The Scathing Atheist - 561: The Heart of War Edition

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

On this week’s episode: An Arizona judge leaves child abuse to the professionals ... A Florida health clinic leaves medicine to the UN-professionals ... And Tom and Cecil will be here for the parts we recorded before Noah was cleared to return to work. --------- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: [e-mail] To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --------- Headlines: Judge tosses out child abuse lawsuit because laws don’t apply to clergy: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/az-judge-tosses-out-child-abuse-lawsuit Election Day was good for pro-choice and bad for Republicans during their debate in Miami: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/republican-presidential-candidates-abortion-views-stances/ Rick Santorum says "very sexy" issues like abortion and marijuana make the GOP lose: https://news.yahoo.com/rick-santorum-gets-weird-very-073413619.html Pope says that trans people…exist: https://www.reuters.com/world/transsexuals-can-be-baptized-catholic-serve-godparents-vatican-says-2023-11-08/ Inside the Clinic Where Being a Discredited Doctor Is a Plus: https://www.thedailybeast.com/we-the-people-health-and-wellness-center-in-venice-florida-sprung-up-from-anti-covid-19-concerns Christian girl wins lawsuit after being forced to participate in weird ™ cult rituals: https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/former-student-awarded-150k-after-cps-forced-participation-in-hindu-rituals/

Warning, not safe for work unless you work here at the podcast. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh, Stamps.com, and by all the various scientific breakthroughs that landed us on a 90 plus percent survival rate for heart attacks. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, I'm America's number one Christian Ray Comfort. Here to tell you that if the selfies I took from our OnlyFans are any indication, we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's November 16th. And Noah's back and alive.

Woo-hoo! It would be really weird if I was just back in that instance. Yes, hi, Noah-lusions. That was the backup plan. I'm Eli Cosnick. He's been right. And from Kellyanne Conway's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, an Arizona judge leaves child abuse to the professionals.

A Florida health clinic leaves medicine to the unprofessionals. And speaking of unprofessionals, Tom and Cecil will be here for the parts we recorded before I was cleared to return to work. But first, the diatribe. It's so weird. Even with so few people praying for me, I still got better. Saw the cardiologist yesterday. He told me I was about as healthy as a person can hope to be two weeks after a heart attack. And I said, man, that is one mysterious way. Of course, what I lacked in prayers, I more

than made up for in thoughts. I have to imagine the messages of support and well-wishing have reached into the thousands at this point. And I've read every single one of them, I think. As you said, there's so damn many ways to get in touch with me online. I can't be sure, but I think that I've read every single one of them. And instead of limiting themselves to vague offers to magically wish for me, there were a ton of offers for genuine material support. But of course, reading through all those messages meant that I also had to read the bad ones.

And to be clear, they were absolutely drowning in the good ones. There were a hundred messages of heartfelt sympathy for every asshole telling me it was my own fault for getting the COVID vaccine. But those ones were still there, as were a baffling number along the lines of, now do you believe in God? Right? Which seems grossly misplaced since, at least in their worldview, God's the one that tried to kill me and science is the one that thwarted him. Right? So hours after watching modern science save my fucking life, I literally got a message that read, quote, do you still worship science now?

End quote. That'd be like me trying to told you so Christians in line for the pearly gates. But I don't want to dwell on those assholes. If they're good at following instructions, they've already fucked themselves to death. Anyway, instead, I want to dwell on different assholes. Specifically, a few well-meaning friends and family members who wanted to make sure that I knew that had I died, God would have let me into heaven on a technicality. The technicality? You want to know what it was?

It was that I was never really an atheist to begin with. They wanted to make sure that I knew that despite 10 fucking years of daily proclamations to the contrary, they never really believed that I was an atheist who was going to spend eternity burning in hell as atheists deserve. I think it's fairly obvious why this is a dick move, but in case it's not clear, let's just flip it around for a second. Imagine the roles are reversed, right? Imagine that when religious people had close brushes with death, atheists took that as an opportunity to challenge their fucking worldview.

Hey, man, I can't help but notice that the universe is not acting in a loving and benevolent way towards you at the moment. Almost as though there is no omnipotent deity looking out for you. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that if you did die, there would have been no heaven to go to. And if there was enough of you left to realize it, you'd have been really disappointed. You spent so much of your life worrying about what God wanted instead of what you wanted. But I'm sure you already knew that. After all, you were never really a Christian to begin with, right? You can see what's wrong now. It's like it's a total dick move. It's a well-meaning in a roundabout way kind of thing, but it's still a dick move because here's the dirty secret behind those messages.

way kind of thing, but it's still a dick move because here's the dirty secret behind those messages. They're not for me. These people weren't trying to change my mind about anything or reassure me of anything. The whole purpose was for my loved ones to try to rescue their poisonous worldview by assuring themselves that their God would never throw me in hell, even if he explicitly says otherwise a lot. Now, I should point out that the people sending me this shit are your typical buffet Christians, right? They don't subscribe to any particular denomination and probably don't know the doctrinal differences between one and another. They have their idiosyncratic form of Christianity based on childhood Bible stories and intuition. But just because they've cherry picked which elements to believe in doesn't mean they believe them any less.

Right. And one of the few universal truths in all those smorgasbord forms of faith is that heaven is for us, not them. Right. Because what would be the point of heaven if Muslims got to go? Right. And here I am fucking up their whole thing because unlike literally any Muslims, these people know me. Many of them have known me for decades. I mean, all but one of them were fucking members of my family. And let me tell you, when you start a charity drive that raises over a million dollars for needy families, you get the family reputation of being one of the good ones pretty quick, families, you get the family reputation of being one of the good ones pretty quick, right?

These are all people I've been there for, for their whole lives. People who know me well enough to know that if their God would send me to hell for eternity, he's not a very good God. So when a perfectly good non-Christian dies, how do you reconcile that? If you're in their camp? Well, plenty of them just say that motherfucker's burning in hell sucks for them, right? There's a lot of that. But if that's too harsh, you can always just pretend that at the very last second, that dying person converted to Christianity in their head and managed to sneak in on the vineyard worker loophole. But of course, that doesn't work when somebody just almost dies, right?

