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Warning, the following podcast is not safe for work.

But that's more of a problem with work than with the podcast.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp and by the fact that the Jags opened the year with a win.

Not sure how it handled losing to the fucking Panthers.

And now, The Scathing Atheist.

Hi, I'm Rob Bourgeois, owner of Raspberry Grenade Games and host of Anyone's Game.

If poring over the last several thousand years of human pop culture and then leading panels of people through arguments about it has taught me anything, it's that we do in fact come from filthy monkey folks, and so does our media.

It's Thursday.

It's September 11th.

And we were having so much fun, I feel like we forgot something.

I don't think so.

It's a Thursday.

I have no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Henry.

And from Aaron Rogers, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wake Ross, Georgia, this is Scathing East.

On this week's episode, I touch Heath's face a tremendous amount.

It's sticky like sap.

And we'll give you another taste of what a slumber party with Eli is really really like.

But first, the diatribe.

You know, I am a bit prone to catastrophism, but

I'm pretty sure the government just declared us to be enemies of the fucking state.

It came in the form of a tweet, like all important government communications these days, and it reads reads as follows: quote, this is from the fucking State Department, quote, Our nation was founded on the recognition that moral virtue and a steadfast faith in God are necessary preconditions of freedom.

Yet under the Biden administration, U.S.

foreign policy belittled Christianity and weaponized government against faith.

That era has ended.

Under At POTUS's leadership, the State Department will eradicate practices that devalue and demean the Christian faith.

End quote.

I'm sorry, devalue and demean?

You mean like our fucking show and its mission statement, like the whole fucking point of what we're doing here?

And, you know, lest we skate by them too quickly in our blind rage at the way the thing closed.

That's actually the less offensive lie in the missive.

The opening bid here was America was founded on the importance of believing in God, which is both wrong.

It was founded on precisely the opposite and unimportant.

It was also founded on white supremacy and male dominance, which can fuck all the way off without us losing a thing.

It also ties moral virtue to belief in a fictional deity, which advances one of the most despicable prejudices that atheists have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

But as much bigotry and untruth as they managed to squeeze into that first sentence, it's not the part that scared me or scared me the most, I guess.

I'm just so used to that bullshit distortion issuing from the mouthpieces of the American government that I'm kind of numb to it.

That's not to say it's not worthy of our fear and rage, but like the rest of you, I'm kind of rationing that fear and rage these days.

There's only so much to go around.

And at the moment, I'm way too busy with that last part where the government of the United States basically declares war on us.

And look, I'm sure many of you are sort of recoiling at the hyperbole there, but how much of an exaggeration is it, really?

We know this administration is willing to declare war on Americans.

They sent troops out against protesters in Los Angeles and figments of Trump's imagination in D.C.

They're openly planning to send troops out against Democrats in Chicago.

They're using National Guard troops to arrest people for being brown without a license, basically at this point.

Or I'm sorry, hold them for arrest.

So it's vaguely legal.

Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine them going out and rounding motherfuckers up for devaluing and demeaning Christianity?

And this is another instance, too, where they don't actually have to do the thing that they're threatening to do to have the effect, right?

Like I'm pot committed, right?

I'm going to keep demeaning and devaluing Christianity until they send me to a Salvadoran gulag or whatever they've got planned.

But if I was on a different timeline where I was just now considering getting into podcasting, I bet I'd be way more leery about choosing atheism as my subject than I was.

Look, one of the things that's been protecting Trump this whole time is that everything he's doing is so outlandish that most reasonable people can't believe it's even possible until it's done.

Either that or it's just too fucking stupid until it's done, right?

But given what we've seen from Trump and his puppet masters, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to make contingencies for when they try to shut us the fuck down.

I could see them leaning on IPs or aggregators or whatever to exclude content that's offensive to Christian or devalues or demeans Christianity, and then suddenly our shows and our livelihoods disappear.

Now, admittedly, most of y'all have way bigger concerns when it comes to the threats posed by the Trump administration than what if they came for my atheist podcasts.

This is a problem that is no doubt keeping me up way more often than it keeps you up.

But whenever the government is targeting a constitutionally protected point of view, I feel like we should all be losing sleep over it.

They're talking about you, Jesus.

Joining me for headlines tonight is nobody, because we're all still in New Jersey, hanging out for our annual accompanying retreat to New Jersey.

But we've been stockpiling headlines for quite a while now, so we've got plenty you haven't heard before, though admittedly, a few of them are a bit out of date.

But before we can get to those, we need to take a quick break for a word from this week's sponsor, BetterHelp.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

And then she said, nobody is ever going to want to see you do a little dance.

Right.

Rough.

So is Anna.

and so as you can imagine i was like really hurt by that right like it really hey hey guys what are you talking about you guys telling me the story of breaking up with his ex again from 15 years ago yep that's the one well i'm sorry heath but if i can't turn to my friends to relive my darkest moments and memories who can i speak to i mean you could go to therapy I mean, sure, but don't you have to switch them with an equally weighted bag of sand to find a therapist?

Nope, no, that's the treasure from Indiana Jones.

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All righty, thanks.

Anyways, so there we are, standing in my apartment after she said that to me, right?

Did you treasure slapping your legs and saying, Welp?

Like so many times.

She never liked my mom.

Welp.

And now, back to the pre-recorded headlines already in progress.

And in, oh, there it is news.

I'd be hard-pressed to tell you why I'm so darn delighted and fascinated by Mormonism.

It's a wildly harmful cult of misogyny with an awful history of abuse and almost a trillion dollars hidden away in a dark money company named after a giant mountain with no government oversight.

