665: Serious Vulgarities Only Edition

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Warning, the following podcast contains the fuck out of some profanity.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp, Aura Frames, and by the upcoming sequel where everyone's favorite rascally golden retriever gets ordained Prayer Bud.

Prayer Bud. At least you only have to worry about him humping your kids' legs.
And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hello, I'm Kranoch, creator of the horror setting The Beast.

And in The Beast, the Abrahamic god may be real and be the one who made humans to torture for fun. But we all know that in reality, we all evolved from filthy monkey men and women.

It's Thursday. It's December 4th.
And it's extraordinary work team recognition day.

Sorry, mediocre work teams. You'll have to wait for your phone day.

I'm No Illusions. I'm Eli Bosnik.
I'm Heathen Wright. And from Mikey Sheryl's, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wake Russia, Georgia.
This is the Scathing East.

Oh, this week's episode, running our hospitals through a group of bigot versions will yield less than stellar results.

Quebec does obnoxious, honky stuff in both their French accent and their politics.

And Lydia and Thomas Smith will be here to hook us up with some of that West Coast vulgarity. But first, the diatribe.

I counted the gods again last week. It's still zero.
Now, I will admit, I tend to be really bad at finding shit.

Sometimes, like, sometimes I'll tell my wife that we're out of butter, and then she'll come over to the fridge and she'll move two things, and boom, there's the butter.

Even though I could have sworn I just looked there.

So, I guess it's possible that there's one God hiding deep behind the mayonnaise in the doggy box from the Korean barbecue the other night, but I'm pretty sure there isn't.

Anyway, I will double check with Lucinda over the weekend, and I'll report back to you if she finds anything. And on that note, I guess we can cue the music and wrap up this week's episode, huh?

No?

Because that'd be a fucking idiotic waste of your fucking time if I literally just showed up once a week to remind you how many gods there aren't?

Well, do me a favor and tell that to the jackasses that email me about two or three times a month to complain that we're supposed to be doing a podcast about atheism, not fucking politics.

Of all the goddamn times in history to try to make that stupid ass point. Now, to be fair, you could do a show about atheism that doesn't touch on politics, and it could even be a good show.

You could focus entirely on apologetics, for example, or on people's personal paths out of the religion.

You could like interview random atheists about their deconversion or maybe talk to grief counselors about the best coping strategy for religious trauma.

And those shows are out there if you'd like to listen to them.

But if you're going to do what we do, that is focus an atheist show on current events, trying to remain apolitical would be a dereliction of duty.

Hell, I would argue that if you have any kind of public platform at all that could be denouncing the Trump administration and isn't, it's a downright moral failing.

But at the same time, if you have an atheist show that tries to stand in the middle between Democrats and fucking theocracy, you're no less political than a show that takes a side.

Your politics are just worse.

And of course, in my experience, if you scratch the surface of these, you guys shouldn't be so political emailers, you're going to find some form of bigotry.

Nine times out of 10, the real issue is they want to be an atheist and transphobic or sexist or homophobes or whatever.

And they'd sure love it if we would tell them how stupid Christianity is without also insisting that everybody is inherently deserving of basic human dignity, regardless of their innate characteristics.

But to be fair to the emailers, that's not universally true. Sometimes their issues are economic or something, right? Like our opinions on this show are decidedly in the camp of democratic socialists.

And that's not derived from atheism, right? You could argue that it's derived from humanism. or even rationalism, but it's not an atheist belief.

And you can definitely be an atheist and harbor a belief in fucking unfettered capitalism or whatever. This is just one example.
There are certainly others.

And yes, I guess we could narrow our focus, refrain from talking about those topics and try to focus entirely through the lens of that one single shared belief at the heart of the show.

But that's not actually what these people want.

If you take out the opinion portion of the show, it turns into something unrecognizable.

So what they want when you drill right down to it with them is for us to take out the opinion parts that they disagree with.

They want us to stop concluding differently than them. They don't want us to stop being political.
They want us to stop doing it in a way that challenges them.

But look, I have no interest in doing an apolitical show.

If I wanted people to not know my opinion, I wouldn't need a podcast. I was doing fine with that before.
And I'll freely admit that much of the time my opinion turns out to be wrong.

I'm not immune to that. So, you know, if what you want is to challenge me back, have at it.
I've got email and all kinds of shit set up specifically for that.

Hell, arguing with listeners online online is how I met our favorite listener, April Poff, and now we're practically besties.

But asking me to be apolitical is a slightly less direct way of asking me to shut the fuck up. And my answer to that will pretty much always be no.

Or fuck you.

Or both.

They're talking about your Jesus.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the holly and jolly of this Christmas season, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to have a cup of cheer?

Cheer neats, please.

Okay, well, now I'm picturing decking the halls with Heath, which is either, you know, really grotesque or he's just kind of standing around nursing an eggnog. And I'm not sure which I like more.

I'm not sure which I like more. Maybe just the brandy.
And before we go any further, we need to thank the shit out of everybody who helped make Bulgaria for charity such a huge success this year.

The timing genuinely could not have been worse with the government shutdown and the interruption of snap benefits coming at exactly the time that we started the fundraiser.

But despite the headwinds you guys showed the up and made it yet another six-figure fundraising haul granted season had to put in like 540 of his own money at the last minute to get us over the hump but our grand total this year was 100 50 dollars

and that's a lot of money so thank you all so goddamn much for all the help that you heaped on recovering from religion and rest easier knowing that you helped to make the world a better place okay but if anyone sees daryl taking arby's up up on the offer of five for 555 let us know right away okay before we yeah we need to know because he's not doing that now yeah and while we set up a hotline for that we're going to pause for a word from this week's first sponsor better help

this episode is sponsored by better help

and then on sundays i wake up and i step on my porch and i yell what's going on i like the song what song hey guys what you up to one on blondes oh i was just telling heath about all my new good habits already it's a little early to start that stuff, isn't it?

Not for me. I'm starting now.
Well, if you're thinking of taking better care of yourself, you should try therapy with BetterHelp. What's

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This December start a new tradition by taking care of you. Our listeners get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash scathing.
That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash scathing. All right, Noah.

Looks like if I'm going to get knocked down, I'm going to get back up again. A lot of song lyrics, man.
What song?

I feel like you know. Come on.
I don't know.

And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, the law of commensurate hyperbole in conservative politics states that the less valid their argument, the more grandiose the stakes.
Right?

So like, so like if they actually have a point, they'll just state the real stakes. For example, send out too many stimulus checks and it could increase inflation.

But when they have a stupid point, they raise the stakes to ridiculous levels to try to distract from that.

protect that endangered owl and the entire industry of logging will be at risk. And when they have no point whatsoever, the stakes suddenly become downright mythical.

Like, Like, you know, legalizing same-sex marriage will destroy the family.

And given that rule, you can often reverse engineer how little of a point they have by how big the stakes they apply to it are.

So with that in mind, I want to remind everybody that according to the official policy of the Catholic Church, trans people's existence threatens to, quote,

annihilate the concept of nature.

End quote. And then you're left with just nature and no concepts which that which then become becomes the concept right

okay that was not i don't know why i talk

i'm the catholic no it's every time i see a trans person i forget what trees are and i can only hold right now it gets very confusing now so okay so that part's not new They've actually been saying that shit since 2019.

But the reason that I bring it up now is because that sentiment just popped up again, this time in the official U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Rulebook for Catholic hospitals in the U.S.

So back in 2018, they released the current version of this manual, and there was no mention of gender-affirming care whatsoever. And gender-affirming care, that's been around since at least the 1930s.

So I'm pretty sure they were aware of it in 2018. But last month, they updated said rulebook to explicitly bar all their hospitals from performing any form of gender-affirming care at all.

And this is probably a good time to remind you that about one in seven beds in U.S. hospitals is in a Catholic hospital.

Right, which feels a little like we occasionally have to remind folks that half of America's bridges are made of puppy bones or something, right?

It's a real damper at parties.