Because in that case, that person can tell you that, no, the fuck they didn't afterwards. So what's left then? Well, the escape clause du jour seems to be just ignoring that objection altogether. To just tell yourself that despite vociferous and well-reasoned arguments to the contrary, your loved one never really rejected the Holy Spirit. Yeah, sure, they may have specifically said things one never really rejected the Holy Spirit. Yeah, sure, they may have specifically said things like, I deny the Holy Spirit, but our God can see into their heart and inside their heart, hiding somewhere behind all the arterial plaque,

presumably, is a love for Jesus that never really abated. And since God can hear that way louder than all those actual statements they made, he'd probably just chalk it up to a tantrum and waive the normal heaven requirements. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think it's sweet that they're willing to write me into their postmortem Jesus fanfic, but it's still a pretty egregious insult to my character, right? And to their faith. You want to espouse that shit? Well, then you have to take the whole fucking thing, bones and all. You don't get to dismiss my life's work in defense of your fairy tale. So for the record, hey, look, if I die and God shows up and he's like, hey, you know, despite all logic, somehow I exist and then offers me heaven, I'm going to refuse it. I wouldn't want

to hang out in the house of some genocidal sociopath anyway, no matter how good the harp music was. So if you want me in your heaven, you have to imagine not just your God forgiving me, but me forgiving him. And that's a bit that I still have some say over. Joining me for headlines tonight are the left main coronary and left anterior descending to my left circumflex artery. The right coronary artery can go fuck itself. We're not on speaking terms right now. Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to walk the beat?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are you doing? I'm staying thematic. Why aren't you attacking Noah? Because your pain is funnier.

It's true. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.? Because your pain is funnier. It's true. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.. Yeah. I'm a good. I'm a good. It was pretty good. Oh, you take your shoes off, Seth Andrews. Dude, what are you doing in here? What's it look like? I'm feeding Noah vegetables in his sleep. No, I see that. Why though?

Because his heart, he has to eat like carrots and stuff now. Okay, I don't think that's exactly right. But rather than just inserting them into his mouth, why don't you try HelloFresh? What's HelloFresh? With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. Okay, but is it going to give Noah the heart-healthy meals he needs with enough variety? Sure is. We shouldn't have put him down. We can't adopt a record.

Yeah, it will. Choose from over 45 weekly recipes and over 100 curated picks from HelloFresh Market. I don't know, Heath. Noah doesn't have a lot of time to cook. That's where HelloFresh's 15-minute meals come in. These quick fixes help you get a wholesome meal on the table in less time than it takes to get delivery. That does sound good, but have you actually tried it? I sure have. I was a HelloFresh customer before they were a sponsor.

I love how the meals unpack in seconds and offer delicious variety. That's why I, Heath Enright... Sure, I'll pick for the Jaguars. Why not? That's why I, Heath Enright... Sure, I'll pick for the Jaguars. Why not? That's why I, Heath Enright, personally endorse HelloFresh. Alright, Heath. I'm in. Where do I sign up? Go to HelloFresh.com slash scathing

free and use the code scathing free for free breakfast for life. One breakfast item per box while subscription is active. That's free breakfast for life at HelloFresh.com slash scathing free with the code scathing free. All right. Thanks, Heath. So what did you manage to feed him so far? 11 carrots. Feels like too many men. Well, I didn't know about HelloFresh. Okay. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight,

while Tim Ballard and his team of merry crossfitters are dive rolling their way through South American jungles on the hunt for child sex slaves to rescue,

the atheist podcasts back home are doing way more to prevent child sexual abuse just by telling people God doesn't exist. Or by doing nothing.

We'd be, well, that too, yeah, right, nothing also kicks it up a notch. Put you ahead. And we were reminded of that once again when an arizona judge tossed out a lawsuit against mormon leaders who knowingly covered up child rape for years because it's

illegal to make religious leaders follow laws specifically the church learned about the abuse through a confession and thus they're statutorily exempt from the legal requirement to report it. What is happening? Are we trying to have prosecutors do a magic act to make it showier or something? And now they'll prosecute the pedophiles blindfolded while drinking a glass of water. Stop making it harder for them. Yeah. Look, here's the thing. If your thing has a mechanism that allows you to cover up child rape, the whole thing isn't worth it. The whole thing, the whole thing is bad. General, pretty good damn rule of thumb. So yeah. So this is the case of one Paul Adams, who in 2010 confessed to his Mormon Bishop, John Herod, that he was molesting his five-year-old daughter. Herod called the Mormon helpline,

yes, for real, and was told not to report the abuse to police or child services. Instead, he was told to inform another bishop and Adam's wife. Then spend the next seven fucking years dutifully keeping Adam's secret, even at the expense of, of course, continued sexual abuse to both that kid and the several more he had after the confession. And in what's fast becoming a Mormon tradition, I guess, Adam's also uploaded video of his child abuse online and monetized it, which is how the government eventually caught him in 2015. And in the only silver lining in the whole goddamn story, he would go on to hang himself in prison

while awaiting trial. Okay, you guys think if we buy them like a bunch of copies, the Mormons will use sleepers as training material? Like, what do we need to do here? Yeah, I don't think they will. So fast forward to 2023, and three of Adam's kids would like to sue the Mormon church for their complicity in half a decade's worth of terrifying abuse plus. But Arizona, like 32 other fucking states, has a specific

exemption carved out for clergy who learn about crimes through confession. What is happening? Yeah, apparently that counts, by the way, when you learn about crimes through somebody who learned about them through confession as well. And apparently the religious morality that we hear so much about also doesn't require you to stop child sex abuse when it's entirely in your power to do so. Even when you see those fucking kids every week as this bishop did. And if you're curious why we have such a fucked up law in the books in the majority of the country anyway, it's because religious groups lobby against every effort to repeal them. And they're better funded than people who really want to stop child rape. OK, so just to be clear, you're allowed to report the sex crime if you learn about it from someone who learned about it from someone who learned about it from someone who learned about it from a confession booth.