And I should have nothing but contempt for it, but

it's just so adorably silly.

Learning about it feels like I know all the lore of the care bears.

And so I was psyched this week when Mormonism's own journey to jokes a lot, a presidential revelation about polygamy that the church has spent years denying the existence of was quietly added to their public archives.

Public archives?

Why do you have a public archives?

Yeah.

You've got a

secret vault of Scrooge McDuck swimming gold and Lamanite tears under that temple square.

I'm sure you have it.

Put it in there if you really need to journal about your evil feelings and put documents in there.

Yeah,

there are no historical documents that are going to make you people look good.

All your archives should be in a vault.

Yes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So first off, big shout out to James, who sent us this news to scathingnews at gmail.com.

People who send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com are the ornam and thummum of religious batshittery.

And if you understand that reference, I'm sorry about your childhood.

I'm not sure you understand that reference, Eli, unless you're saying that our listeners are what religious batshittery turns to for divine guidance.

That is exactly what I mean.

Oh, okay.

So little backstory for those of you who aren't.

balls deep in the lore like myself.

As balls aren't very deep.

I'm nipple deep into this lore.

There you go.

Yeah.

So way back in 1886, the federal government sought to stop all Latter-day Saints who practice polygamy by making it illegal in various ways.

Federally, at the state level, they called it fraud, whole thing.

In reaction, president of the church, John Taylor, wrote a revelation proclaiming that polygamy was an everlasting covenant that could never be revoked.

Now, if you know anything about Mormon history, you know that the head of Mormonism reacting to a national declaration with the news that God commanded them to do that thing that just became illegal is nothing new, even in 1886.

Where Taylor's revelation gets controversial is that Mormonism renounced the practice of polygamy just four years later in 1890.

And because of that turnaround, the Mormon church has been denying the existence of that document by their president for hundreds of years.

Well, I don't think it was more than 139.

That is until last Saturday, when, as I said, they published it in their digital archive for literally anyone who cares to access it can see it.

It's like they never met an Exmo.

So many people hate your fucking church, and they're going to be all over it the moment a new detail pops up.

Like, you thought you could pom it in there like an extra chess piece in the middle of the game, and they wouldn't notice?

Sure did.

There's just one last thing about this story that is too funny to pass up.

Okay, well, first of all, you should click the link to this story in the show notes to follow the batshit path of this document.

It's so very Mormonism with people getting banned from the church and going into hiding and, of course, sending competing revelations from God the entire time.

But my favorite thing is that this document, which the church has vehemently denied the existence of for years,

was published with so much evidence that it exists.

In addition to the document itself, it was archived with a letter about the document and my favorite, a memo signed by the first presidency counselor, J.

Rubin Clark, that details how the revelation came into the church's possession.

Okay, that's hilarious that they have all that stuff, but like we didn't need that.

It doesn't matter.

Like, you think people forgot you did polygamy?

That's like the first thing everyone thinks of if you say Mormonism.

Absolutely.

Sometimes I think they leaked the magic underwear story just to try to knock polygamy down to number two.

Yeah, and it didn't work.

Nope.

So yeah, this is awesome news for the Mormonism nerds out there like myself.

And a great reminder that if the Church of Latter-day Saints says something doesn't exist, it might just exist in notarized triplicate.

Yep.

And if they say something does exist.

And in standardized testament news, the state of Oklahoma was crushing it with their amazing public school system, ranked in the top.

49.

But then Christian theocrats hijacked the curriculum and started preaching to the test.

Superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, recently changed the entire social studies curriculum into Christian nationalist pseudo-history, and the Republican-controlled state legislature officially approved the new standards in May.

And that's when the amazing heathens at Americans United for Separation of Church and State jumped in with a lawsuit.

on behalf of about three dozen parents, teachers, students, religious leaders, the ones who hate most of their squad, and atheists in general, to once again push back on theocracy like the cancerous cuticle it is.

And the president and CEO of Americans United is Rachel Laser.

So I'm feeling good right from the jump whenever we think about Rachel Laser.

Fuck yeah.

Pretty much the only leader of a national atheism group that isn't named after an ichthyoid, right?

Like her name could be so much less cool and still be worlds cooler than the competition.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, even if she was Rachel mildly glowing LED bulb, she'd be head and shoulders above the competition.

Sorry, Nick.

Just a quick reminder about Superintendent Ryan Walters, for anyone who's new.

He's the guy whose face operates as a fig leaf when Donald Trump is naked on camera.

And he's also the guy who tried to buy 55,000 God bless the USA Bibles for the public schools in Oklahoma.

Those are from the Trump X Lee Greenwood Bible Fashion Collab or whatever it was.

Walters was forced to cancel that order for $55,000, but then he bought 500 for AP government class anyway.

And that was like, I guess, 99% less stupid.

So congrats on that.

Also, keep in mind, these are bad Bibles for

public school Bibles.

It's the full King James, but don't answer yet, plus

the Declaration of of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and of course, the lyrics of just the chorus to God bless the USA by the

and no, they do not have amendments 11 through 27 in there.

They're like the early stuff.

So in the one section of that stupid fucking book that might fit into a social studies curriculum, the one with amendments, they skipped the abolition of slavery and equal protection and voting rights for black people and women, among other things.

Yes, and it's also, it's hard to imagine how the Lee Greenwood lyrics factor into the test, regardless, right?

Like question 14, if tomorrow all things were gone you'd worked for all your life and you had to start again with just your children and your wife, what nation would you thank your lucky stars to be living?