And by the way, if you want a sense of the fucking knots that they had to tie themselves into to make this shit sound ethical, let me quote from one of the two new anti-trans rules they added: quote, since creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift.

Okay, go fuck it. Right, right.
They wanted to say a priori, but they didn't really know how to fit it it into that. Yeah, right, right.

We have a duty to protect our humanity, which means, first of all, accepting and respecting it as it was created.

In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore, but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in form or function.

End quote. So, you know, no LASIK surgery, no cochlear implants for you.
God put that cleft in that palate for a reason, damn it. Yeah.
No, I'm sure they're done with boo jobs forever. Oh, absolutely.

Oh, wait, no, sorry. They're literally just talking about gender-affirming surgery.

Well, they do throw, quote, some forms of genetic engineering, end quote, under the bus as like a smokescreen, but they spend another rule and a half explaining that, no, no, they really mean trans people.

And chemo is murdering God's tumors. And yep, fucking electric cars are suffocating God's trees of carbon dioxide.
This is Holocaust. That's how they,

yeah, that's how they kill nature. Now, of course, none of this comes as a surprise.
The majority of Catholic hospitals already didn't do any form of gender-affirming care anyway.

And a couple of years ago, they foreshadowed this shit with a non-binding memo that said gender-affirming care failed to, quote, respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, end quote.

So it's not like we didn't see this coming, but the predictability of bigotry doesn't make its effects any less harmful.

The USCCB just codified a rule forbidding an entire form of health care that can be proven to be life-saving.

And even if you can't be bothered to give a shit about trans people, you should still be scared shitless about letting elderly virgins whose entire job is gullibility decide which kinds of life-saving medical treatment you can and can't get.

Nah, no, they're going to stop at the Quakers this time. The Quakers are the ones doing the genetic engineering.

And in dogmonogamy,

we're going to get there. It's going to make sense.
It's going to be awesome. So if I'm setting aside my natural skepticism about the international pedophile cartel with a giant vault of Nazi gold,

That would be a crazy thing to do. I'm not doing it.
No, no, this is an insane thing to set aside. Why would I set that aside? So, okay.
Keeping it in front of me.

I'm keeping it right in the middle with that firmly set in the middle as the context for everything about the Catholic Church.

I will say that I did enjoy hearing some criticism of Donald Trump and ICE from Pope Leo XIV, aka Pope Bobby Bears.

Can we at least go with Bobby Bulls because of all the bulls? Bobby Bulls.

Yeah, you're perfect.

So, yeah, fascist thugs from ICE were literally rappelling down from helicopters in Bobby's hometown of Chicago, and the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion people stepped it up with a very strong, cut it out, you guys.

But sadly, that powerful humanitarian campaign had to be cut short when the Pope's attention was needed elsewhere to address a much more serious threat to humanity.

Polycules.

So

we got an official document from the Vatican about the global scourge of polyamory last week. Okay, who let the Pope visit either a board game cafe or a circus school?

Guys, there are some things he doesn't need to know about. Okay.
But he's got a point, though. There are some serious problems with polyamory.

Like, for example, how you can't move on to the next fucking episode until everybody's there. Huge pain in the ass.
Just catch a bit of Todd. Fuck, rest of us don't work nights, Todd.
Thank you.

It's got to be exhausting. I hate Todd.
Todd's the worst part of this polycule.

He's not even good at circus. Idiot.
Honestly, it only became a polycule because we wanted to cheat on Todd. And I, and not enough people say it, but everyone knows it.
He knows what he did. Okay.

And a big thanks to Stormy D for sending a link to scathingnews at gmail.com and for dogma nonogamy. That was excellent.
Really good shit.

I was trying to do something, but I was like, I'm going to do poping relationships, but dogma nogamie was sweet. It was still

Stormy had me beep. So Stormy gets one of those deep squinty nods of admiration and respect.
I'm doing it right now. Ooh.

Like the end of a Cohen brothers movie. Yes, exactly.
Okay, so here's what I'm pretty sure happened with the Pope.

Somebody told, you know, like a bishop or a cardinal about the concept of a polycule during a conversation about their nephew at Vassar or Circus College or whatever.

And that bishop or cardinal panicked and told Pope Bobby. who then put together an emergency panel to investigate this crazy new phenomenon.
And they drafted, this is real, a 40-page document.

What about it? It's called One Flesh in Praise of Monogamy.

I love the idea that they think there's a lady sitting out there who's like, you know, I wasn't so sure about being locked in sexual slavery for the rest of my life, but then I read a novella by the Catholic Church and now I'm locked in.

I'm all I'm good to go. Well, I feel like you need 40 pages so you can have room to bury the fact that as great as as monogamy is, none of the guys writing the fucking document are doing it, right?

So, this type of document from the Vatican, it's called a doctrinal note.

And this one reads kind of like David Attenborough describing a species he's never seen before.

Here's the exact words: quote, various public forms of non-monogamous unions, sometimes called polyamory, are growing in the West, capitalized.

Polygamy, adultery, or polyamory are based on the illusion that the intensity of the relationship can be found in a succession of faces.

It's not the faces, man. It's not just the faces.

Yeah.

He continues. Our age, in fact, is experiencing various drifts with regard to love, an increase in divorces, the fragility of unions, the trivialization of adultery, and the promotion of polyamory.

Whatever Cynthia Arivo and Ariana Grande are doing in those interviews of freaking.

Yeah, I gotta say, rates of divorce in the West peaked in the 80s. Rates of infidelity peaked in the 90s.
Also, did he just say one of the dangers of polyamory is the increase in polyamory?

He did. And it's again, they're defying gravity.
It's against nature. So from there, they kept writing for like 39 and a half pages of just complete nonsense.

It's like a dozen boomers writing a group essay about how to change the advanced settings on a phone with like the developer options.

I'll skip ahead to the part where they tried to smooth it over at the end by being, you know, woke in their heads at the end.

They'd like everybody to know that the fat new Catholic Church, P-H-A-T, of the 21st century is all about sex being enjoyable for sissette monogamous Catholics in missionary position only without birth control.

Or in the tantalizing words of their fuck pamphlet, the unitive purpose of sexuality is not limited to ensuring procreation. So you're welcome.
Oh, wow. Language.
Okay.

So their conclusion is, okay, fine. You know what? You can enjoy sex.
Compromise. Yes, it really is.
That's exactly what happened. Yes, it is.
So, yeah, that's what Pope Bobby's been working on.

Busy, important guy. He's been scolding the fascists in the White House

at one time, lightly. Also, though, it's a Jubilee year.
So that's fucking Jubilee stuff. Sure.
And I wasn't finished.

He explained how human society is going to crumble to the ground because of daisy chains and cuddle puddles in polycule. Somebody had to say it.
Doing the Lord's work over there, Bobby. Great work.

And in school days news, one of the more interesting parts of our job over the last 10 years has been watching the most moronic claims of Christian persecution become national policy.

It's kind of like if over the last decade a sizable percentage of our army had been pulled into the hunt for Bigfoot.

Well, this week we caught a whiff of the atheist anti-Christian Sasquatch once again when a Christian college student got an F on her paper because of her Christian beliefs. I don't believe her.

I don't think that's why she got an F.

There you go. Dismissing her claims just because of her Christian beliefs.
Exactly. Yeah.
You are correct, but still.

Yeah. So, first off, big thanks to Kathleen for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com.
Kathleen, for sending us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com.

You get the greatest gift of all, the laughter of a child. You won't know when, Kathleen.
You won't know how, but it's coming. It's coming.

It'll be from your closet in the middle of the night after you watched a horror movie, Kathleen. I'm sorry to spoil the surprise.
but snuck into her house for no reason. Crazy, right?

So, this comes to us from the University of Oklahoma, where the hot air apparently comes sweeping down the plane.

Musical, topical,

Oklahoma. I wrote that and I hated myself so much for writing it.
Do you want to do it with the fringe on top? The story with the fringe on top? Maybe you can work that in. No, no, no.