Someone who learned about it from someone who learned about it from a confession booth? Yes. Yes. The information to convict pedophiles has to be at least third hand. Is the law in 32 states? 33? That's absurd. But any clergy who didn't use that loophole and get to level three or four or whatever,

those people are horribly guilty and evil. Like make them do that and get to level three or four right now. Also fix the law, of course. But use the loophole. Yeah, that must be a weird policy to explain if you are trying to do the right thing, though, right? Like, no, no, Frank, listen to me. I need you to tell someone to tell someone to tell someone what I took. Yeah, right. Why do I have so much freedom?

Yeah. one you lost what i took out yeah right why do i have so much freedom yeah yeah no and to be clear no that there is no loophole no matter how many fucking whispers down the chain you get you're never required if you were if it originally yeah it always just gets yeah overturned yeah fun now for their part the lawyers representing the children plan on appealing this dismissal the law is pretty cut and dry on this point so I doubt that they'll do any better at the appellate level. But I feel like this is one of those things where it's worth appealing anyway, right? Just make the courts publicly remind people that priests, preachers, and bishops take full advantage of their legal ability to cover up child rape as often as possible until the law changes. Because in the words, I'm going to give her the last words, in the words of

Lynn Canagan, who represents the plaintiffs here, quote, How do you explain to young victims that a rapist's religious beliefs are more important than their right to be free from rape? End quote. You don't. Terrifying.

Oh, shit. And in Cleveland and Gomorrah news. Last week, Americans in the dozens headed to the polls in a non-presidential election year. And despite how that normally goes, we actually delivered a few wins. Most notably, Ohio voters approved two ballot measures, one to legalize recreational marijuana, and another that would enshrine abortion and other reproductive rights

into the state constitution. Liberal priorities are benevolent, even if they're not always proportional. Yeah, exactly. Circle the one that doesn't belong. They're both good. They're both good. Yeah.

On the plus side, legalization puts us one step closer to me convincing Heath and Noah to do a Cleveland, Ohio live show, baby. Yeah. On board. So did Republicans take the L and shut the fuck up? Of course not.

Of course not. And the stupid was especially well showcased on the GOP debate stage following the election. following the election. I'll start with moist lizard Ron DeSantis, who weighed in on policy issues, but most importantly, revealed that day's word on his page-a-day desk calendar. According to Ronnie Two Boots,

quote, you've got to do a better job on these referenda. I think of all the stuff that's happened in the pro-life cause. They've been caught flat-footed on the referenda, and they've been losing referenda a lot of the people who are voting for the referenda are republicans who would vote for a republican candidate referenda end quote he sounds like like a transphobe who's trying not to use any pronouns whatsoever right exactly yeah but no Yeah. But no, but look,

but what he's saying here, when you strip it away, that nonsense is that even his voters disagree with him on this shit. Right? And his takeaway is, well, the problem is the majority rule thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And hey, look, say what you will about how successful Democrats have been over the last decade or two, but at least we want the things we campaign on. You know what I'm saying? Right, yeah. All right. will about how successful Democrats have been over the last decade or two, but at least we want the

things we campaign on, you know what I'm saying? Right, yeah. All right. We also heard from South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who couldn't ignore the writing on the wall and has since dropped out of the presidential race. But he took his one final opportunity to say something incredibly stupid about abortion. According to Scott, quote, I would not allow states like California, Illinois, or New York to have abortion up until the day of birth, end quote. And great news,

Tim Scott, neither do they. That's not how it works. Right. Yes. Not a thing. But thanks for admitting that your states rights argument was always bullshit, though. I appreciate that. Exactly. Stuck that in. I'd also like to say i overturned the primary process is that is that better i hear that's what y'all are into i don't i don't really know what you want reclaiming my time that's nothing man what are you talking about all right we also got a very important feminist message from vivek ramaswamy

the don fickles of the gob debate stage who had lots of trouble landing on a single coherent thought regarding, well, any issue. Yeah, right. He said, quote, if in the state of Ohio, we talked about access to contraception, adoption, and also here's the missing ingredient in this movement sexual responsibility for men we live in an era of reliable paternity tests that are 100 don't say reliable reliable so yeah we can say men deserve more responsibility so we can tell women we're all in this together okay yeah. Yeah. Okay. So to the extent that I can pull meaning from that thought fractal, he's saying the problem isn't that women have too little control of their bodies. It's that men don't have enough control of women's bodies. Sure.

Yeah. Or at the very least, they don't have ownership of the inevitable baby that comes out of that body. Right. Yeah. And I'm sure the women of America really appreciated that very supportive and woke stream of semi-consciousness. Unity. But giving voters too much control over their lives

is a recipe for disaster, as indicated by former Pennsylvania senator and Urban Dictionary poster boy, Rick Santorum. Google the word Santorum if you're curious what I meant by that. And a big thanks to Chad for the Santorum link. Scathingnews.gmail.com. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Heath, are you telling me a little later in the headline than I would like that not only can our listeners send us atheist news at scathingnews at gmail.com but if they do they can join the elite force of hand-selected listeners we've chosen to hand beat noah's heart for him moving forward don't be silly they'll they'll use a machine so after the ohio ballots santorum whined to newsmax quote you put very sexy things like abortion

and marijuana on the ballot. And a lot of young people come out and vote. End quote. I get how abortion is sexy. It has vaginas in it, but weed? Really? Fucking weirdo.