Well, the fuck because they don't, because they only have the chorus.

Yeah.

And especially when Lean Lee Greenwood will sing that song about basically any country he's in.

Like he's also recorded God Bless You, Canada.

Have you heard that?

He's singing about how he's proud to be in Canada, where at least he knows he's free.

Genuinely, check it out on YouTube.

Come on.

Honestly, it's amazing.

Honestly, I genuinely think singing that song is the only way he can remember where he is at any given time.

He's got a song to help with object permanence.

Love it.

So the new standards got snuck into the curriculum by Ryan Walters without a hearing at all in December of last year.

And then it all got adopted in May because Republicans don't read good or they liked it or both.

Here's a very much non-exhaustive list of the absurd propaganda that was added.

And a big thanks to the tireless, friendly atheist Hemet Mehta.

for redlining the material like the exasperated, angry teacher that he is.

I'll start with first grade, where it says, explain patriotic traditions that unite citizens.

Explain the purpose and meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance and the significance of the phrase under God.

It also says, identify and explain the meaning of the United States's official motto in God we trust, including the importance of religion to American people.

God, geez, amazing that even in the lesson about how out of many won, they still have to go with the bullshit motto, right?

bigots about it.

I thought America's official motto was paid leave is for commies.

So at least I'm learning something here.

All right, moving on to second grade curriculum.

It says, identify stories from Christianity that influenced American colonists, founders, and culture, including the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Yes, that Jesus, the one Jesus,

they say that.

For example, they put in there the golden rule and the Sermon on the Mount.

Okay, I feel like highlighting the passages they used to justify slavery would meet that standard, I guess, if any Oklahoma educators are listening in.

All right, I'm going to jump ahead to grade eight.

And Marsh, you might have some insight about this one.

Okay.

It says, Evaluate the role of Judeo-Christian ideals in supporting colonial demands for independence, as exemplified by the Bible being a frequently cited authority by America's founders.

Okay, now, are you suggesting that Marsh would know about this because he spends a lot of time among people who live inside their own imaginations?

And actually, you know, I know nothing about this.

You're forgetting that we've only ever been the thing that people demanded their independence from.

That's my side of the independence equation here.

If you think Britain at any point took notice of what those supposing demands were and what was supporting them, you are very much overestimated.

As far as we were taught, all those colonies were just ungrateful, but we magnanimously let them try to stand on their own two feet for a while, knowing that they'll come crawling back to Glorious Motherland one day.

That's our side of the story.

Oh, awesome.

Oh, baby dear.

Yeah, we're going to come back to the UK.

We also got some new standards for an elective class at the high school level called History of 20th Century Totalitarianism.

And no, they did not hear it.

Wow.

Yeah, and they didn't, but only because they're too currently busy writing the curriculum for future of 21st centuries to tell us.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, well, Project 2025, they call that one, yeah.

Yeah, that's what it's called.

Here's the new Christian propaganda that was imposed on the curriculum for a class about the dangers of totalitarianism.

Quote, the student will compare Judeo-Christian and Western political theory to communism.

Describe the Christian idea of the equality of of souls the christian idea of charity and the renunciation of worldly wealth so they're teaching the value of equality and the evil of wealth accumulation are what separates christianity from communism yes

yep they are right but i don't think they know why

they do not know anything and last but not least we have the new curriculum for the first Trump administration.

Oh, so they did finish writing Future of 21st Century totalitarianism,

they got a chapter, yeah.

So the original standards included a discussion of the COVID pandemic, the impact of the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, and

in very generous terms, the quote, issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.

And here's what we got in the revised version from Ryan Walters.

On COVID, quote, identify the source of the pandemic from a Chinese lab.

And okay, okay, I'm guessing that might be true, but I'm guessing.

Lots of experts are still more than guessing the opposite, just to be clear.

On George Floyd and BLM,

nothing.

That's gone now.

That's entirely gone.

Yeah, Ryan Walters was really sad when they told him that the module couldn't be choked to death.

Hey, hey, that module just coincidentally deleted itself around the time they happened to hit the delete key.

Oh, okay.

All right.

That's it.

And on the 2020 election, here's the new standard.

Quote, identify discrepancies in the 2020 election results, including the sudden halting of ballot counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of Bellwether County trends.

Yeah, in version 2.0, they're going to add, without saying, here's some demonstrably false bullshit first, Heath.

So it turns out Ryan Walters and the Republican lawmakers, they violated a few laws.

You can find those laws in the Oklahoma Constitution and also the Constitution of the United States.

Here's what it said in the complaint by Americans United.

Quote, The standards voted on by the Board of Education were never released to the public in advance, since Walters modified them without telling anyone, violating the state's Open Meeting Act.

By voting on standards without knowing their content, the board violated a law requiring it to have authority over academic standards.

Forcing teachers to spread lies violates a law requiring information taught to children to be accurate.

That's good.

There's a no-lying law.

I like that.

Spreading Christian propaganda to children violates a law requiring age-appropriate standards.

And by promoting Christianity above other faiths and no faith, the standards violate the Oklahoma Constitution.

Yeah, it feels like being a First Amendment attorney at this point in history has to be both the easiest and the hardest job in the world.

Right?

Yeah, it's like being a lepidopterist in a mothra film.

Like as easy to find your target, just zero chance of success.

Yeah, right, exactly.

So part of winning the lawsuit is demonstrating how the new curriculum is actively promoting a religion rather than just including religion more passively.