I think it's the rest of the stuff you're going to say. I think it's perfectly the worst joke I've ever written.

Because it's as irrelevant as it is not funny. All right.
But Selmantha Fulnecki decided to answer her psychology essay. That's her name.
Her name's Fulnecky. Her name's Full Necky.

And so she has decided to be offended for a living. Can I say I fucking get it, girl? If you need to stop all jokes in the world, I've been called literally Fulnecky before.

It's not my name, but I've been called that. Yeah, exactly.
Anyways, she decided to answer her psychology essay assignment about the outgrouping of queer people by outgrouping queer people. Yep.

And look, you can read like the paper she was responding to and her exact assignment in the link of the show notes. But needless to say, it wasn't,

so what do you reckon about these queers? But that didn't stop Samantha from weighing in with all the acumen of your uncle's last Facebook comment before you block him.

That's what the assignment was in her heart for sure.

Here's a quote from her essay: quote: The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem.

God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose. God is very intentional with what he makes.
And I believe trying to change that would only do more harm.

End quote. Hey,

God made you stupid. And that's okay, Samantha.
That's okay. Staying at the university is just doing more harm, though.
School is hard, and it's it's not for everyone. God made you a certain way.

Just go with it. But you're probably wondering yourselves, okay, but are queer kids who get bullied demonic? Don't worry.
Fulmecki has our answer.

Quote, I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. Keep in mind, she literally just read a scientific study that shows that they do.
Yeah, she didn't read shit.

I strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students' confidence.

Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth. Wow.
What?

I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school. Don't say however.
However.

Okay. Pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want

is not biblical. Oh, whatsoever.

Hey, hey, Samantha, full necky. Bring it in.
Take a knee. I love, personally, truly love a good argument against everyone getting their own truth because that's fucking dumb.

But then you landed on, therefore be a bigot. It's really hard to lose me during a rant against postmodern therapy speak fucking nonsense.
And you lost me because you went to be a bigot at the end.

Well, and it's especially undercut when you close off with a reference to the Bible,

i.e.

the own personal truth you seem to think that you're entitled to. Yeah, that's right there.

So as you might have guessed, she got a sir, this is a Wendy's on her paper with the graduate student who graded her writing, quote, please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead, I am deducting points for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive.

Adding, additionally, to call an entire group of people demonic is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population.

You are entitled to your own beliefs, but this isn't a vague narrative of society pushes lies, but instead the result of countless years developing psychological and scientific evidence for these claims and directly interacting with the communities involved.

You may personally disagree with this, but that doesn't change the fact that every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association in the United States acknowledges that biologically and psychologically, sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.

End quote.

So I'm not giving you an F because you're wrong, but you are wrong. I'm giving you an F on everything but the fucking punctuation, and even that's not an A.

Okay, it sounds like Samantha got bullied in hopes of changing her opinion, just like she supports in her essay

with free speech, just like she supports in her essay. So story over? Yeah, right? No, I wish.

So yeah, as you can tell, that's pretty clearly Christian persecution, which is why Sam decided to email Republican Governor Kevin Stitt, the university president, the dean of her college, several reporters, mostly right-wing assholes, and the anti-teachers union group, now headed up by former state superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters.

I already fucked a pile of flour at one.

That's why he doesn't have that other job name. That was a Jackie Cheegan movie.
I need more ninjas. I need the ninjas to come prove.

Well, unfortunately, we live in the now time.

So a bunch of Christian assholes, including Oklahoma state senators and Turning Points USA, converged on Samantha's claim and on her instructor, who happens to be trans, piling on the university president, her instruction, and anyone involved with claims of oppression and horrific abuse.

And as you might imagine, from a state that exists because we didn't want Kansas to get too big, the university has temporarily folded to their harassment, placing the instructor on leave for the rest of the year.

Yeah, tough way to make the point, but hey, if the goal is to teach the students about the marginalization of LGBTQ voices.

Yeah.

Now, I want to be clear. We've seen stories like this before, right?

The university is waiting for the Christian outrage to die out, and then they'll put the teacher back in their position, but their cowardice is meaningful.

And the idea that Samantha and students like her are going to attempt to bully their way into a degree using the dregs of the internet is a problem for literally anybody who cares about knowing things.

So, you know, pretty much everyone but Fulnecky. But it does make me wonder, won't there be more students like samantha in the future hmm i wonder what that would be like

all right everyone now if you'll all bring your blue books to the front of the class one by one you can leave after you've dropped it off here you go professor um

this is your final yep yep i'm all i'm all set this is

a picture of christ on the cross Oh, yeah, it's my firmly held belief. Right, cool.
It's just, this has nothing to do with the assignment. I'm sorry, Professor, but I

have to disagree.

I think the Lord Jesus Christ and him dying for us on the cross has everything to do with this final and our final judgment before the Lord.

Sorry, are you pausing for like applause? Kind of thought everyone would stand up and cheer.

Okay, I might be standing on my own, but after I've reached out to the governor, the president, and that guy who got caught watching porn in his office, I know this nation will have my back.

It was a Jackie Gian movie. Okay, you know what?

Sorry, is everyone turning in their religious beliefs and then threatening to sick the worst people in the world on us if we address that they didn't do the work? I certainly am.

I mean, why wouldn't we? Okay, cool. You can all go.
You all get A's and you can all be you forever because this is how it is now. Oh, it was great.
Nice. Okay, excellent.
I'm on my way home.

I'm going to go get to lunch. I actually still wrote the paper.
Boonerd. Fine.
I'm gone.

And with that terrifying glimpse into the future still echoing in your ears, we're going to pause for a quick word from our other sponsor this week, Aura Frames.

Okay, what if the mug says, this mug is for you, my mom, the mom of Heath? Yeah, dude, you're not getting it. Hey guys, what you doing?

Well, I'm trying to help Heath do some last-minute Christmas shopping, but he's not really grasping personalized. How could her name not be personalized? It's very personalized.

Heath, when someone says they want something personalized, they mean they want something meaningful, something about your relationship, like an aura frame. What's

an aura frame? Aura frames are digital picture frames that hold unlimited pictures and videos. Just download the Aura app and connect to Wi-Fi.
I don't know, Eli. My family's not exactly app friendly.

Hey, that's okay. You can set up an Aura frame for a loved one while it's still in the box.
All they've got to do is plug it in and start admiring photos of their grandbabies. Now, that's personal.

It sure is.

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All right. Thanks, Eli.
Now, do they make an aura frame with my mom's name on it?

I mean, you can set the welcome message. Nice.
With her name. Yeah, okay.

Mom.

Next up in headlines, in life imitates fart news.

Or

does it? Maybe fart imitates life.

All right, buckle up. We're about to get philosophical because we have a story about farts.
We're going deep.

And a big thanks to Dan for being the first of many to send us a apparently viral link to scathingnews at gmail.com. Dan gets the pride of intellectual curiosity.

And that intellectual exploration begins with a Christian pastor who does spiritual healing of his congregants by literally farting on their faces.

Yeah, to be clear, if Christianity had started with farting on people's faces, this cracker is the body and blood of our Savior would be making it weirder. So I get it.
I do get it.

You know, look, we can fight back against encroaching theocracy and all, but I'm glad we haven't lost track of the reason why we're here in the first place, Heath. That's good stuff.
Fart jokes.

And away we go. My epistemological journey begins with the headline: Farting Pastor Fixes Spirits by Breaking Wind.
That's from the journalism team over at BoingBoing.net.

Only the best sources for our listeners. I love that they couldn't get the dot.
No, I wonder what BoingBoing.com is.

Okay, so that's where I learned about a pastor named Christ Penelope of the Sevenfold Holy Spirit Ministries. And yes, he farts on faces during Sunday services.

According to Pastor Christ, it has to be right on the face because the healing power enters through the nostrils. I mean, we were more curious about where it was exiting.

So, right, because I want to know how the power of Christ got up there in the first place, right?