I have seen you and Lucinda turn a keef-covered joint sideways like a fold-out nudie magster. Yeah, I have seen you and Lucinda turn a Keefe-covered joint sideways like a fold-out nudie magster. Yeah, and Santorum also voiced his opposition to voting. He added, quote, thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country. End quote. It's just amazing to me how many ways Republicans have now found to say public opinion fucks up our whole thing. It sure does. Sure do. So congrats to the people of Ohio for getting a basic human right and drugs. And here's hoping other states in the union give a little test run on that whole democracy concept we've been hearing all about. That being said, I'm already seeing news about

the GOP-controlled Ohio State Legislature finding a loophole around democracy and bodily autonomy. So fun times. We'll see how that goes. And in transubstantiation news, I know I already used that pun on another headline segment. But this is so apropos on this one. It's really good this week. It means it. I mean it. So if you pay attention to the mainstream press about the current pope, you've probably

gotten the impression that he's the good one. And in many cases, that's true in that he's not actively a member of the Nazi party or by name in written record covering up child rape. But this week, this week, positive, positive, this week, he can add yet another it's about fucking time to his resume because this week he acknowledged that trans people have souls. Yeah, and just for the record, the Catholic

God is a father, a son, and a non-binary ghost. He's three-spirit, or they are three-spirit, according to their own thing. Yeah, exactly. I think they'd have caught on quicker. Yeah, so last week, the Vatican's official doctrinal office responded to questions by a Brazilian bishop regarding trans-inclusionary practices within the church. According to the newly amended Catholic handbook, transgender people can be godparents at Roman Catholic baptisms,

witnesses at religious weddings, and even receive baptisms themselves. And left-leaning media went nuts for it. It was like, we will let them give us money. And everybody's like, oh, they're so progressive. But all the weddings that

were witnessed by a trans person before whatever day last week, those might not count. And there's a panicky phone chain to figure out the magical consequences of that. So, yeah, tricky stuff, obviously. And I should point out, as always happens

when the Catholic Church gets dragged into the progressivism of 18th century England, they're already patting themselves on the back so hard they might require compensation from a cemetery maintenance fund. Prominent Jesuit priest,

Father James Martin, remarked on Twitter, quote, this is an important step forward in the church, seeing transgender people, not only as people in a church where some say they don't really exist, but as Catholics, end quote. Not adding, and given our dwindling enrollment, we need all the recruits we can get. Yeah, right. emphasize here that Pope Frank Moorpork justified the decision

by reminding priests that baptism is available to all people, quote, regardless of the state of sin of the person receiving it, end quote. Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah. Right. No, his actual line of reasoning was, well, it would be like baptizing murderers and stuff. That's

okay. Right. And even that was so progressive. He had to have one conservative priest removed from the premises freaking out about it. I prefer Coors Light. Ow, get off me. I didn't think we had to bail him. Fuck.

Punched you like Santa. So, yeah, we here at The Scaming Atheist expect to lose most, if not all, of our trans listeners to Catholicism. now that they're people and everything. But just in case you remain unimpressed by the Pope's steam-powered morality, I'll remind you that the not-God position is still batting a thousand. Right, yes. And with that reminder in place, we're going to take a quick break from a word from our other sponsor this week,

Stamps.com. Well, I'm sorry, Grandma. I just can't continue our relationship with a pumpkin spice drinker. Yeah, well, I don't. Hey, Eli, what was that? What are you doing? Yeah, were you just yelling at your grandma? I know, I know. I don't want to, but the alternative is schlepping to the post office with everybody's gift for the holidays. So, you know, we'll make up afterwards, right? I'll call her around. But Eli, if you want to skip the hassle of the post office, why don't you just try stamps.com? What's stamps.com? Stamps.com has been helping businesses like yours save time and money during the holiday

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cheapest and fastest shipping options. All right, guys, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Give your business the gift of Stamps.com so your mailing and shipping is covered this holiday season. Sign up with the promo code SCATHING for a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage at a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and enter scathing. All right. Well, I got to call my uncle Steve. Why? Oh, I got to tell him not to open the letter I sent him.

Why? What? You know what? I don't want to know. Yep. Skip it. And we're back. Next up in headlines in Vax don't care about your feelings news. Oh, brilliant. Fantastic. Every day nestled between hospital bill screenshots and our friends terrifying GoFundMe campaigns, we see new reminders of just how broken America's health care system truly is. Almost every single U.S. citizen, regardless of their exorbitant insurance, is just about one diagnosis away from financial ruin. You don't say.

Yeah, including our very own no illusions, which is why it's never been more important for you to go. Eli, you cannot GoFundMe your recovery trip to Disneyland as a medical expense. I need to heal on Space Mountain, Noah. I need to heal. All right. Well, it turns out financial ruin might be the only way to get affordable health care. So that's fun. And with our absurd system firmly in place, the stage is set for idiots to be conned by liars, as it always goes.

And while insurance CEOs and big pharma lobbyists reap the lion's share of profits off of human misery in our system. There are a few doctors, asterisk, out there willing to go rogue on science and provide their own brand of care. Yeah, right. Sometimes it has to be in international waters, of course. But in the terrifyingly large majority, it doesn't. It does not, no. And a big thanks to Debra for the link, scathingnewsgmail.com. Get pumping, Debra. Work those thumbs.

Here's the latest encampment in the war on ivory tower data. And of course, it's in Florida. Of course it is. There's a new facility called the We The People Health and Wellness Center, where patients can be seen by doctors who were either fired or disciplined for

being anti-vax idiots. That's their selling point at this clinic. And it's Florida, so it's working. Yeah, no, it's like the rock, paper, scissors casino from Vegas Vacation, but for medicine. Yeah, exactly. Okay, here's the question. At a certain point, Florida has brought this on itself, right? Like those birds that won't mate we call self-extinguishing species, right? Like it's at a certain point. So the suicide squad of rogue physicians assembled for one last score

is headed by conservative activist and clinic co-owner Vic Meller. Speaking with the Daily Beast, Meller relayed his clinic's unconventional, read homicidal, sales pitch. Quote, you can't work here unless you've been fired by the establishment for believing in your patients first.

They've all been fired for it, end quote. While that might sound appealing for like a defense attorney or I don't know, a cable guy, not great for doctors. I don't think he took the right messages away from the cable guy. I feel like I really missed the point there. Miller also added, we're not doing this for the money. Yep. That's a lie. They literally are. You have to pay money to go there. So yes, they are. And you can't use insurance because of course, insurance companies won't go near this place.

Anyway, continuing the quote, we're doing it for people and especially kids. It's just barbaric what they're doing to kids with these vaccines. To me, it's evil. At some point, they will have to answer for that. End quote. There's one thing every patient wants their doctor fueled by. It's vengeance.

