The Scathing Atheist - 634: De-Pope-ulated Edition

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

In this week’s episode, The pope was dying to meet JD Vance, Donald Trump celebrates the resurrection of the messiah with a "grind my gears" segment, and Noah tries to make Heath, Eli, and the listeners jealous for not going to AACon. --- 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/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/ --- Headlines: Pope RELUCTANTLY meets with JD Vance on Easter even though the Pope HATES him: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/pope-francis-meets-with-jd-vance.html AND IT FUCKING KILLED HIM TO DEATH: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/world/europe/pope-francis-dead.html https://www.nytimes.com/article/pope-francis-death-health-problems.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/world/europe/next-pope-francis-candidates.html Oklahoma and Indiana hope to declare official statewide Christianity: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/oklahoma-republicans-pass-controversial and https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/indiana-resolution-declares-unified Hate pastor campaigned to stop lesbian from becoming school superintendent; he lost: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/04/hate-pastor-campaigned-to-stop-lesbian-from-becoming-school-superintendent-he-lost/ Trump uses Easter message to disparage enemies, declare he will make America more religious than ever before: https://religionnews.com/2025/04/21/we-should-be-shocked-by-trumps-easter-message/ and https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-vows-make-america-more-religious-ever-before-2061904

Warning, this podcast contains warnings. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Factor, Mint Mobile, and by the new human-sized soundproof hamster paw for Christian children trying to avoid learning secular stuff at public schools, The Unhell Shell. The Unhell Shell, because this is about to be Supreme Court mandated, so we might as well get in on the action early. And now, the scathing atheist. Hi, is this People Builders? Hi, this is God.

So I'm creating this world with billions of people and I need a little help. Oh no no no no no. My people, they are in fact evolved from filthy monkey men it's it's just that I have these three guys that I need to make for a podcast and all I have are leftover junk pieces so I thought maybe you guys could help. No just just one thing though one of these guys needs to run on bourbon another of them on weed and the last guy well I mean he's not gonna run at all but let let's face it, he needs to operate on tofu dogs?

I don't know. Don't ask. ["The Last of Us"] Ah! It's Thursday. It's April 24th. And it's New Kids on the Block Day! Well, now it's more like Divorced Dads on the Porch Day. Oh yeah, how about it's Draft Day? I'm no illusions.

I'm Eli Boffnick. I'm Heath Henright. And from Kelsey Grammers, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is the Skating Ethnist. Oh, this week's episode, the Pope was dying to meet JD Vance. Donald Trump celebrates the resurrection of the Messiah with a grind my gears segment. And I try to make Heath, Eli, and the listeners jealous for not going to AAcon. But first, the diatribe.

See, the problem with saying that RFK Jr. needs to get fucked in the ass with a Honda CR-V is that when I say that, you instinctively imagine it driving straight in instead of backing in with the doors open because fuck this guy as hard as this guy can be fucked and fuck him right in the goddamn brain worm. Fuck this guy with the whale corpse and the chainsaw. You know, it's hard to be pissed off enough at all the people that were supposed to be pissed off at with all the hate that we need for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem and JD Vance and Pam Bondi and

Marco Rubio and all the belligerent fucks that voted for this bullshit rather than admit that a black person was right when they were wrong one fucking time. But you know what? That's what I'm here for. I've dreamed for decades of a day when somebody came to me and said, nobody could be pissed off enough for this. So I got plenty of rage left over for this fucking poisonous whoopee cushion of a health secretary.

