement of lifting or falling, or God is slacking.

Yeah.

God is slacking.

You're like falling down on purpose at this point.

Yeah, the God of the universe has that trouble with like, you know, counting how many months it's been since because like January starts as one, but it's sort of the zeroth month at the beginning.

It's a leap year.

He didn't get it.

Also, the video has given up on itself at this point.

There was sort of a theme of them wandering through the suburbs, but now it's just switched to a concert footage, but they're a Christian band, and they obviously can't fill a room with people.

So it's shot like all the scenes at the bronze in Buffy the Vampire Slayer rate.

There's the band, and then there's a very excited line of dancers who would like to assure us under oath that this club is hopping.

Yeah, it's like every video of a Trump rally for the last couple of of months with just like those three women he clearly paid to be quote enthusiastically clapping and swaying behind me.

You have to do it for this amount of money.

The whole time.

Otherwise, you don't get the KFC coupon.

All right.

Let's talk another lyric here.

All I need is another day where I can't seem to get away from the many things that drag me down.

So far, the things that drag you down are pleasing yourself, having confidence, and winning at things.

And the concept of winning.

The concept of winning.

So sad.

So, this is where the video took a confusing turn for me.

All of a sudden, we're learning about the plight

of the newspaper delivery guy on the electric scooter, like an adult, like a 25-year-old guy whose job that is with a paper wrap.

He's in an army helmet.

Yeah, he's going to come back.

Not in a way that makes sense, but he is going to come back.

A bunch more of this is like from his perspective and like how maybe God helps that tough job he has.

Buckle in, guys, because it's about to get relatable.

All right.

Are you ready?

Oh, boy.

I'm sure you've had a day like me when nothing seems to set you free from the burdens you can't carry all alone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, that does tend to be the case when you rely on an imaginary friend to help you with your real problems.

Right.

That's an issue.

And I should point out that the video chooses to illustrate this for us by handing one of the the band members a bunch of binders, which I guess would be an okay illustration, except he's grinning and so excited to be in a music video the whole time.

It doesn't quite get the solemnness meaning across.

I thought he was just grinning at like binders.

Like he enjoys stationary and good organization of businessy stuff.

Like, again, the band member.

is supposed to, you know, get the boring desk job, but then explode the cubicle with the power of rock and roll and like change everything.

My God.

But this guy is just like, ooh, 401k matching plan.

Nice.

I like this job in the 4% rather than three.

Wow.

Oh, you got the plastic sheets.

So I'm not going to, I'm not going to tear any of the stuff that's frequent.

All right.

It continues.

In your weakness, he is stronger.

In your darkness, he shines through.

Sounds like a super healthy, chill relationship.

Well, that's because you aren't seeing how well he's handling these binders now that God is on his side.

Apparently not.

Do the homework.

Okay.

Seriously, though?

Does the pug come back?

The pug does not, sadly.

But that is the message about the binders for real.

Like, according to those lyrics, in your darkness, by which they mean when you just can't organize binders in your cubicle, he shines through.

Like, Jesus Christ inspires you to.

And then we watch.

To go get a label maker.

Use the little shelf area and get the label maker.

It's actually out, but you have to refill it.

But then once you refill it, you put labels on everything and it's very organized.

So it's pretty, pretty nice.

Wow.

Thanks to Jesus Christ.

He continues, when you're crying, he's your comfort.

When you're all alone, he's carrying you.

Yeah.

And according to the video, that lyric was about when you're riding your scooter on your paper route as a full-grown adult and you get a little wobbly for a second, but then you're fine.

God's the scooter.

Thanks to Jesus and God.

Yeah.

So we get the chorus again here.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

And the illustration at this point, correct me if I'm wrong, is a guy standing in line at a burger shop.

He picks his nose and then throws that booger in the garbage.

At which point he's asked to leave the restaurant by people bigger than him.

What I'm saying is that this isn't a hill song.

You know what I'm saying?

Okay.

What Elijah said is exactly what we see with our eyes if you watch this video.

But he flexibrate.

Well, I think here's what they were going for.

The nose picking guy that we clearly watched, he was supposed to be throwing out his gum in the garbage.

Like he's online at the burger place.

And he's like, oh, I have gum.

A good person would throw it out in the garbage right over there.

I'll walk over there.

A Christian would put it in the garbage.

The Christian thing to do would be to put that in the garbage and then get back in line.

So he starts doing that and he tries to get back in line.

And then big guys with muscles cut the line and they're like, back in the line, dude.