Well, especially vengeance against observable fact, right? Yeah. I don't know, guys. My doctor seems awfully upset about the observable fact of my fatness. So, you know, maybe. Well, nevertheless, in its first six weeks, Maybe. Well, nevertheless, in its first six weeks, the Venice, Florida clinic has attracted 350 patients to its subscription-based model. Appointments and care are provided for a monthly fee directly to the clinic. And again, completely outside regular insurance. But given what monthly

premiums and annual deductibles are at this point, a little COVID misinformation is way too easy to ignore for a lot of people. And the clinic's surprising lack of complaints only supports the public's desperation to see anyone with a stethoscope and a swishy flask of colored liquid for no reason. They're happy to do it. Bottom line, their insane thing is working way too well.

And now Meller and his co-owners are planning to open more clinics of disgraced physicians on purpose nationwide. Jesus, it's scary that we have them in such abundance that you can support a fucking franchise model with them. Yeah. God. Yeah, we do. And finally tonight in learning is transcendental news. And finally tonight in learning is transcendental news.

Next to diet and exercise, meditation is one of the most commonly ignored practices that would benefit our lives immensely. By spending a few minutes each day, relaxing our mind with deep breathing, each and every one of us could vastly improve our mental health and stability. Yeah. Some studies even show that it works better

than watching TV for the same amount of time. There you go. Stop with the facts, please. No facts here. Thank you. And given its universal application and low cost, kids and young adults could better grapple

with biological upheaval. Their bodies are undergoing and counteract those negative emotions with calming, centered mindfulness. So leave it to the American public school system to take a good thing and fuck it up this week.

Yeah, if they can do it for reading, right? Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Maybe Pizza Hut can have a meditation personal band. I don't know. So first of all, big thanks to Morgan for this story. Scathingnews at gmail.com. You get to keep any blood you catch. Anyway,

on to the story. No. What could have and should have been a standard and... No, it's just like, give it back. Yeah, I didn't agree to that. My property. I agreed to it. So, anyways, what could have and should have been a standard and beneficial meditation break during a typical

school day was turned into a performative farce recently by a school in Chicago. Rather than applying your run-of-the-mill, close your eyes for a few minutes at your desk with the lights off while Enya plays in the background, one school decided to employ transcendental meditation practitioners to a classroom who pulled out all the stops in making things fucking weird. Students were asked to present gifts to a photo of a TM guru and recite

mantras from a Sanskrit text that included the names of Hindu gods. So, if you ever wondered what the sound of one hand clapping resembles, there it is. Yeah, no, it sounds just like one hand doing a jerk-off gesture as it turns out. Okay, but one-hand fapping,

that's a much better con for beginners, though, right? All right. Yeah, and if you're a furry, you should do moo. The situation, three Buddhists in our audience fucking love that. That's excellent. I just appreciate it. Thank you. So the situation came to a head

when a Christian student complained that she felt forced to participate in the religious practice with the implication that failure to do so would result in penalties both academic and extracurricular. Her complaint escalated into a civil suit against the school administrators and the program developers, alleging that they violated the students' religious freedoms. And instead of letting what sounds like an open and shut case go to trial, the school board settled out of court and awarded the student $150,000,

which for the record, we agree with. How do you fuck up sitting in a chair and breathing so bad that I am on team Christian right now? Okay, but how do you fuck it up so bad? The answer is religion. Right. The Christian people just happen

to be on the other team right now because it's like a religion, right? Like that's they just like fell into that. But to be clear, religion is so fucking stupid. They found a way to ruin the active practice of nothingness. They fucked that up. They ruined the nothing. They ruined the nothing.

The still sitting. Yes. Yeah. still sitting. Yes. Yeah. So it's pretty tragic that a noble step towards adolescent mental health had to be botched and corrupted with unnecessary, as Heath pointed out, religious undertones, especially when you consider legal worries will likely quash any future efforts for kids to learn this stuff. But I suppose it's part of every child's educational bedrock to learn that adults will blithely destroy any usable set of skills they might find helpful the second they're placed inside an educational framework. After all,

what is public school for? Right, right. Although I like the precedent of 150 grand for forcing kids to undergo religious bullshit. Oh, is that the rule now? Yeah, right, right. Is that how we're playing? And while we reflect on how damn many times we were discouraged in school from doing all the things we now do to make our living except typing, we're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Mumanji. And when we come back, I'll tag in Tom and Cecil. As Thanksgiving rapidly approaches and the pumpkins in my neighborhood are replaced with paper turkeys and decorative gourds,

I find myself reflecting on the things I'm grateful for. Friends, family, and the fact that the meanest thing I do is also the nicest. That's right. It's time once more for Vulgarity for Charity. Heath, there was music. Who knows where you went while I played? Welcome back. Thank you.

Still weird. I've been here. Okay. But when the season calls for scorn, there's two men that I call the Hawkeye and Black Widow to our people who matter. Tom and Cecil

of the Cognitive Dissonance Podcast. Gentlemen, welcome back. Is that DC Universe stuff? What is that? How dare you? Am I Hawkeye or Black Widow in this? I don't know which one of these. Black Widow.

Okay. You're the sexiest tied to a chair. Everyone knows that. Okay. All right. Not untrue. So quick reminder for those of you who are new, this is our annual charity roast for modestneeds.org

who would not like me to call them a better version of GoFundMe that you can write off on your taxes. But that's what they are. And so far, we have raised... Oh, as of this recording, we have raised $68,255.37. Whoa, whoa. That does not include the $100,000 match.

There's still over $30,000 of that match left. So get in there. Get double your money's worth. Get on. Yeah. And if you want to get in on that, check modestneeds.org, 50 bucks or more.

Send proof to vulgarityforcharity at gmail.com. That's the word, not the number. Along with who you'd like us to roast and you could aim some of the sweet, sweet ire you're about to hear at the victim of your choosing. But before like us to roast, and you could aim some of the sweet, sweet ire you're about to hear at the victim of your choosing.