Like, like God had it like sitting on a pedestal, and then Penelope comes in and he actually sits on the pedestal and God's like, well, now it's going to be awkward. Fuck.
Yeah, just logistically.

God, I hope boingboing.net doesn't find out about this.

So, of course, this practice of face farting led to some questions, including a number of Christian leaders who had very serious concerns about the lack of biblical grounding for the farting spell.

But the pastor had answers for his critics. Here's what he said during an interview.
Quote, it started with Master Jesus when he stepped on Peter. It is the demonstration of God's power.

Just like God made Adam go into a deep sleep. It is a similar thing.
Is it? God did anything with the body of Adam while he was on the ground in deep sleep. He was not feeling anything.

The Bible doesn't say anything about Adam saying, God, you're hurting me. End quote.
Sorry.

His argument is, You're telling me God was sitting there looking at God's lifeless, completely still body, and He didn't do any fart stuff to it. Come on.

All right, credit where credit is due. I had not thought about it like that.
Well, there you go.

Master Christ also added, I don't fart on people, I heal people.

And

I think he's lying. First of all, it's both at best, but I don't think it's at best.
No. I think some guy named Definitely Not Christ decided to call himself Christ and managed to become a pastor.

Or it's actually his real name. It doesn't matter.
Either way, just like a typical cult leader, he started testing the loyalty of the flock with insane pranks.

And at some point, he got drunk or stoned probably, and he farted and he laughed at that. He realized that farting is, in fact, pretty much the funniest thing.
Agreed.

So he decided to do fart healing. And then he made up some bullshit about how it connects to the Bible, which is possible with literally anything.
You can connect it to some Bible thing.

But now he's stuck doing the fart healing, right? Like imagine the amount of brand that this bit requires him to consume. Right.

Also, like, do different farts heal different ailments? How hard is it to fart correctly on command?

Like, write like a squeaker for tinnitus, a fizzler for congestion, an SBD for heart disease, because it's the silent killer. Right.
It's thematic. Sure.
So

one other detail about the timeline here. So the article at boingboing.net was from Thanksgiving Day.

But the original story about Pastor Christ and his face farting spirit cleanse comes from at least four years ago.

I found an article from 2021 with the same photo of this guy sitting right on somebody's face, and he's holding a wireless mic, apparently mid-sermon at his church and that leads to the last part of my theory on how this story gets to us here today on this very serious podcast about science and philosophy i explained it as

the algorithm sharded and much like a religious leader just making shit up the algorithm pulled something out of its ass from a long time ago and it spread through the room of the internet while we all scrolled on our phones trying to avoid interacting with our family in person on Thanksgiving because that's fucking exhausting.

And of course, farts are funny. Or maybe we just need a reminder that this guy exists every four years.
Like, you know how like rich white people think about elections every four years?

That's what it is. Which is one of the many ways that American elections are like having aerosolized shit explode into your face.
Yeah, exactly. And finally, tonight in Quebec and it again, noons.

As we all do our best to survive the theocratic hellscape that has become American politics, one One can't help but wish for a pendulum swing in the other direction.

A world where, in a few years, thanks to a backlash, we're in charge and we're making all the rules. Now, of course, that concept as sort of a backlash doesn't really make sense.

When liberals are in power, we do things that benefit everyone. We feed hungry children and we empower the poor just enough so that they can afford to vote us out of office again.

It's kind of our thing.

But if what you were imagining instead was a sort of anti-religious revenge fantasy, then you might enjoy the Frenchier Parts of Canada, which this week introduced a bill to ban prayer in schools and restrict the offering of religious-based meals.

Okay. Okay.
I know I'm supposed to be against that, but I'm not sure why.

Did you get me there? Right? No, there is at least something to be said for no longer protecting intentional wrongness.

It's tricky. It's tricky.
All right. So first off, big thanks to Logan for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com.
Logan, for sending us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com.

When we become the tyrannical atheist leaders of J.D. Vance's nightmares, you get to do his Christmas nut check.
Nice. Keep it festive, but don't milk the buildup.
Scathingnews at gmail.com.

I will be milking the buildup. Okay, when it comes to things involving J.D.
Vance's nuts, I will not be doing any milking. There you have it.
The full spectrum of our show.

Right. So, first off, I want to spoil this story a little at the outset and point out that this bill actually has nothing to do with secularism.

Like the other bills we've seen before it, this bill is actually just an anti-Muslim bias in the name of secularism.

Bill 21, which these laws are based on, was passed by the Quebec government back in 2019 and prohibited certain public employees from wearing religious symbols while at work.

And while, like me, you might be inclined to agree that Kathy's cross necklace is stupid, this was much more about preventing people who wear yarmulcas and hijabs from being able to work for the government and when you make a law that prevents minority religions from being able to get or do a job uh

doesn't really turn out well for that minority but the law didn't do that everyone could do their job without a magic hat they just can but it does sound like bigots are in charge so i guess i'm sympathetic to the magic hats because of that.

I feel it. I feel you.

I'm stepping towards it. But here's the thing.
Yeah. Unlike the overwhelming majority of Christians, I get pissed when my worldview is used as a smokescreen for bigotry.
So yeah. Right, exactly.

So this new bill would expand those restrictions even further and includes a ban on prayer rooms and universities, restricts the offering of religion-based meals, and expands the requirement to have faces uncovered throughout the public and subsidized daycare system.

all of which do not promote secularism nearly as much as they oppress religious people.

So So even though things like prayer rooms and magic food and face coverings are stupid, the way to show people that is to give them the freedom to make that decision on their own.

Okay, libertarian freedom to be stupid. And that, you know, that leads to pluralism.
Okay. Yeah, you got me on board.
I'm on. Thank you.

Anti-bigotry. Yeah, it's so weird though that their list doesn't contain anything that would affect Christians, though.

Look, technically, you know, everybody has to eat the same amount of pork is equal, but it only matters to folks that don't eat fucking pork. So, yeah.
Yeah. So we're going to see how this law goes.

I'll admit I was skeptical on our very program of Bill 21 back in 2019, and that wound up being passed. So you never know.
But what's important is this.

Even if the bad guys are temporarily on our side, it's important that we not empower them because what they're going to do with that power next is never worth the victories they grant us right now.

Yeah.

And while we wonder where the Christian leaders were when it came time to say that kind of shit to their folks, we're going to wrap up the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Good morning. And when we come back, Morgan gets to edit five tracks at a time.
Lucky you.

As much as this show is bursting with fucks, you know some shit's going down when we have to like start roping in guest Vulgarians, but you guys crushed it so goddamn much with Vulgarity for Charity last month that we found ourselves in exactly that position.

So without further ado, we're excited to welcome in two of our favorite guest roasters, Thomas and Lydia Smith of Where There's Woke, Serious Inquiries Only, Opening Arguments, Gavel, Gavel, and probably three or four more since the holiday break.

Lydia, Thomas, welcome back.

Thanks for having us. Oh, it's great to have you.

Now, before we get to the mean shit, let's talk about the green shit because a lot of fantastic folks gave us money and asked nothing in return, starting with Keith, Celia, Gail, Diedrich, Jeff, and Rick, who we are thanking most thankily.

And a big thanks to Carol, Loka, Peter, Bruce, twice, and Matt and Laura. And by the way, Matt worked for the Federal Reserve, which is not a Ponzi scheme.
I spoke to him about it. It's not.

And a tremendous, humongous thanks to Beta and Rob, who donated $2,500 and asked nothing in return. Beta and Rob, to you, we say, pick a hole.

Why do they have to pitch? Make it They can just do whatever they want. You can also pick a bend, a crook, or a fold.
You're making it clear.

So, okay. But before we stop thanking people with nothing tonight, Thomas, we have our first guest roaster request for a thank you.
What? Drew Hickox would like a thank you by name from you.

Is it a sex thing? Maybe, but will we still do it? Absolute fucking lutely.

Acknowledging that there's some, I don't know, is there a bucket of slime that's going to fall on me after the next time? Yeah, somehow this is an Eli prank.