And unfortunately, you can't just argue fucking didoy, but it looks like it won't be too much of a problem to make that argument.

The legal team for Americans United put together a handy list of exact quotes from Ryan Walters in which he directly incriminates himself.

He's been proper chuffed about all the fascist theocracy he's doing.

Marsh, did I use that correctly?

Did I nail?

Proper chuffed it?

Nailed it.

Absolutely.

He's fucking psyched.

He's yoked about all this theocracy.

And he went around bragging to everyone that he could find, telling them approximate quote, fuck yeah, I'm going to shove Jesus right up in there.

Fuck yeah, I am.

So the exact words included an interview with Fox News when he said, quote, we cannot tolerate those who have taken the Judeo-Christian values out of our schools.

And during an interview with One American News, he was asked, Are you bringing the word?

Are you bringing God?

Are you bringing Jesus back to the classroom?

And he said, quote, we are.

Are you criming the crime so hard right now?

I do like how OAN has basically stumbled backwards into investigative journalism.

Right.

Yeah.

They've got him on tape admitting to breaking the law.

That's massive.

Like any investigative journalist will be really happy with that.

So I've got a new idea.

How about we launch a far-right news channel purely as a means of collecting incriminating confessions from right guards?

That would work so well.

They're just, they're borst and some practice.

Talk to your boys.

British journalists do shit like that all the time, and they did so well with it.

Okay, so let's hope common sense prevails in the lawsuit.

Probably won't, but let's hope.

And let's hope the children of Oklahoma get to keep benefiting from that sweet T49 ranking they have right now, or at least when the standards were better.

We'll see how it goes.

Neil, next up in headlines, in putting the Mo and Molestation news, the Trump administration is working hard to protect child rapists these days.

And I'm not just talking about the Epstein client list because that doesn't exist.

Obviously, the cornerstone of the conspiracy theory that's defined their side's entire existence for the last six years doesn't exist.

It never did.

And you know what?

It's very conspiratorial of you to suggest otherwise.

So that's true, but that's only because it's technically not a list if it only has a single name on it.

And if that name is annoyingly autographed in a stupid marker page.

Oh, it's just up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down the hallway.

Yeah.

Now, so I'm talking instead about the Department of Justice announcing a lawsuit against the state of Washington over their law that requires priests to report all the ongoing child sex abuse they're aware of, regardless of how they know about it.

Hey, Donald, why do you hate the police?

Because personally, I care about a thin blue line.

Maybe you've heard of it.

Now, I'm sure you'll remember this law.

We've talked about it as recently as episode 637.

But the long and short of it is that generally speaking, things that priests learn through the confession are protected in more or less the same way that shit you tell your doctor or your lawyer is protected.

Because if you believe in salvation and shit, the ability to be honest with your priest without fear of legal consequences is necessary for evil people to make it into heaven.

But salvation isn't real.

So some localities have pushed back on that tradition, like the state of Washington, which recently added priests to the list of mandatory reporters.

Of course, priests fear this change from both sides of the confessional, so they've been vehemently opposing it since its inception.

Yeah, the priests rooting out child predators is basically that Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing to.

Yes, exactly.

Right.

Like Matt Damon getting tasked with finding himself in the departed.

Yeah.

So that now that opposition culminated in a lawsuit by those priests that we covered on episode 637, but now the law faces another suit, this one from Trump's Justice Department.

Their suit claims that the law violates the First and 14th Amendments and, quote, puts clergy to the choice between temporal criminal punishment and eternal damnation, end quote.

No, it doesn't.

Because you know how the threat of eternal damnation is one of those things that we factor into judicial decisions?

It's like that.

Okay, but I'm pretty sure I figured out a sweet loophole.

It's pretty tricky, but see if you can follow me.

You confess to a priest, the priest narcs, you die in jail, and then you go to heaven.

It's fucking win-win, right?

There you go.

And the narc priests can go confess for narcing or whatever.

Yes, exactly.

That's it.

Right.

So it's either that or we ordain all the cops, but only cops.

So if you want to confess,

you know, you want to confess, it could be one of those two birds, one storm situation.

And on the plus side, there'll now be a confession phone line number that's really easy to remember.

That's efficiency right there.

Doge needs to get on it.

Fuck yeah, man.

Now, to be clear, despite what the wording of the lawsuit would have you believe, there's nothing in the Washington law that targets priests.

What it does is remove an exemption from priests.

That's a different fucking thing, right?

When you remove an exemption, you obviously remove it only from those people who are already exempt.

And in this instance, that's just Catholic priests.

But the fact that you have a privilege isn't proof that you have a constitutional right to it, unless, of course, you're the fucking Trump administration, in which case that misapprehension is your whole fucking raison debt.

And in commencement redress news, it is the official position of the federal government that atheists are bad people and have no place in the military.

And though we may have suspected that for quite a while, we got verbal confirmation of it last week in the form of a speech Trump's transportation secretary delivered to a graduating class of merchant marines.

During the speech, he said, quote, There are two types of people in life, those who believe in God and those who think they're God, end quote, and reminded them that, quote, only God can calm the seas and bring you to safety, before adding, quote, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of prayer, end quote.

Okay, check.

I'm estimating that power just right.

Yeah.

Okay.

I tell you what, Sean, we'll use one of those big boat guns with the bullets the size of a baby penguin.

You use prayer and we'll see who vaporizes into a blood cloud.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Now, Sean Duffy isn't exactly a household name, so I should probably remind you that this is a man who got his start on MTV reality shows like Real World Boston, Road Rules All-Stars, and Real World Road Rules Challenge, Battle of the Seasons.