But before we get to that, let's pass along some thank yous. Heath? Indeed. Big thanks to Cam, Bethany, Natalie S., John N., and Amy H. for tossing us money with no roast and no jacket required. You get first dibs on the stuffing at thanksgiving for sure and of course an even bigger thanks to kevin y and mark g who gave us more money so they should get all the stuffing or something i i don't know eli didn't tell me this was going to be themed so

stuff them and last but not least biggest thanks of all to linda who donated 1,000 motherfucking dollars and asked for nothing in return are you sure Linda are you sure Linda we'll hold Heath down while you fuck him Linda just say the words no holding required Linda my holds are yours

Heath's holds are yours Linda I don't know what's happening I'm doing sex work for charity. I guess that's good, right? Yeah, it's a good thing. It's tax deductible. Earn it. Alright, let's begin. Heath, this first one is for you. Buck and Lisa would like a roast of

authoritarianism. Okay. Well, Buck and Lisa don't sound European, but I'm assuming they must be, because if they were American, they'd be fully aware of the need for authoritarianism. Remember, authoritarian

is the opposite of libertarian, and that stuff's bad. Here in the US, a political system that's all about rejecting democracy and rejecting individual freedom is exactly what I think we need recently. I know that freedom,

it used to be all about like, you know, water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants. That is great stuff. But now it's a little different here in the U.S. Every time I hear the word freedom in modern day America, it's always like, my basic freedom, bully a trans orphan and refuse food at my lunch counter. My basic freedom to feed a giant pile of donuts

to all the local bears. I do what I want. It's not good. But for Buck and Lisa, for old world Buck and Lisa, I'm assuming, I totally understand the anti-fascism instinct, especially over in Europe. I mean, at one point, the fascism got so out of control, the United States and Russia had to show up and stop it and be like, wow, what are you doing here?

You let the racist white people have too much power and authority. We're the United States and Russia. Bottom line, fuck authority, except if I'm in power because I'm right. And most people are stupid. So you don't want to entirely get rid of the fascism. All right. See, so this next one is for you. Joe would like you to roast food TikTokers. You'll see a food TikTok like,

this guy broke all of cooking with his... No, he didn't. He never fucking broke anything, okay? He made potato chip mashed potatoes, which is basically adding five unnecessary steps to making regular mashed potatoes to get them to taste like absolute shit. Okay.

The other food TikTok is a badly disguised food fetish porn where someone finger fucks an entire fucking human sized pile of food that they're just going to throw the fuck out after they're done. Stop being gross. Quit it. Stop it. You're not some fucking food innovator. You're a dude with a greasy lens cell phone with his oven preheated to cringe. Get the fuck out of here. You forgot the third category, which is poor people being poor. And those food TikToks are sad. I haven't rolled into those yet. Thanks, Eli.

Your show. Oh, yeah. Cecil won't edit that. Eli, I got one for you here. Nate would like you to roast his dog, Eli. Your show. Oh, yeah. Cecil won't edit that. Eli, I got one for you here. Nate would like you to roast his dog, Maggie. All right. So Maggie did her best in these pictures to look as cute and innocent as possible. But guess what, Maggie? Nate told me what a selfish monster you are. You are the Timothee Chalamet of dogs, Maggie.

Sure, you look sweet, and all I want to do is hold you. But deep down, you are a selfish monster you are like Hitler and Elmo had a shit covered baby and you are fooling nobody with those giant brown eyes Maggie okay maybe a few people but not Nate Maggie and sure as fuck not me all right Tom this one's a little bit of a challenge for you but but Alex put up the dough to make it possible. Alex would like you to roast the people who discontinued his favorite candy. Yes, for him. Okay, that's amazing.

That's something to be angry about. All right. You know, at the time of this writing, if you want to read the news in the morning, you have to have a team of qualified therapists on standby. And if you want to remember that news for, let's say, a podcast about it, you will need a team of qualified distilleries also on standby. Shit is that bleak. Climate change is accelerating faster than anyone predicted at the same time that Trump leads in polls across five battleground states. The tools of disinformation have become not just more prolific, but nearly sentient.

And we have to somehow train people who only read headlines to neither believe what they read nor what they see. The military is training AI-powered robot dogs outfitted with machine guns. And Amazon is testing a team of robot warehouse workers that don't have to take breaks to piss into jars. Amazon is testing a team of robot warehouse workers that don't have to take breaks to piss into jars, while Boston Dynamics showcases humanoid clones that can parkour their soulless ways around obstacle courses as if the corporations and nation states that will buy these will somehow deploy them for something other than the automated destruction of humanity. And the arts, the last bastion of human expression, are being subsumed into a cold cocoon of empty prompts and painting and poetry replaced by training the soldiers of artistic demise as if suggesting art was synonymous with its creation. War is broken out in the Middle East and continues in Ukraine, and both of which serve as foreplay conflicts between the greatest military superpowers in world history. But guys, guys, there are greater tragedies afoot.

Alex? Well, Alex cannot anywhere in his Googling locate even one disposable single-use plastic tub of small sour candies called Bug City Tarts. It's not a good candy. I know. I know, guys. I had to walk away for a moment from this roast before I, too, could continue. I know. I know.

I know. You can still buy any number of tiny tart clones and substitutes at your local Dollar General. And I know that they all taste like yellow dye number seven coated in citric acid and the foreshadowing of diabetic neuropathy. But still, still,

when I read about the sons of bitches who discontinued Bug City, who, amidst the strife and the chaos and the hurting of this world, chose to pull these

sweet, tangy, sour, crunchy bits from the shelves. Those boardroom bastards who picked profit over pucker. I knew indeed that all was finally lost. Alex, I too, I long for the day when upon finishing a tiny personal bucket of candy, I could imprison a cricket in that bucket

to stare at him for a time, imagining myself perhaps as an entomologist or perhaps the owner-operator of one of America's 158 for-profit prisons. But alas, alack, Alex, we

live indeed in dark times. This is the best roast you ever said. This is the best one. I think it's the best one. I feel like we're done. I feel like we're done. Hey, everybody. We're doing 40, however many. Fuck you.