It definitely feels like

it, Thomas. Donated money for this.
I will say thank you to Drew Hickox. Ah, the slime.
Got it.

Suddenly, I own all of dear old Ted.

Drew Hickox. Thank you, Drew.
Eith, kind of gross. Just stop stealing Thomas's sex thing.
It can be both.

It could be trumpy and a bonus. It could be fuck.
Yep, nope, it can't.

All right, Let's kick things off with a roast from Eli. Eli, Balaas would like you to roast Paul Zuliner.
Zuhliner, yeah. Yeah, okay.

So look, I have never seen a man look more self-aware of what he has become in his own author photo.

A still from Donnie Darko could never capture the self-hatred and philosophical isolation that Paul is delivering on the back of his own foot.

He looks like the post-three ghosts of Christmas trans rights Richard Dawkins came back to the present to stop Richard Dawkins. It's insane.

Oh, man. You got to make that movie.
Yeah. All right.
And Heath, Damon would like a roast of work.

Yeah. Okay.
I don't, I don't even understand the assignment.

Like, like, if I don't spend my lifeblood hours grinding out nickels to spend on the products of delightful corporations that fund the passive income of millionaires and billionaires, what the fuck am I doing here?

Like,

what's my value? What would you say I do here? Like, I'm going to go, I'm going to go paint an art picture.

I'm going to go like spend quality time with others, like have the love of my family and friends. Like, I'm going to read a word book with my reading eyes and talk about it with other people.

What the fuck are you talking about, Damon? Get your head out of your ass, you communist.

All right. No, I've got one for you here.
Rob would like a roast of his cousin, Sarah. Yeah.

So specifically, he directed me to a response she left on his how the fuck could a moral person vote for Trump Facebook post after the election.

And her response was basically a wall of text tirade about how, you know, she didn't have time to leave a wall of text tirade on his Facebook post.

But once it was done insisting we couldn't see if it stood really still, she went on to this list Trump's virtues that aged super well, right?

Like stuff like how honest he was about his intentions on the campaign trail, how few wars he would start, and how much better inflation was about to get.

But the biggest lie in the whole post was about how Rob should just get over it and accept the results of the damn election, just like Trump supporters did when Biden won in 2020.

All right. So Lydia, very excited to deliver you this one.
Michael would like you to roast Bill Maher.

Yeah, this almost ended our marriage because I am the one who roasts Bill Maher in our family. That's every marriage has, you know, like who roasts Bill Maher and who roasts Bill

who's on spiders, who roasts Bill Maher. Yeah, yes, who's big spoon, who's little spoon, who roasts Bill Maher.
Listen, I recognize that. I offered you the opportunity.

Yeah, and so

the counselor helped us through it. And what we're going to do is, I'm going to roast Bill Maher by being his audience while Lydia does her roast.
So I'll be the

paid. So what Bill Maher does, if you're not familiar, is he's not funny.
So he pays people to like laugh in his audience. And so I'll be playing that role.
Okay, go.

Bill Maher is a smug, almost 70-year-old man. Guys, he's freaking old that acts like he's a teenage boy still who can't get late.

So he's trying increasingly more ridiculous things to be noticed by girls. Thank you so much, audience.
And it keeps not working.

As someone who used to be a teenage girl, by the way, I am more turned on by a baked potato than whatever shtick Bill Maher attempts. Every single week on his stupid show.
That's a weird example.

Baked potatoes are awesome. And I'm vegetarian, so I can't even put bacon or anything fun on that baked potato.
I would still rather have sex with that baked potato.

It's still better than boring, basic biach Bilmar. Yeah.

God, it's so funny. Listen to our show this week, actually, and you can hear us make fun of this audio.
It's a series.

Where literally a guy just does that in the background after every joke because no one left.

Yeah.

Cool.

All right, Thomas, will you thank Drew Hickcock by name one more time? All right. Well, this is definitely a sex thing.
Okay, no, at this point it is.

But also, yes, thank you, Drew Hitcock.

But Jeffrey would also like you to roast people who don't believe that white privilege exists. This that's fun.
That's fun. White privilege doesn't exist.

We elected white privilege our fucking president.

White privilege exists so hard that incompetent virgins came and ransacked our entire government because one time a white person had to watch an HR video on not using racial slitters in the office.

Yep. White people are so entitled entitled that they saw the MLK quote about the moral arc of the universe bending toward justice and they called the manager to have it straightened.

Iron that shit out. All right.
So Heath, this next one's for you. You know you weren't going to make it through an entire vulgarity for charity without roasting a dog or two.

So why don't we start with Bruiser? Yeah, here's the thing. I think Bruiser might be addicted to drugs, like human drugs.

So we got some photos of Bruiser and it felt like one of those crazy nights I had in my 20s. Right.

And I'm looking through the pictures in my phone the next day, you know, and like you could see the moment you took the serious drugs from one picture.

It's just, it's Bruiser doing like normal stuff, smiling with his tongue out. They're out in the woods.
He's looking out into the distance, all pensive. But then out of nowhere.

There's a picture of him and he's got this insane fuck stare straight into the camera and he's chewing on a giant pacifier. Like he just snorted a soup ladle of Molly.
It's crazy. Yep.
He sure did.

Like, you remember the hangover Ed Helms just holding his own tooth with pliers?

It was like that picture for a dog. Yeah.
But less balanced.

All right. Well, Noah, apparently I'm assigning roasts now.
Oh, yeah. Chris would like you to roast the Greater Orlando Airport Authority.

Yeah. So when I saw that, I assumed Chris wanted me to roast the fact that it's the ninth busiest airport in America for which they have as many as four TSA agents on staff at a time.

Or maybe the fact that everybody who works there wears a tag that says, hi, how may you go fuck yourself? Or maybe the fact that the entire airport is laid out like a goddamn Zelda dungeon.

But no, apparently they've made it worse since the last time I was there because they decided to replace their antebellum people mover with higher volume ones that can accommodate more than 16 people in their luggage at a time.

And that's great, but they decided to start that shit at the height of the holiday season, which is fucking nuts. Cool.
Yeah. Apparently they're shutting down one tram at a time.

And in the meantime, they're forcing passengers onto a bus that'll take them to a tram, that'll take them to the terminal, that'll take them to the plane like they're in a holiday romp with John fucking candy.

And don't worry, they expect to have this all sorted out by 2027.

Oh, boy. 2027.
That's the optimistic estimate. And knowing Orlando like I do, I'm going to give it a 50-50 chance by the time that they're done, the tram is going to go to a fucking toll booth.

Noah, if you donate under the name of chris you have to tell us

that is nowhere near my least favorite airport so

all right lydia i've got one for you that i think you're going to enjoy here anthony would like a roast of calls to lower the temperature from the side that says their opposition is made up of murderers groomers and communists okay yeah good one the temperature is already pretty like moderate i would say i don't think we need to lower the temperature and listen i think having one-on-one conversations with folks that think like this could actually maybe make a difference.

I don't know. But

when we're talking in general, look in the mirror, my guy. I'm a stats girl.

I have a feeling if I sat here and pulled all the numbers of folks that have harmed other people, which is what we're getting at when you accuse the left of being full of murderers and groomers, right?

It might not look so great for you. I mean, Roy Moore.
Can we talk about Roy Moore? Roy Moore. You guys, just can we reminisce on that fucking guy? He's insane and a pedophile.
Matt Gates.

Can we talk about Matt Gates? Oh my God.

And I don't even know that we could get a coherent definition from the right about what communist means based on how they've described Zoron Mamdani at Turning Point USA rallies. He's a communist.

He's a socialist. They can't make up their mind at all.
I don't think they actually know what that word means.

Also, as the sole woman on this episode right now, I'd like to point out that 99% of the time, it's just dudes that are the problem. Yeah.
Girl power. Thank you so much.
Fair. Fair.

Matt Gates called to ask when Phoebe's birthday was the other day. I was

very disturbed.

Do you think he's just going to get her a present?

Yeah, probably. Probably.