And I guess Trump figured with all that road experience, he was probably qualified to be the Secretary of Transportation.

That's not true, but the reality isn't less dumb.

It's just less funny.

He was the Fox News host that looked the most like Pete Budichesh.

That's why he got the job.

He also has nine kids, which no sane person has done since the 1820s.

Okay, Noah, I'm going to need you not to hyperbolize on air.

I literally Googled to see if Sean Duffy had been on Real World Road Rules Challenge because I didn't know which part of that paragraph was crazier.

I am incapable of hyperbolizing about this motherfucker.

Exactly.

So, okay.

So in his capacity as a former reality show host and human super soaker and having exactly as much military experience as the three of us, he decided to fill his speech with nine life lessons.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, numbered lists are easy if you suck at writing coherent thoughts.

Okay.

I went to a wedding once where one of the groomsmen gave a speech and he said, This speech will be in three parts.

Life, walk, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Seriously, it went so long.

After Liberty, the groom walked over and took the mic away and said, Yeah, I'm pursuing happiness.

Well done.

Fantastic.

Well done.

So unfortunately, nobody did that to Sean Duffy.

So he got all the way through his life lessons.

He got all the way to number nine, which was be my religion really hard.

Though that was hardly the first time he brought up his theological bullshit.

And it wasn't enough to proselytize, right?

He also implied that one can't be an atheist without thinking that they're God.

Implying that paradoxically, the belief that the universe itself was created for your species and that its author has a personal plan for you specifically

is more humble.

Humility.

Got it.

Yeah.

And not just a plan, but a plan being thwarted by a former best friend goat demon who wants to turn your kids gay.

If you pitched this to me as a fantasy novel, I would change subway cars.

Hey, Sean, maybe focus some of that prayer on every plane being late right now.

Yeah, right?

If Hitler's transportation guy saw Newark airport, he'd be appalled.

Truly appalled.

You're not even just doing your job, Sean.

Like, what's your excuse to be?

When Bernie and Zoron give you the wall, you better have an excuse.

Right?

And look, I want to be clear that this is much more than just an offensive and inconsiderate speech, right?

We've been seeing those from Republicans for years.

This is a representative of the president speaking to the military.

Right?

It's part of an intentional and coordinated effort to make the 30% of people in the military who aren't Christian uncomfortable enough to keep their faith to themselves.

In other words, words, this isn't a warning sign of theocracy.

This is a part of theocracy.

And in Kim Jesus news.

A Kim Chi?

Kim Chi.

Oh, that guy's asking what you're going for.

As Donald Trump provokes nuclear war, so your shitty uncle won't notice him taking away his Medicaid, it's a welcome reminder that there are, in fact, dumber reasons to provoke international armed conflict than those provided by Donald Trump.

And if it's on our podcast, you know those reasons are going to be religious.

And sure enough, six Americans have been detained in South Korea this week for trying to send Bibles to North Korea by sea.

Yeah.

Atheists don't usually like that.

And Kim Jong-un doesn't like anything.

But if Christians want to send me Bibles by sea, I would love that.

Sure.

Please do.

Sure, yeah.

And if more Christians want to get arrested by South Korea, that's fine too.

Also fine too.

Right.

So first off, off, big thanks to the one and only prospector, Stormy D, for sending this headline.

And, of course, that amazing opening pun to scathingnews at gmail.com.

If you send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com and we're ever on a season of the devil's plan together, we will form an alliance with you.

Scathingnews at gmail.com.

I'm sure Eli's talking about a TV show, but we are on a season of the devil's plan together, Stormy, and we are forming an alliance with you.

That's fair.

That is fair.

So, if you're not aware,

North Korea for years.

In the past, folks have used balloons to send everything from like anti-North Korean political information to K-dramas over the border, but doing so has always been dangerous, both individually and internationally.

A reminder, North Korea is a fascist cult whose dictator regularly threatens to destroy the West with nuclear bombs he claims to be building.

And while it doesn't look like Kim Jong-un's going to build a catapult big enough to reach the U.S.

anytime soon, they have and still can attack South Korea, which with the support of China could very well throw all of us into a world war.

So it's probably better we leave stuff on our side of the fence.

Yeah, but maybe some missionaries could go there in person, you know, assuming they care about spreading the word of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Right.

It's important to them.

Think about all the intestinal parasites that have never heard the name of Jesus.

And sorry to make this scarier, Eli, but North Korea's ICBMs can absolutely reach the U.S.

mainland by now.

Yeah, they can.

Where's the midnight hammer?

It's whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

But as I said, imperiling the world has only ever encouraged Christian behavior, which is why the American Christians in question attempted to load Bibles, anti-North Korean leaflets, USB sticks, and a little bit of food onto a boat.

There's a few MP3s on there for you on the USB stick.

Check them out.

What?

Got some newsboys on there.

Don't Google it.

They were arrested on what amounts to littering charges, and their attempts were reclaimed before they could reach the North Korean country.

I love that the Bibles were littered to them.

That's awesome.

I feel like this is a hazing drill for new cops in South Korea at this point.

All right, Rook, go deal with the fucking idiot Americans before they get harpooned or whatever.

Blood paperwork.

It seems like they sprinkled the food in there for the same reason that you put a dog's pill in peanut butter, right?

Just make sure that they're going to reel that boat in.

There wasn't a delicate way to introduce this to the story, but I do love it so much.

In the AP News article, they mention at the end of the list that there was food also in the package.