All right, Cecil. I got Cecil with that real good. Jesus Christ, man. Yeah. All right. Cecil. Yeah. Our 69, man. Yeah. All right. Cecil. Yeah. Our 69th donor. Nice.

Josh would like you to roast his friend Kelly. Hi, Kelly. Oh, if Kelly's listening, I haven't seen Kelly in many years. She's a wonderful lady, so please don't take this the wrong way. Kelly looks like a librarian vigilante that chases down overdue books in a very economical three-cylinder

Ford Fiesta. She looks like when she catches the perpetrator, she asks, they feel lucky, punk. And then she like immediately apologizes for calling him punk. And she said, she's got carried away. It's never going to happen again. I'm really sorry.

She still can't decide on a superhero name. It's either going to be Scarred Catalog or The Publisher. Oh, Scarred Catalog or The Publisher. Scarred Catalog! All right, Heath. Dustin was chosen randomly, but I think it's worth pointing out he gave us 250 smackaroos for you to roast a classic piece of

literature of your choice. Oh, okay. So here's the plot. A guy gets friend-zoned, and he's in a big snip. So his brigadier bros take him out to a party, and they're like, dude, you got to fuck somebody hotter for spite. Also, we're definitely not invited to this party, so be cool. We're the fucking worst, the literal worst. So the guy looks across the smoke-filled room at the party.

He sees a hot lady. He walks over and he kisses her without even saying a word, like he's Donald Trump on a hot mic. They get married the next day like fucking crazy people. That night, the guy and his brigadier bros run

into the hosts of the party that they crashed and they have a fight in a Waffle House parking lot, I'm assuming. During the fight, the main that they crashed and they have a fight in a Waffle House parking lot, I'm assuming. During the fight, the main guy does a murder and then he goes back to his new wife's house to have post-murder sex

on their wedding night. She's 13 years old, by the way. Anyway, yada, yada, yada, three days later, they both kill themselves. That's Romeo and Juliet.

There you go. Fun story. And also me and Heath's hometown. It works for both in that situation. All right. These final four secured their spot in our roast by being among our top 100 donors with the sheer girthiness of their donation.

So they deserve a full court roasting. First up, Dr. Angie would like a roast of ER doctors. Dr. Angie. So to the ER doctor that dipped my thumb into some substance when I cut it and they said it was going to sting. Thanks, fucking Captain Understatement. It felt like I was grinding my thumb off, but the grinding wheel was the actual sun. You're probably one of those people who when Trump got elected was like,

oh, this should be interesting. Fuck you. 13. That is the number of visits my wife and I made to the ER in 2021 when she got C. diff from taking an antibiotic

notorious for allowing C. diff to proliferate. 13 ER visits across four hospitals and not a single one of them tested for or proliferate. 13 ER visits across four hospitals and not a single one of them tested for or caught that infection. 13 visits with no prior history of any ER visits in the 15 years prior.

13 ungodly waits and 13 attempts to get help. 13 desperate pleas that indeed something was wrong. That it was her stomach that was the cause of this hell and 13 times sent home without respite. But with an uncounted number of not-so-subtle attempts to offer a referral for psychiatric counseling. Anxiety, they insisted, likely the culprit. And after all, she was just a woman who was crying, and none of this is as sexy as a bullet wound or a light bulb shoved up an ass. I'm grateful, I suppose, because I must be for the ER, for the adrenaline junkies hopped up on sleeplessness and caffeine, excited for the blood and the rush of

staving off someone's final moment for another day. But you'll have to forgive me if I can't find it in my heart to thank you for your service, can't shake your hand or look you in the eye, or stop myself from grinding my teeth to furious nubs. I'll ask you for your patience. After all, someday maybe I'll have a sexy enough wound to get you to messant. Perhaps I'll need to turn to you in a moment of arterial spray desperation or clutching my chest and you'll be there for me.

I know you will. I have to believe that. So I repeat it like a mantra 13 times. Hey, you know how every other kind of doctor has a specialty because medicine's incredibly complex and requires a deep knowledge of subject matter to help people? Well, mine is urgency. That's right.

The time dimension and death's relation to it, that's what I studied in school because I couldn't pick watching people die as a major. So, if you'll excuse me, I've got a 25 year old black woman in excruciating pain to ignore. So I can shove another tube

into a 97 year old 300 pound white guy. Lest he not spend another thousand years held in perfect medical stasis. Now, Bob, I'm on down to the IR. Yeah. Hey,

ER doctors. Thanks for the medical stasis. No notes. All right. This next dog pile feels appropriate because it's for Scott's cat,

Kincaid. He looks like a handsome boy from the front, but from the side, it looks like ambitious macaroni art. Like the artist ran out of elbows and was forced to use angel hair and dryer lint.

Kincaid has a Cindy Crawford mole on his face and you just know he pointed that out to everybody at the litter box, right? Like he just could not shut up about it. Yeah, and Scott's email describes Kincaid as fat, orange, and dumb. So it sounds like Kincaid likes cats who don't die. But then he died.

Like an asshole. Maybe live, you lazy piece of shit. Fuck you, Kincaid. Try living. Yikes. Roast your cat. He's dead and cremated. How much more roasted does he get? Jesus Christ.

Alright. If you want your money back, I'll give it to you. I feel like I'm the only one who's held a cat in his arms and killed it. I feel like I'm the only one in the cast who's held the cat and watched it die multiple times. That's not true. I have to. Really sorry about that.

Brutal. I just wanted to feel alive. Alright, next up, Ricky would like us all to have a turn with some transphobes who threatened to school. I'll go first and I'll say, if part of your plan to save children involves calling in a bomb threat to a school, you're either on a

bus that can't go under a certain speed limit or you are in fact the bad guy. You're the bad guy. You sure are. You're on the wrong side of history. And this whole thing started when a bigot activist wanted to give a speech at a library because she lost a swimming race to a trans woman. And the library

in Yolo County, by the way, that's the name of the county, a library there was like, oh, you're a piece of shit. No more talking. Nope. So bigot, instead of a bigoting tour like you did, maybe think about getting good. Here's what you need to do.