All right, Eli. This next one is for you.

Reed would like you to roast Tom and Thomas for, quote, ragging unfairly on Eli for having the most reasonable position on the pre-nuptial agreement episode on Dear Old Dads. Thank you, Reed.

Now, listen, do I remember what I said or what

my opinion was at the time?

No.

But what Reed is emphasizing here is that I am the heart and soul of that podcast.

I am the voice of reason and Tom and Thomas are my confusingly named detractors.

I am Christ on the cross and you are the Roman guards stabbing me in the side with your spears of taking a turn to talk sometimes. Also,

on that subject, you'll both 100% kill yourselves if you get divorced. So I think prenuptial agreements don't really apply to you.
It should have just been a solo episode. All right.

You could just do a will, I guess. Yes.

And Thomas, as much as I wish there was somebody that had, you know, like that wanted you to roast Eli in response to that, unfortunately, I didn't have that.

But Emmy would like a roast of gerrymandering in North Carolina. Well, sorry.
No can do. I've got no notes on that.

I can roast the Supreme Court for ruling that, quote, claims of excessive partisanship and redistricting redistricting present political questions not suitable for resolution in federal courts.

In other words, if you don't like not having a vote, then just vote to fix it. Yep.

I can roast Texas Republicans for being so fucking incompetent that they gerrymandered in the one remaining way that isn't allowed by our fucking Supreme Court. And then you know what happened?

Call back to my earlier roast. Supreme Court Justice White Privilege Alito said, yeah,

but still. And then just decided they get to do it.

And I can roast Democrats for not realizing we've been playing code names with Heath heath this entire time and we're still trying to play by the rules well meanwhile heath has written the word on his eyelids while he gives the clue and we're just like but we should just play by the rules oh we lost yet again we lost again where does it say anything about eyelids we lost again show me to the party of heaths So, yeah, I don't, I honestly, I'm no roast.

Just the roasts are for us. All right.
Fucking start gerrymandering everywhere until they realize it's not fair. And then maybe we'll pass a whole thing that says, don't be fucking Heath.

All right, hey, good job in California on Prop 50. Fucking

Heath. Sorry for bringing you into this roast.
We're gonna play the game. All right, Heath, it's time to get some behind-the-scenes drama for the listeners here.

Kenneth hasn't requested a roast, but he knows where the conversation will go. He would like an update on the points game that you guys play during the ads.
Thank you. How dare you, Kenneth?

Thank you. It's about time this was brought to light.
Eli, please don't interrupt.

Following the clone accords of 2024, in which it was legally decided that all points won by underground mindless clone Heaths that certain members of the company had been growing for the sole purpose of extracting points

by your wife. It was ruled by your wife.
It's still legal. It's still legal.
After that point, Team Heath took a decisive lead. But then, against all judgment,

I fell back 200 points after wagering those points to the Woldasher Mizzel during the wild hunt. Although that is a bet that should have never been ratified, your wife did that one, too.

We don't agree on anything. It's crazy.
So, that said,

the raw points score as adjudicated by Bet MGM, the official bookkeeping partner of Puzzler and Thunderstorm LLC.

I told you guys we're not going to fucking pay for that. It was the only way.
It was the only way. Don't be ridiculous.
No, it has to be official. As adjudicated.

Officially, the score stands at Heath 155, Eli 133 face

he gerrymandered his way out of that one hey big shout out by the way to the listener who asked to remain anonymous who I literally just messaged on Facebook and was like you keep track of our show where's the point game at and he was like oh I actually keep track of that and I was like yeah you do

all right Noah got one for you here Harper would like you to roast his nearly blind and very rotund dog, Bella. Oh, Bella's the great.

Bella's the kind of fat where the the head is just like a face at the end of the belly, right?

The neck is a long gone vestigial memory that you can only discern by examining her DNA or something like that.

Like if she wants to look to the left, she has to move her butt to the right to compensate, right? But she's losing her eyesight, so that'll be less of a problem as she needs to look left less often.

Now, that will mean that she won't be able to appreciate the plating of the garbage that she's scarfing down quick before somebody can turn the trash can right side up again, but it will make her better at running into the trash cans in the first place.

So it's a little win-some lose-some kind of thing. Exactly.
All right. So Lydia, this next one feels perfect for you.
Lauren donated $300 for us to roast Elf on the Shelf. Oh, that's $300 well spent.

Let me give this to you.

Elf on the Shelf is a corporate ploy to continue to directly shame moms for never doing enough, even at the time of the year when, for the most part, any holiday magic and memories are the result of unpaid labor from only moms.

They also do this indirectly by exploiting women, competing against other women, you know, especially with social media. Don't even get me started.
Pinterest, Instagram, everywhere.

It's calculated too, because when you make women, the makers of Christmas magic, feel bad, they'll spend more money to try to make up for it.

And this little creepy elf doll will pose however you want and do whatever you deem necessary, right, to make that happen. You stick his head in the toilet, hilarious.
Put him stuck in the freezer.

So funny. Kids will love that.
Poop out the chocolate for those thumbprint cookies. Everything's good and you're going to feel better.
So spend the money, moms.

Also, wait, I thought we were backing off of Santa seeing everything you do because it's creepy, right? Like we totally wrote out that song because we're like, he sees you when you're sleeping.

Hate that. But now...
To get around that, he just sends in his employees. Right.
So typical CEO behavior.

And the fact that the elves aren't pushing back means that they're just brown-nosing anti-union snitches. So stop buying them.
Fucking scabs.

Also, I need to disclose that I looked up images of Elf on the Shelf to refresh my memory because I will never do this. I've never done it.

I will never do it ever in my life because I already shamed myself enough as a mom. So he's just, you know, not in my brain.
I don't need him.

But if you look at him, it looks like he farted and is just waiting for the smell to make its way over to you. He's like side-eyeing.
Yeah. Like waiting for you to make it.
That's what he looks like.

Yeah, exactly. But perfect.
However.

One little shout out. I won't hear any slander about his makeup.
It's really good. He uses a great mascara, leans into blush, which is brave and powerful.
He has a youthful glow.

We're all seeking it to be honest, but that's all the nice things I know about him.

Otherwise, he can go die.

That's that's incredible. I want to hijack your guys's show to just help women in the quest for equal rights.

Women need to take a lesson from Eli's impression of me and once in a while just be like, Yeah, that's fucking stupid.

That's dumb. That's fucking dumb.
I'm not doing that. No,

I'm not doing that. So, okay.
You know what's really fucking sad? Because we had a fucking Snoop on the stoop and I Lucinda loved it and then

he took his MAGA turn and shit and became a piece of shit. Oh, yeah, I forgot

that fucking sucks. Okay, Thomas, this victory lap is for you.
Aaron would like a roast of Winsome Earl Sears.

Really?

You want me to roast a 61-year-old black woman, veteran, the U.S. Marine Corps?

That's cool. So are you trying to have me canceled? Is that what we're doing here? Or murdered? Look, I'm not super religious.
I hope that's okay with everybody here.

When a campaign bus with a huge picture of your face spontaneously bursts into flames days before the election, maybe you're on the wrong side.

It's possible you're on the wrong side of politics. All right.
So, Eli, Glenn would like a roast of her former son-in-law, Trey.

Gwen.

I want to roast Trey for you. I really do.
Because yes, he looks like a white guy in black face in an in-living color sketch that doesn't hold up to to the ravages of time.

Trey looks like if putting spinning rims on a Visa gift card was a guy. And Gwen's description tells us that that is who Trey is deeply as a human being.

But Gwen, I need to call you to task as well because the moment this man stepped into your house, Gwen, you knew you needed to poison him. You knew it.
I know you knew it. You know you knew it.

And the fact that you didn't make like the mushroom lady the second he first ate in your home, that's on you, Gwen. That's on you.
And I hope you take future measures to correct your mistakes.

Well done, sir. All right.
Now it's time for us to take care of five more of our top roasters of the fundraiser. These folks splashed down so much cash that they deserve a full court roasting.