And not that I needed any new thing to stoke my ire for this anti-vax, alt-med, anti-science, scion of shame, but I'm sure you heard about the latest. Last Wednesday, Kennedy gave this grotesquely inaccurate speech about autism that pushed the common alternative medicine refrain that the increased prevalence of autism is from some environmental toxin rather than the increase in testing people for autism. He pledged to find the cure for autism by September, and he vowed to do so with a wildly unethical collection of private medical data from people's doctors, pharmacies, insurance companies, and wearable devices. So, extensively, this speech was a

response to the new CDC report that noted an uptick in rates of autism, and in it, he dismissed the prevailing science about genetic inheritance. He declared that a dead end on no scientific authority than that which he gleaned in law school I guess he accused the public in the media of succumbing to a quote myth of epidemic denial and quote and thereby I guess at least imply that the scientific community was Perpetuating a myth of denial and in so doing he disparaged the shit out of people with autism He described children with autism as quote

Kids who will never pay taxes. they'll never hold a job, they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted, end quote. Now of course, a lot of people's immediate response was to point out all the fucking taxpaying, baseball playing, job holding, poem writing, date going, unassisted shit-taking people with autism that so very clearly disprove his fucking point.

But as instinctual as that might be, it subtly plays into the Nazi-ass framing that he's crafted around this whole fucking thing to begin with. Right? Because yes, there are some places on the autism spectrum where people can't use the bathroom unassisted. but so fucking what? Do we value human beings now based on how hard it is for them to take a shit? How much their existence inconveniences us? And why the fuck are the first two items on your list about productivity to the state?

I mean, taxes and jobs. Holy fuck. Is that how Robert Kennedy sees human beings as potential contributors to the GDP? Because look as terrifying as the conclusions first approach to science that he's talking about is the far more concerning element here is the eugenic presumptions that underlie his whole fucking argument, as though what we want is a world without autism, right? But a world without autism is also a world without so many of the people that I love and care about, right? And even if you could somehow extract the autism and leave

the person, you'd still be siphoning away a lot of the them that I love and care about. you'd still be siphoning away a lot of the them that I love and care about. But of course, this seam of eugenics runs beneath a lot of the old medicine scene. Never acknowledged openly, but always just below the surface, right? It's there in the bigoted horror some parents feel when they realize that their genes could be faulty enough to create a kid with autism and then scramble for some external villain to blame. It's there in all their ableist bullshit about us making our health and our minds a fucking mindset that necessarily excludes those with congenital conditions and necessarily ostracizes anyone unfortunate enough to develop a chronic condition along the way.

And it's there in RFK Jr.'s presumption that neurotypical is an ideal that we should be trying to funnel people into. Everything about RFK's position is terrifying beyond belief, but nothing is more terrifying than the eugenics groundwork that he's laying by defining people with autism as leeches on the fucking state who need to be cured or prevented. I know a lot of people who can't play baseball or hold a job or write a poem or take an unassisted shit. What does Kennedy's cure for them look like? Joining me for headlines tonight are the fish and chips to my greasy newspaper Heath Endright

and Eli Bostic. Fellas, are you ready to slowly give people heart attacks? I'm bringing the good fats, those Omega threes. And I'm keeping it salty, baby. There we go. And speaking of how salty Eli is, we're going to take a quick break for a word from this week's first sponsor, us. All right, guys, you ready for ads? Yeah.

Uh, what do we have this week? Uh, Portland live show. Uh, Heath, that's that's sold out. Okay. Oh, I think Iridium Knight has a few tickets left. No that's right it does. Okay well okay. Hey podcast listener if you didn't get your tickets to Iridium Knight do that. What if they don't have tickets to the show? Well the show is sold out. I think someone refunded a Platinum Knight ticket. Yeah, the show is sold out. I think someone refunded a platinum night ticket. Yeah, two platinum night tickets. Okay, but those aren't gonna be there anymore by the time this ad comes out. People could check. Yeah, check. Check. So if

you wanted platinum night tickets, but they sold out, you can check. They might not be gone. And also, if you don't have iridium night on Thursday, you can still get those cut off of movies live calm Anything else A-con I I just got back right right You guys ever look under the new videos tab in Pornhub? We can just go back to the show. I feel like an agent discovering talent.

Okay. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, JD Vance killed the pope with his personality. He did! Yes he did! That happened. That is the evidence we have. Science. Doctor. Medicine. with his personality. He did. That happened. That is the evidence we have.