And in the Christian Post article, it's the very first thing that they mention.

Now, as will surprise nobody, Christians are already crying persecution over this.

They actually won the right to fly balloons full of Bibles over the border in the Korean Supreme Court last year.

So no doubt we'll be seeing some nautical law come into play sometime soon.

The point is, as dangerous and as scary as the world can sometimes seem, we could take comfort in the fact that some way, somehow, there is a Christian out there making it worse.

Yep.

Always is.

Next up in headlines in Back the Blue Laws news,

a very important component of the economy in northern New Jersey, the American Dream Mall, is facing a lawsuit about a very serious violation of the Christian code of ethics.

As we all know, the Bible strictly forbids anyone from

buying clothing at the mall on Sundays.

Does it?

And of course, Bergen County, New Jersey takes that very seriously.

So they have blue laws that forbid such behavior.

But Eli's favorite hub of commerce and culture has been flouting those regulations and selling stuff on God's day.

So a group group of local businesses who do care about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ decided to sue.

Hey, we're all having fun, folks, but if my son can't go to the $26 giant bullpit on Sundays, I will personally re-kill Jesus Christ myself.

I'll do it with my bare hands.

Guys, guys,

this isn't about religion.

Okay, it's about maintaining a day with reduced commercial traffic.

Officially, to make it legal.

Wink.

Which is why I'm sure they'd have no issues if we just switched that shit to Monday.

Oh, yeah, sure.

That'll be cool.

And a big thanks to Sarah for sending us a link to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Sarah has the option to get any one item at Wetzel's Pretzels from Eli if they ever meet up at the mall.

Okay, it's an Aunt Annie's, Sarah.

It's like he didn't even look at the map I sent him.

So here's the background on the lawsuit.

According to Bergen County executive Jim Tedesco, when the American Dream Mall was getting ready to open, they they promised him the retail stores would stay closed on Sundays.

He said he was personally assured of that.

The mall would still be open on Sundays, but only for godly essentials like food and real estate transactions, apparently is allowed, roller coasters, indoor ski slopes, and artificial wave surfing in accordance with the county blue laws.

But according to the complaint, non-essential retail stores have been open for business on Sundays for years now.

And all the other retails in Bergen County are getting fucked on the deal.

The owners of the American Dream Mall, on the other hand, are claiming that's fucking stupid and also arguing that it doesn't even count because the mall is technically on state-owned land.

So the Bergen County blue laws don't apply.

Ah, if only there was a way to afford those businesses the same opportunity to compete.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, and we should point out for those who don't know that this mall is, it basically basically shares a parking lot with MetLife Stadium.

It does.

Right.

Where the Giants and Jets play.

You know, kind of, you get a sense of why the shopping mall next to the football stadium might want to be open for business on fucking Sundays.

Yeah.

I don't think they have a Chick-fil-A.

So I decided to check out the history of the Blue Laws in Bergen County, and I found a great source called the LocalGirl.com.

I was doing educational research there for science.

Autofill really helped out.

And I learned that it all started in 1677 with the General Assembly of East Jersey enacting a ban on the singing of vain songs or tunes on Sunday.

That got expanded in 1798 with a state law called the Act to Suppress Vice and Immorality, which banned any commercial activity that involved amusement or travel.

You could still travel to the church or a doctor, but the distance could not exceed 20 miles.

Well, sure, that's how big our state is.

Well, actually, you're still not allowed to drive more than 20 miles on Sundays, but that's just a traffic thing.

That's

how far you get at 0.83 miles per hour.

Yeah, this is physics.

So that set of blue laws continued until 1920, when New Jersey carved out an exception for baseball and other sporting events in public parks.

But that was getting abused by heathens.

So they clarified in 1927 with an addendum that said, it is entirely permissible for your children to play tennis and baseball, to swim in canoe, skate and sleigh on our property on Sunday, but illegal and sinful on your own property.

There was a meatball incident.

We don't like to talk about it, okay?

And fast forward to 1958, And it became clear that lots of the un-Christian activity in New Jersey was based on retail.

So the state enacted a ban on supermarkets being open on Sunday.

But even the U.S.

Supreme Court of 1958 was aware that food is at least somewhat essential, and that law was declared unconstitutional.

Jersey got mad, and in 1959, very next year, they just banned all the other retail stuff they could think of.

But they did allow each county to decide by referendum if they wanted to keep the state law.

Over the next few decades, every county voted to get rid of it except Bergen County.

And despite several more attempts in Bergen to allow buying stuff on all the days, they still have this blue law in place today.

And that's despite the entire concept of Bergen County being commerce.

So I grew up in a suburb of New York just across the state line.

from Bergen County.

And that invisible border was actually

very visible.

My town was very much working class, cops, environment, and Bergen was rich people.

You could see the money the moment you crossed the border just by looking at like the color of the grass one stop to the next or by feeling the giant potholes in the road immediately the moment you got to our side.

Bergen County's entire existence is based on being a wealthy suburb of New York City and having fancy malls.

It's their whole thing.

They all know it.

Yet somehow they're the only county in all of New Jersey that's still holding on tight with their blue laws.

That's how sticky religion is.

Right.

But now they've met the awesome power of the bubble experience in the Armani store.

They may fall at the feet of capitalism.

So that's nice, right?

Something to root for.

Always promise.

And on that pre-recorded note, we're going to wrap the headlines up for the week.

Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli.

Thanks as always.

Jumanji.

And when we come back, we'll let you in on a little of the patron-only fun from the weekend.