And you need Jesus when that happens.

So to be clear, though, what happened is gum guy had so much trouble taking the gum out of his mouth, like in real life, the actor, the band member, that it looked like a very aggressive nose pick in video.

Sure did.

I mean, I mean, to be fair, not a lot of people do take their gum out of their mouth through their nostrils.

Yeah, that's a weird pick.

It can can be done.

Any sideshow performer will tell you it can be done.

But man, gross.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And just to be clear about the lesson here, the guy, he just goes to the back of the line after the big guys cut him because Jesus helped him be a coward in a good way.

Good for you.

Good for you, Jesus.

So we get that chorus again.

I get down, he lifts me up.

I get down, he lifts me up.

I get down, he lifts me up.

Yeah, double chorus.

Every time I'm down, the Lord lifts me up.

So, just so we're clear on where the score,

we're going to settle the score.

So, so, so far, we're halfway through the song.

Literally, not every time, even in the song, because like 11 times he's gotten down, and only nine times has the Lord lifted him back up again.

He's like pretty much subterranean at this point.

It's true, yeah, he is sinking.

Christianity is getting bugs bunnied in their own song with the old, like, one for you, one, two for me, one for you, one, two, three.

Let's get back to another verse here.

The valley is so deep.

See my previous math.

I can barely see the sun.

Also, at this point in the video, he's, as Heath mentioned, in the back at the burger place, and a pregnant lady is behind him, and he lets her in front of him.

But they didn't have a pregnant friend.

No.

So they're just letting a woman who's leaning backwards in front of him.

Yeah.

They just do the like hand baby shape thing in that area and they're like, that's pregnancy, right?

Just rubbing my food, baby, rubbing my Chipotle burrito.

Okay, if I'm in that scenario, I would definitely let the pregnant woman go in front of me.

I'm cool with that, but not the guy, right?

Like, I'm still in line.

Yeah, the husband takes the free ride.

Interesting.

I would let anybody with IBS go in front of me.

If you're rubbing your stomach like that,

I don't even want to.

Geometrically, I don't know if that's smart, but I like your sentiment.

She's related to a victim of irritable bowel syndrome.

So there's a lot.

All right, so back to the the chorus again.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

He lifts me up.

I get down.

And this is where we're going to revisit our friend on the scooter, right?

So as Keith mentioned, there's been a guy on a scooter just riding around.

And at this point in the video, a bunch of kids bombard him with water balloons, leading me to believe that this video is just a camera crew following this band around for their day and everyone hates them.

Oh, wow.

Absolutely.

Yeah, they're trying really hard to make it about Jesus Christ here, but very clearly, it's actually about a Christian band of like 25-year-old guys getting viciously bullied by the little kids in the town where they live.

Yeah.

And then angrily writing a song about how those kids are super mean and fucking godless.

And we're going to write a song about it.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, from what it sounds like, the kids are an allegory to the devil.

Like, they're there.

I thought you were going to say they're an allegory to this podcast.

And I was like,

not on.

The kids are the devil.

They're Antifa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We get a bridge here.

Yeah, down.

I get down.

I get down.

I get down.

And we're watching the band meet up and discuss their day.

Like, did everyone hate you today too?

Me too.

Oh my God.

We are a Christian band.

You're all wet.

You're all wet.

Water balloon kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then they all do a slow-mo walk to the camera as a band, as one of the shots here.

And they definitely all agreed ahead of time: okay, guys, we're doing a slow-mo thing.

We're just going to walk slowly to the the camera and everybody can see us.

But then one guy does a crazy aggressive dance move and they 100% hate that guy.

I mean, so many.

You said we agreed we were all just going to walk, Chris God.

Drummer energy.

Yeah, real drummer energy.

Thank you, Anna.

Brave enough to say it.

So we get some more choruses here.

A total of eight.

He's more than a drummer.

He's also our friend.

He's

a percussionist.

So we get a total of eight.

I get down.

He lifts me up here.

And the Lord lifts me up there at the end.

Oh, yeah.

Every time I'm down, the Lord lifts me up.

And then it stops, ends with a bunch of applause.

And if we're going to stand at the very end here with our final count, that would be 26 times the Lord has gotten him down.

And only 18 in which he was raised back up again.

Market.

I'm

not sure.

Hall of Fame numbers, if it's baseball, but it's not baseball.

It's not baseball.

When you're omniscient and omnipotent.

But here's the weirdest part.

The video's over.

The song is over.