So everybody have Adam. We're going to start with Beth, who donated $5,000 for a roast of Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry.

Ooh, Jeff Landry looks like he just smelled a fart, and it is his favorite vintage.

From Elf on the Shelf.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Now, let me say his very clearly photoshopped Congressman portrait. It's on Wikipedia if anyone wants to look at it.
Most definitely added lip gloss after the fact. It's shiny.
It is so shiny.

It's beyond moisturizing.

And as of like yesterday, Jeff Landry is responsible for Trump announcing he's sending the National Guard to New Orleans ahead of Christmas, like during the Christmas holiday. Yep.

When the city is on pace to actually have one of its safest years since the 70s, since the the 70s. So, fuck Jeff Landry.
Yeah. Yeah.

This fucking sycophantic leech on Trump's taint was begging Trump, could he please send the National Guard in to get rid of all the fucking queerness or jazz or whatever it is that they're after.

And he looks like the host of a game show where you smell panties and try to guess which celebrity they were stolen from.

Jesus Christ. And you get it right, but he makes the answer in the form of a question.
It's still worse.

And you're like, fine, who is Ghalain Maxwell?

This is a new game. Why am I here?

The game shows called Win-Loser Drawers.

That fits because I was going to say he looks like someone had Super Dave Osborne's corpse dry cleaned and polished.

I think that works. Well, I don't want to say Super Dave's in hell, but it like it fits with

being the boss in hell. Yeah, he's in hell and he looks like that.

All right. And Chandra would like a roast of people who have gotten weirdly fascist in the past year because they finally have a tiny bit of power, and apparently, that's what we do now.

And she gave us $2,000 whopping dollars for the privilege. Okay, I got to say, it's like the obnoxious kid in high school that had no friends.

So, all they could cling to in their desperation of mattering at all to anybody was to suck up to the principal and join like the tardy police and stash their classmates that were late for school.

It's embarrassing, honestly. And obviously, anyone with power who gets fashion is dangerous, but they're also, and I think we need to focus on this, pathetic and weird.

And they still don't matter, and no one's going to go to their funeral.

That is fun that that's true. Yeah.

Yeah.

Apparently, Chandra had an like she'd been donating time to an organization for a decade and a half before a change in leadership led to like a sort of Trumpian fascism and microcosm where they ran out everybody they considered impure because apparently, basically, my entire demographic cohort is exactly as bigoted as society will let them get away with it all fucking times.

Jesus, how fucked up do you have to be to make old white men look worse? Yeah, it's tough. It's tricky.
It's tricky.

And look, I want to point out that the fact that you live in a microcosm of a second where this behavior is acceptable is deep and abiding proof that you did not read how this story ended for the last group of fascists.

Yeah. Like, I guess what I'm saying is sleep in jammies.
You don't mind being photographed. You know what I'm saying?

Okay, I hate to fuck up your thing, but the last group of fascists, they have like all three principles.

Well, their story is over. Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, eventually eventually they'll die of old age.

And no one will go to their funeral. Yes, thank you.
All right. Strong Thurman.
Okay, so the planet will be on fire.

So I can't tell exactly what kind of organization we're talking about here, but clearly some idiot at that organization bought a gavel as the chair of this little, you know, community group or whatever, and he got drunk with power because of his little gavel.

And he decided to like make that group great again with the vibes of, I guess, a eugenics-themed HOA with like getting out of the impurities. It's terrifying.
You can just say HOA.

But here's the thing that's happening when shitty people have to do a flex like this in some tiny little thing.

It's like Lydia said, they have nothing in the rest of their life. They have no power, no respect, no love, nothing.

I'm going to do the Tom thing because he's not here. I'm going to get all Tom and Dark.

When they go home, they're completely ignored by everyone. Their dog doesn't even even make eye contact.

These people are utterly bereft of any value in the universe. They're not even information.

I'd say they're noise, but that would mean somebody cared when a tree fell on their head in the forest and was listening.

They're the empty set of all empty sets in the dark void of invisible brackets with the nothingness of nothingness inside.

They're Mike Lindell's packet data of people.

They're not even. It's even like like a poetry slam, you know, snapping over here.
Yeah, that is exactly right.

And I'm going to roast myself for Heath having unlocked my new kink, which is apparently Tom, but who's good at math?

Carry me away, Tom, who's good at math.

Come on. The empty set of all empty sets of music.

I'm afraid of all the computers.

I absolutely love this one.

Derek would like a roast of people who purchased a Tesla after Elon musk went crazy so purchased a tesla yeah well so after it became clear to the average standard buyer yeah yeah no buying a tesla post musk going crazy is like buying a ford after you learn about his opinions on jazz music it is it's not a great look derek first of all let me thank you for sharing in your submission how to tell a pre-doge vehicle versus a post doge you know model y specifically i'm going to make sure the audience hears this too because it's important okay the model y was updated in January 2025.

And now the headlights and taillights are a bar. So like, like what you would see with the Cybertruck.

So with that knowledge in mind, everybody, audience, entire audience listening, I think we can officially tell you all, and this is me speaking on behalf of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm, to go key those cars.

Like you guys agree, I can speak on behalf of your population. You sure can't.
Absolutely. No, he's so outvoted.
He's usually two to one outvoted, but he's extra outvoted.

We're going to ramp up the keying thing in a second. Go ahead.
Yeah.

What a weird loser segment of the population you have to be to drive electric, but not actually give a shit about the environment or humans or democracy or decency.

Also, Doge was a bumbling failure at so many steps along the way. And it's ending earlier than they initially planned.

So if you're buying a Tesla now, I can also assume that you're also a failure that finishes early. Hardcore.

I like the idea of them buying Teslas and being like, it's great, except for the electric part. Yeah, right.

Trying to put gas in the trunk.

Yeah.

Just pouring it in.

All I have to say to those folks is your self-driving mode works all the time and be sure to park it in the garage near the fireworks. Yes.

Okay. There's a cyber truck owner who moved into my building over the summer.
Oh no.

He parks right fucking next to me. No.
Yeah. I've been workshopping ideas for a few months now.
I haven't done anything yet. Here's what I did, though.
I looked up.

This guy looks out his window and sees he just staring.

I'm writing notes on a legal pad all the time. Like

a fucking Wiley coyote blueprint or something. And he's like, man, there's nothing more dangerous than a clearly single white man

holding up big, like schematic blueprints. No, I really did look up the specs of the Cybertruck and I found out it has exterior cameras on the front, back, and both sides.

So I'm going to need to start by repelling down from above

and taking over the cameras. I do have all the the equipment ready for that.
And then I want to set up an obstacle course that he has to get through before he can leave the basement. Okay.

So you guys remember that insane demo that Elon made where he claims the truck is bulletproof against the nine millimeter height. Yes.
Gun?

Do you remember that? He smashes the window with the big metal ball. Completely smashed.
The shot would bounce off, but it just cracks all over the place.

Anyway, just completely unrelated to the gun thing, I said, I'm going to rig up the garage like the assault from the American Gladiators, and And it won't be tennis balls that are being shot at the Cybertruck.

Here's the other plan. And this one's a little easier to pull off.
I might be able to do this. I want to hide like a hair dryer in my jacket somehow.

And I want to blow it on those side panels that are held together with balloons. So it's just like, and then I see him coming and I just walk away.
And then he gets on the highway.

His whole car is just flying off. And it just

falls apart. And it's just a frame.
He's like Fred Flintstone. Yeah.

I have to imagine when you looked up the specs, did they say like, and this part will go,

and this part will go,

like, I imagine the specs talking in that way. You could just pour gasoline into the back of this if you want.
You're allowed to.

I can't stop you.

All right. How about one for Jessica? who would like a roast of people who expect free legal or medical advice from their lawyer, doctor, friends, or family members or acquaintances or whatever.

Yeah, obviously those folks are just like lazy cheapskates.

At least have the decency to go to this person's place of business and ask those questions, not over a slice of pumpkin pie, delicious, at Thanksgiving, while 15 kids are running around the house screaming their heads off.