Hey, folks, shows a bit weird this week because once a year we get together for a week-long hangout.

It's something that we do for ourselves, but it also includes a pajama party live stream that we do for our patrons.

So, for our C segment this week, we thought we would share a few of our favorite moments from this past Saturday's extravaganza.

Enjoy.

Who says,

Who would you love to have as a guest masochist, alive or dead, real or

fictional, willing or unwilling?

Okay.

Okay.

Real people?

Probably not willing.

I think they would like

Barack and Michelle Obama.

Oh.

I think they'll.

I think they would enjoy us.

Right now, like if we'd blow that.

You don't think?

Instantly.

We would blow it instantly.

That's not the point.

What is this wee shit?

What is this wee?

I would get too excited.

I would come in too hot.

We would come in so hot.

I would come in too hot.

And no one would be cranky in front of the pre-show and they would reel it.

They would feel it.

The vibe would be so hard.

But you know what?

Barack would be like, I get it, man, I get it.

His hand would be on the doorknob and he'd hear through the door, if you fucking ruin this for me.

And then the door would open and you and I would be like, woo-hoo!

And we would walk straight out.

I'm just each one.

I'm just each one.

We would deserve it.

And they would leave.

Yeah, I would never allow him on our show.

For the embarrassment I would do to myself, I would not.

If he was like, I'll come on your show, I'd be like, absolutely not.

I will ruin both of our lives.

Okay.

That's fair.

Since we have Lucinda doing Twim and Anna contributing the occasional song, will Anne be making any appearances on any of the shows?

Maybe, and Andrew

dares to get editorial here,

maybe as an extra character voice for Bible Peace Theater.

Okay, well,

I am banned from doing any voices or accents at the murder mystery party to which I go every December.

That's just real.

So you do not.

You do not.

I thought you were lying, and they were like, and remember, remember the rule.

Just from last year, do you remember what happened to you?

We're not doing that.

Well, we assigned you Rabbi Moshe Cohen if they didn't want to say

that.

They were scared of my brilliance.

Wonderful

asks.

They say, I've recently heard that everyone has a squirrel story.

Oh, boy.

Anyone care to share?

Yes, I do care to share.

Thank you for asking.

So when I was a young child

at my house, there was a squirrel playing outside.

And I was like, oh, how adorable.

That's so cute.

I was probably like six.

And I was like, I'm going to go say hi to the squirrel.

Mistake.

Do not do that.

so I walked up to like the screen door and it was open I was like hi little squirrel trying to say hi to it and it stared at me and then it started running straight towards me I slammed the screen door as fast as I could and then it just kept staring at me through the screen door staring me down I was so terrified of squirrels after that like I would see one on a street that I was walking and if it was too close to where I was gonna be on the sidewalk I crossed the street I wanted nothing to do with squirrels after that like in college I was doing that I think I've recently gotten over it, but it took a workout, okay?

Yeah, wow.

We had a duck situation.

We love each other.

All right, one for four.

Here we go.

All right.

Three's the charm.

All right, Anne.

I'm very excited for this one.

It's my favorite newlywed question because everyone gets it wrong.

But maybe you're going to break that cycle.

Anne,

what is your husband's favorite holiday?

Okay.

Again, I think people expect me to say Thanksgiving because it's a food holiday.

But I think, truly, his favorite holiday is Christmas.

Fuck.

Oh, no.

Fuck.

I literally was like, well, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving because it's a food house.

But maybe I should write Christmas because Anne knows I really do like Christmas, even though I'm supposed to be atheist, which I am.

I didn't mean supposed to be.

I mean, I am.

I don't believe in.

I think the number of gods is zero.

Yet, nonetheless, there's good songs and presents and shit, and Christmas is fun.

Are you about to burn out so hard in the future?

I ruined Thanksgiving because of the food.

I ruined it.

But I actually, we both, like, double-bluffed each other out of that one.

We both should just be like,

we gotta be on the odd number bluffs.

We always say,

audience at home.

We lock in on odd number bluffs together.

I wish I could have recorded for you these two fucking psychopaths talking like they were two opposing American slash Russian chess teams as they got ready to write down their favorite ice cream where they were like but he's gonna think that I'm gonna think instead of just writing down their favorite ice cream

so very quickly from Zachary happy trans kid mcbortion

there was a show in Skating Atheists where Noah and Heath said Eli had a weird dick.

Is there?

It's not weird.

What's weird about it is that the shape, size, thickness, voluptuousness.

I'm very curious.

Now, the only reason I'm asking

is because Eli tagged it.

It's not weird.

He did.

It's not weird.

It's small.

Just get it clear.

It's not weird.

It's small, and that's for social justice reasons.

Because I care about women and their comforts and safety.

Yeah.

These fucking big dogs coming into your house with their fucking kielbasas, ruining your meat.

Oh, sorry, girls, I can't go to brunch.

I'm healing.

You can fuck me six times and then go to gymnastics.

You can sandwich fucking me in between Pilates

because I care about social justice.

Speaking of Eli's social justice penis, it's time to look for back in once again.

And I'm a lot of me!

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Well, I was hoping this would be a little bit more upbeat, but uh

so no, so I want to go back to a nostalgic thing.

When we, very early in the podcast, uh, about a year and a half after we started it, uh, about six months after we were doing it for a living, Heath moved down to where we were in Georgia.

We moved into a house together, which was a house that had been lived in like by 52 different groups of six college students before us.

Right?

It was one of those houses.

Oh, it was one of those things.

You can smell that.

Yeah, right.