There's no music, but we watch about 40 seconds of footage of them helping someone fix their car.

So

they're God,

I guess.

I think it was a forgiveness thing.

The guy that they're fixing his car just by chance happens to be the accident guy.

It's the karate guy from the accident.

Yeah.

And then they like run across him on the highway.

By chance, he's broken down.

And they're like, Christian charity,

you tried to karate us, but we'll still fix your car because

our religion's dumb.

This is a great movie.

I take it back.

Okay.

We're landing in different places today, and that's okay.

And that's okay.

I'll turn the other cheek and forgive you, Eli.

You go hang out with Ben Foltz.

I will hang out with Ben Foltz.

It's awesome.

The rock of the suburbs.

Just like Quiet Riot did.

And we made it through.

Whatever that was.

So,

Anna,

whatever that was that we just did.

Yeah.

Anna, how did you go about fixing

that?

Yeah.

Well, first

of all, I called in help from the pros.

I asked our very own Morgan and his band, Moody Boy,

if they could step in and help me out with this one.

And they came through big time.

Go check out Moody Boy.

They're on all the streaming platforms, they've got some amazing fucking music out.

So, highly recommend Dreams.

They're just a dream.

So, basically, it turns out that this song, all this song needed was new lyrics, new drums, new guitar, new bass, and a fiddle.

So, you know, so take it away, me.

Yeah, it's long.

Yeah, it's hard.

Yeah, this song, I'm going to give you 10 guesses.

What you think this is about?

You're not going to guess it.

It's bad.

I'll give you that.

Here we go.

If you've ever met a Christian, even one not on a mission, then you probably had the same discourse

that even if you don't believe about the Bible, we agree it's just as good as other legends, Egyptian, Greek, and Norse.

So sit right down and give it a weave

and see why this opinion is objectively wrong.

It's long, but if you keep on reading, it's dumb.

But if you keep on reading this song, it's good fucking Greek.

Good luck suspending that disbelief.

Now you gotta find your friend and ask them why would they pretend to have read the book when clearly that ain't right.

Yeah,

turns out most people have agreed to skip the genealogies and cherry-pick the verses that they like.

But seems to me if my religion were based on nothing but this text, I'd be a bit more concerned about

the slavery murder and the rapy sex.

It's long, but if you keep on reading this dumb, but if you keep on reading this long through the fucking Bible, I'm numb in the brain cause it's it's indescribably bad.

Ain't a book of poetry sad.

How folks don't know they're mad when you say this shit isn't even good for a book of myths.

No morals, no story, no overarching messages of peace.

It's really

dark and gory.

Why the fuck would anybody ever wanna be a priest?

It's long, but if you keep on reading, it's dumb.

But if you keep on reading, it's love through the fucking Bible.

I'm numb in the brain, cause it's indescribably bad.

Ain't a book of poetry sad, how folks don't know they're mad when you say this shit isn't even good for a book of myths.

I'm bored, but I keep on reading, I'm floored by the misogyny, good lord.

The old and new testaments are equally wack-a-doodle.

It sucks, and I keep on reading my books.

There's none to see here, I'm stuck.

Gawking at the pages, don't even get me started on my Mary's ages.

It's long, but I keep on reading it.

It's dumb, but I keep on reading it far.

Through the fucking bottle, I'm not in a hand.

Cause it's indescribably bad.

Ain't a book of poetry sad.

Our folks don't know it.

They're mad.

When you say this shit isn't even good for a book of this.

Fuck.

Hell yeah.

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

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

You can't wait that long.

Be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skepticrat, debuting at 7 a.m.

Eastern on Monday.

An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, God Awful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m.

Eastern on Tuesday.

And an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Big thanks to Anna, big thanks to Eli, and of course, a big thanks to all the Patreon donors, new and old.

Your magnanimous munificence, mammoth mental mastery, and majestic mammalian magnetism mesmerize mere mortals like

mus

me.

So close.

And you will be complimented next time around.

And if you're feeling financially benevolent like those fine people, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash scathingatheost, and that'll get you early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

You can also make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheost.com.

And if you don't have the money for giving away money, we get it.

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

And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us.

And our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music 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 skatingatheost.com.

No, I won't hold on, Heath Enright.

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Extra charge for miles over 10,000.

Current vehicle must be registered to consumer 30 days prior to lease.

Includes 7,500 EV cap cost reduction.

Not all customers will qualify.

Residency restrictions apply.

Take delivery by 9:30.

Jeep is a registered trademark.