Someone's already passed out and snoring. The old people complaining about the way you did sweet potato casserole isn't the way that they did sweet potato casserole.

Can't we just enjoy the family dysfunction together instead of asking those questions? Hold those thoughts.

Go to the person's office, ask those questions then across a desk like a normal person, and then complain about the bill that you will absolutely get because these people are professionals and advice is part of their product that they sell.

That lets them have a place to live and food to eat. So knock it off.

Yeah, look, it is bad enough to ask people to play for exposure when they didn't take on postgraduate levels of debt to learn their fucking instruments. Okay.

I felt guilty when I asked a pet groomer friend of mine for advice about combing the knots out of peekaboo's fur. Y'all are just lucky.
I'm not a fucking doctor.

Because if I I was a fucking doctor, my answer, no matter what you just asked me, would be yes, you definitely have cancer. Right.
No matter what you're asking me about.

And hey, that would be my same fucking answer if I was a lawyer, too. That's what WebMD does.
Yeah, right.

Same advice. Oh, now we figured it out.
No, I'm so glad that Noah said that because that is exactly my proposal.

I think if you ask someone for a free version of their job, they should be unbound by their moral obligations when it comes to what they tell you. Oh, was it a bad ankle? Drink a cup of paint thinner.

You'd like me me to look over your lease for free? The key is to trick him into signing a piece of paper while you're dressed as a cake delivery man.

If you want it for free, you should get exactly what you paid for it.

Yeah. Kind of like when people complain about the ad they didn't like on the free podcast that they were listening to.

And if you don't like the company in the ad, hey, good news. That company wasted money on the ad because you're not going to buy their thing.

Like, I want every Republican candidate wasting their money talking to our audience in ads. If we could get that, that would be amazing.

And when people ask me for advice about starting a podcast, they don't usually. But if they do,

I tell them they should definitely do that right now. Get into podcasting.
Strike while the iron's hot. Ground floor, sellers market on podcasts.

And, you know, don't get bogged down with bullshit, like, you know, writing down your ideas ahead of time. Just free flow right off the dome in your metal box of a garage

for For this sound. Call the show Echo Chamber.
It's kind of meta. Oh, there you go.
That's what Joe Rogan does, though. Yeah.

Yeah, he does really well.

And last but certainly not least, Ryan would like a roast of private equity.

Okay, wait, I want to jump in here at the start and say that I'm too stupid to know what private equity is to make fun of it. So I Googled it.

And then I still didn't know.

So I chat GPT'd it. And I'd like to say that I think using money to invest in please stop making me do sexual role play as a centaur is

bad, and I condemn it. All right.
So, Eli, I'll try to sum it up for you.

So, you know how there are millions of great ideas for services and apps and products and shit that would be really useful and moderately profitable, and everybody would really like it if those existed, but they don't have the potential for explosive growth, so nobody can have them.

Yeah, that's because a bunch of fucking people who made billions investing in the easiest time to ever invest convinced themselves it was actually because of their fucking super genius and not the fucking revolutions in communication technology that did to trick.

So basically, they were people who picked the correct lottery numbers once and convinced themselves that that made them mathematicians.

Almost everybody who's successful on Wall Street.

Yep. I got to talk more about those people because I grew up in the capital of Silicon Valley, folks, San Jose, capital of Silicon Valley.

If you didn't know, it was a trivia question last night that I got right, by the way, at a bar I went to. She won't stop talking about it.
I won't.

I've I've had enough of tech bros and venture capital firms and the disgusting money that gets thrown around because of disrupting, I guess. I don't know.
Yes.

I purposefully don't live there anymore, but every time I visit these people think that they're hot shit.

The best they can do, guys, the best that these people can do with all of their money and all of their power and supposed brilliance that they've bestowed upon themselves is drive around in circles at Santana Row, which is like an open-air mall sort of shopping thing, revving their stupid car engine for someone to notice them, begging for someone to notice them.

It's embarrassing. It's so embarrassing.
And then all, then what they do is then they get out of their car, they go to happy hour, and they spend $18 for a Paps blue ribbon. That's what they've done.

to San Jose. By the way, that was just a recording of a car engine because they drive a Tesla.
So they have gas in the trunk and then they play a revving. Can you hear the sloshing also?

That's amazing that the car revving is happening at a mall and then they get like their bucket of hipster beers for eight.

This is the dumbest thing. Okay.

All right. So private equity.
Here's the thing. So you know how the stock market, it's like a big, complicated casino game.
And it's you know how the Federal Reserve is a Bonzi.

But it's like, it's this complicated thing. And the game's clearly rigged for the rich and powerful.
And those people are always running scams that we usually hear about later.

And then we have a giant financial crisis because of the scams sometimes and everyone gets fucked.

And it seems like there's a smoke-filled room with billionaires, you know, swishing brandy in their maha ha snifters and making deals for themselves to keep getting richer.

Well, private equity thought that was a little too democratic.

They just make enormous like billion-dollar secret deals that are not available to all the. filthy commoner naifes trading at, you know, Wall Street firms on the New York Stock Exchange.

Private Private equity is the smoke-filled room behind the smoke-filled room of the stock market. So, yeah, fuck private equity.

And also, fuck whoever snuck the word equity into the concept of stocks. That's crazy.
Right?

What a load of shit. Oh, yeah.
Maybe we can get the Trump administration to ban it just because it has that word in it. Oh, there you go.

Smart. Oh, my God.
Diversify my portfolio. No fucking thing.
Right. Nothing.
Nothing.

Cash, Cash, take your plane, take the FBI's plane over there and shoot him from a rocket.

All right. Well, Thomas, Lydia, thank you so much for helping us tell people to go fuck themselves.

And if you'd like to hear more of Thomas and Lydia telling people to go fuck themselves and doing other stuff, be sure to check the show notes for a link to the 4% of all podcasts that are theirs.

Before we start this cycle again, I want to let you know that I'm going to be speaking at Baja Con in August of next year. That's August 21st through the 23rd in Point Edward, Ontario.

And there's a boat cruise and everything. Looks like a great time.
Check the show notes for a link to learn more. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight.

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, The Skeptic, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and even a new episode of our Sister Show's Hot Friend God Off a Movies debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday.

And an even new episode of our Have Sister Show Citation Dida debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd have forgotten the lessons of Thanksgiving already.

If i neglected to thank heath enrich for making so much frankin' sense i need to thank eli bosnick for always bringing more than required i need to thank lucinda illusions for being gold i don't need wordplay for theirs she's just gold i also want to thank thomas and lydia for one more time for making with the insults be sure to check the show notes for links to their stuff also want to thank cranaut for providing this week's farnsworth quote he does allure cards on deviant art No idea what that means, but you can find links to it on the show notes.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best people. Audrey, Daniel, Danny, Terry, Kathy, if I give give you dollars, it's because you're the best.

Justin, Terry, Catherine, the Mighty Adam, J, AJ, Occam's Raver, Mr. Hobaida, and Steven, who are so cool, the whole temperature in their hemisphere is dropping.

Except for the one dude who is from New Zealand, who's so hot that he counteracts his coolness.

Together, these 18 amiable atheists aided our aims to alienate ancient Abrahamic ace holery this week by giving us money.

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

And if you'd like to help, but you're too busy commercializing the holidays in our ongoing effort to take the Christ out of Christmas, good job.

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

And speaking of social media, Tim Roberts Handles app for us, and our audio engineers Warren Clark will also write all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

If you have questions, comments, or death threads, and find all the content info on the contact page at scathingatheist.com.

Love Chumbawamba. Love them.
And Aura Frames had. No, you don't.
I love that one song, and I can't name anything else.

There you go. I can name a variety of Chumbawamba songs.
Yeah. It's just a quick Google away.

No, I know him by heart. Wow.
Google is like, nope, I got nothing.

It brings up tub thumping, and it's like, did you want something besides that? I don't think you did.

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 a Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2025. All rights rights reserved.
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