It was just one of those places that nobody ever gave a shit about in the last 17 years and the room that we had to record in was so fucking echoey

and we didn't have much furniture because neither of us owned any damn thing at the time because we were both moving out of New York City right like we moved out of New York City and got a giant fucking house

in my car right oh yeah exactly and we moved we couldn't fit in a van

so we we had nothing in there and so in order not to be too echoey we would have to turn heath's mattress up against the wall and put our recording equipment facing that way and it was an inflatable

mattress

it's not for your picture it's not as cool

it's not as fancy

we'd put it hang a heavy blanket over it we'd shove a table against it we'd put our microphones and we'd sit straight and sitting straight like facing away from each other but like in the same direction so that we wouldn't echo as bad it was uh yeah yeah, and I just missed the simplicity of that because even as we were doing it, we're like, Well, I hope one day we can look back on this as a silly fucking thing we had to do and not the way we podcast.

Somebody's ringing the doorbell to find the meth that was hidden

years ago under the bottom of the pole.

That was the same year that you won the podcast of the year award.

Yep, so we won our podcast award.

And they did that.

And yeah,

Vlog of Will and Schott's party.

Scotch, Scotch, Scott, Scotch, Scotch, Scotch, nice.

All right.

Well, that was our.

Yeah, exactly.

I like this part.

I think I'm not going back and it's like unacceptable.

I'm going back to change history a little bit.

So I'm picturing him like

it's 2015.

He steps onto the golden escalator and he just trips like an infomercial.

And just caught his neck.

He's caught him.

He gets shredding this down.

Even better, even better, he's actually on the up escalator when he falls, and he's just still

like a snow people.

He dies forever.

Forever.

And he still gets 2.5%.

He's still the best.

His curse is just rolling and

liquid that's just in constant.

But we infuse him with other things to keep it going so it doesn't liquefy too much.

What are those rocks where you're out of the way?

You know when you swork at somebody and you hear him

parachute down and then he got sucked in and that's when we realized there was some kind of vacuum at work?

All right.

So,

I have a standing rule that when we start to talk about liquefying Trump scorps, it is time to take a break.

So, we're going to step this way and we're going to welcome in Anna Bosa!

All right.

Hold her out.

Hey, Bob.

Thank you.

I'm getting stuff everywhere.

Someone's phone.

Got it.

All right.

don't forget that.

Got it.

Gonna sit like a bisexual.

Alright, yes.

No feet on the ground.

Okay.

Ooh, am I getting zoomed in on?

Oh, that's exciting.

I love that.

I'm going to play a piece from God Awful Music.

If you know audio, what is it?

Audio adrenaline, you might know this song, like recognize this song.

Anyway.

yeah, it's long.

Yeah, it's thick.

Yeah, it's hard cover.

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

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

Sit right down and give it a read

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 far,

good fucking grief, good luck suspending that disbelief.

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

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,

it'd be a bit more concerned about

the slavery, the murder, and the rapey sex.

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

But if you keep on reading this slog 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 when they're mad when you say this shit.

It isn't even good for a book of myths.

No morals,

no story, no overworking messages of peace.

It's really

dark and gory.

I would fuck with anybody ever wanna be a priest.

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

But if you keep on reading this song

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 and they're mad when they say this shit.

It 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 whackadoodle.

It sucks.

But I keep on reading, my fucks.

They're numb to see here.

I'm stuck.

I got your method pages.

Don't even get me started.

I'm a paradise ages that it's long.

But I keep on reading, it's dumb.

But I keep on reading this song

through the fucking Bible.

I'm dumb in the brain because it's indescribably bad.

And a book of poetry sad.

How folks don't know when they're bad.

But when you say this shit, it isn't even good for a book of myths.

And it's not.

All right, have a good one, everybody.

I'll see you next time.

The incredible Anna Boznick.

And with yet another thanks to Anna for always closing it out strong, we're going to wrap up the best of there.

But a quick reminder that the pajama party and the ones from the past are still available to watch for patrons of any of our shows.

So if you were thinking about supporting the show and needed a nudge, consider yourself nudged.

Before we turn our devices to airplane mode, I want to remind you that tickets are still available to see us live in New Orleans on September 27th, but time is running out, so be sure to go to GodOphlfMoviesLive.com or check the show notes and secure your tickets today.

Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our Sister Show's hot friend, Godolph Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our Hepster Show Citation Dead, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, I need to thank Heath Enright, Ann Perkins, Eli Bosnick, Anna Bosnick, Lucinda Lusions, Thomas Smith, and Lydia Smith for rocking out the live stream and for some epic gamage over the week.

I also want to thank Rob Bourgeois of Raspberry Grenade Games for for providing this week's Farmsworth quote.

Be sure to check the show notes for a link to his website.

And most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most masterful mammals whose names I don't have on hand because I'm recording this minutes before running to the airport to catch a flight home, but I promise I will thank you by name on next week's show.

And if you'd like to hear your name alongside theirs, you can support the show by making a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheists, whereby you'll unreally access to an extended average 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 scathingadius.com.

And if you'd like to help, but not in a money-kind of way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a your 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 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.

Aaron Rodgers lives in Montclair.

He does.

Yeah, he's like 15 minutes from me.

Have you seen him?

Be dangerous.

No.

Am I in jail for making dolphin sounds at him until he punched me?

Like a dolphin orgasm.

Do you have that, Eli?

Do you have a dolphin orgasm sound that you could do?

Absolutely.

I mean, you didn't go to NYU for nothing.

Exactly.

Yeah.

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.

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