Go back to your practice pool and dive into the water and then that's it. Just stay there under the water. It is ironic that all this happened in Yolo County. I mean, if it is indeed true that you only live once, it feels an extreme waste of that precious resource of your time to worry about the genital arrangements of strangers. Yeah. And last, but certainly not least, Jackie

H. gave us 1,000 smackaroos for us to roast our least favorite adaptation of a book into a TV show or movie. Excellent. Okay. Hey, Mel Gibson, you ruined the Bible

with The Passion of the Christ. You had a perfectly good novel about a genocidal ghost who hated his failing prop magician son and had him fuck murdered by Roman guards. That was amazing. And you ruined it. You also ruined Hamlet, Mel Gibson. The answer

was not to be. That's what you should have chosen. I can't do this as a roast. The Dark Tower, how do you fuck up Idris Elba as the gunslinger and fucking McConaughey as the man in black? If you'd have fucking read the wiki plot

synopsis of the book, you'd have been 100% better. Go fuck yourself. Hate you all. Yeah. Hey, you know what this beloved foundation of the fantasy genre, The Hobbit, is missing? A bunch of bullshit topical references that are coked up writers thought of because they thought the book was boring.

Oh, how generations of imaginative girls and boys have longed to hear Gollum announce that he's looking for my wife and how grateful the literary canon will be in future to finally learn which genders could be paired up with the least amount of screaming from Tolkien's grave.

As Boromir says, very nice. I hated him so much I sat there and just stony angry silence the whole fucking time love the book books great yeah first two thirds okay all right I'm gonna go with I am

legend and look I know that it's a novella but it is a brilliant ground breaking novella it is page by page perfect it sets the stage for both the vampire and zombie genres at once it is full of survival horror moments and true psychological terror and real human tenderness and then there is the will smith movie and all i want to do is slap that title right out of will's mouth. Yeah. They killed a dog.

Yeah. It is the worst. Bad, too. It's terrible. And on that resounding note, we'll leave things there for the week, but there's still a bit more time to get in your roast request to vulgarityforcharity at gmail.com.

Tom, Cecil, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. And when we come back, Noah will be here to thank all the patrons Heath and I missed while he was convalescing. Hopefully not in one breath because we might lose him forever. Before we power it down this week, I have an apology to issue. We're going back over the records from last year's Vulgarity for Charity and we discovered that some two dozen of our top donors from last year never got their roasts.

So if you were thinking, wow, I'm really shocked that wasn't enough to get me over the bar last year, it might well have been. And we just fucked up our spreadsheet keeping. So huge apologies to that group, along with assurances that we're going to add an extra segment to Bulgarian for Charity this year so that we can get those long overdue roasts to you. And speaking of Bulgarian for Charity, there's just one week left as of the day this episode releases. So go to ModestNeeds right now. ModestNeeds.org. Give whatever you can. Send your receipt and roast request to VulgarityforCharity at gmail.com. Get that in quick. Think about

what a strain not breaking last year's record would put on my heart. Do you really want to do this to me, people? Anyway, that's all the blast 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 Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed,

debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Huh, I can still say all that. Awesome. Obviously, I can't close the show without thanking Heath and Eli for giving me the best possible environment to convalesce in and allowing me to come back at my own pace with the peace of mind, knowing that the job was going to get done fine without me. It really meant the world to me. I also need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for being with me every step of the way, even through some pretty tough steps. I also want to thank Tom and Cecil for all their help raising money for charity and their incredibly generous offers to help out while I was out. I also want to thank the thousands of listeners that have reached out with

touching messages. And while we're thanking, let want to thank the thousands of listeners that have reached out with touching messages. And while we're thanking, let me also thank Delilah for providing this week's fabulous Farnsworth quote. But most of all, of course I want to thank this week's best people. No, no,

I'm not. I'm afraid the bit where I give everybody's name in a single long breath is now confined to the dustbin of history. So apologies. If me breathlessly spitting your name out at the end of a long list was the reason you donated, we can refund you for that. Anyway, here's the list.

Eliza, John, Bootstrap, Zella Redna, Jonathan, Blad, Vig, Beetlejuice, Keith, Cornish Beast, Kaylee, Quill, Seek, Elle, Claire, Ken, Eric Anderson, and is Thalamon on Twitch. Alex, Kristoff, Baika, John, Commander Shepard, Travis, Esteban, Tobonite. If you can pronounce Themyscira, you can pronounce my name. Probably can't. Tyler, Courtney, Dan, Slider, Emily, Phil, Simon, Patrick. It ain't easy being greasy. Atheist therapist, Shani, Courtney, Chasing Rabbits, Dave, Drew, Angie, Melissa, Kyler, My Left Foot, Scott, Benjamin, Major Boney, Pokemon, Eva, Not Ava, Trevor, Daniel, Catherine, Bobby, Crystal, William, and Ray, who are so beautiful that when I hear their names, my heart skips a beat. Don't worry, I'll call somebody about it. Together, these 56 ferocious free thinkers forewent a few fragments of fortune this week to give us money. Not everybody has the

money it takes to give us some, which is all the more reason that if you do, you should make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode. Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at SkathingAtheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but not in a money way, 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 Robertson handles all that for us. Additional writing for this episode was provided by Mike Schuster and our audio engineer, S. 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

scathingadeus.com. Don't worry, Morgan. My cardiologist specifically said it was okay for me to rant like that. I actually asked. I said, hey, man, am I cleared for performative anger? And he goes, what? And I explained the diatribe to him. And he's like, yeah, I think you could do that. You start seeing spots, stop doing it. I'm not seeing spots, so we're good.

90 plus. Sorry, I'm not seeing spots, so we're good. 90 plus. Sorry, I'm out of practice, guys. All the various scientific break. What? What? Oh, we've lost him. It's your fault. He's a dithering old man now.

It's so sad. Side down. Well, you knew it was bound to happen. Gently place a blanket on his lap, but he was never the same. Sure as hell, I'm not going to do all the names together in a row. gently place a blanket on his lap, but he was never the same. Sure, Zella, not going to do all the names together in a row in the outro anymore. Not going to fuck with that no more.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.