Science, doctor, medicine. I know this is Pope Hock, ergo propterhoc, ecological failure. How dare you. But also, come on, the couch fucker clearly did it. Obviously.

Yeah. So Pope for anatopsis, the anatopsis is contemplation of death. William Cohen Bryant's It's a poem. Nailed it. Anyway, Pope Pheranotopsis met with the vice president on Easter despite hating JD Vance. The pope gave him that meeting

and then the pope went to sleep that night and he never woke up. The woke pope just stayed asleep, presumably to avoid a follow-up meeting with JD Vance because of a cerebral stroke and irreversible cardio circulatory collapse. I was gonna say, if there's ever a man who's both dressed like a couch and has it coming,

it was this pope. Oh no. Yeah, okay, but this means that our show is about to be on its third pope guys that ties us with queen victoria took her it she reigned for 63 fucking years to get that nice so the death of the pope is an emotional moment for catholics around the world and that's why i want to focus on my experience with this. I was up late on Sunday night into Monday morning doing some editing and when I got done with that, I decided to look at stories for the show this week.

I had a story about holy water causing an epidemic of cholera which is an amazing metaphor for the entire church but it's a depressing story. And then I saw a headline from the New York times entitled Pope meets with JD Vance after criticism of Trump administration. And I remembered their feud from earlier this year about immigration policy. So I switched to that story in the notes. I pasted the new link and genuinely one Christian second later, I got an

alert that said, Pope is dead. I had literally just typed, Pope reluctantly meets with JD Vance on Easter, even though the Pope hates him. And then I added, and it fucking killed him. We have the new link. And honestly, as often as we are cursed by something breaking right after we record this show,

we were owed a conveniently timed Pope, Jeff. Okay. Okay. So I want to share my experience as well. I'm three days into the stay up until 2 a.m., but still make the 9 a.m. talk conference schedule when at 4 a.m. the Pope dies and 106 people desperately try to be the first person to send me a fucking text about it.

So convenient timing would have been maybe four in the afternoon or something. But other than that, yeah, the timing was great. Just as you get to the breakfast buffet. Yeah. And here's the last part of my night. I thought about JD Vance's recent timeline. And while holding back tears of laughter because of this crazy headline moment, I made a rare post on social media about JD Vance's Holy Week.

Here's how it went for JD. One, try to pick up your alma mater's NCAA championship football trophy. Two, immediately drop it while the White House band plays We Are the Champions champions and break up, drop it and drop it and break it. Yeah, break it. Three, demand a meeting with the pope on Easter, even though he hates you. Four, the pope gives you three minutes for the meeting. And you're so fucking obnoxious during three minutes that the Pope literally dies that night with you,

chance dance fans, as possibly the last person he met with. And I also mentioned that if the Catholic God does in fact exist, he's got an amazing sense of humor recently. Yeah. He's really nailing it. It doesn't make up for the Holocaust, but he's killing it at the moment.

Yeah. Also, this is important. I'd love to see JD head back to the White House for a quick meeting in the Oval. Just, there's this book called The Secret, and I'm just trying something out. But before you dismiss my theory as a big coincidence, you need to see the look on the

face of Pope Francis while he's dealing with JD Vance for a total of 180 seconds total. You can see the life leaving his face. Yeah, he looks like the blue meanie who got kicked out of Pepperland for kid fucking. I don't know what any of that means, but I agree that he does look like that. Yeah, that's probably right. Beetles movie? Come on, old people. So with Frankie gone, here's what happens next.

First, everyone goes on Peacock to watch Conclave and finds out they just removed it last week. It's only available to rent or buy on other services. Interesting. Yeah, no, I got a screener of it. I can assure you it was not interesting. I heard it was really good. It's not that good. So honestly, it's got great soundtrack, great cinematography, great acting, terrible, boring fucking script and nothing happens the entire time. Yeah. It's literally that movie they did a joke about in Tropic Thunder where the people are gay but priests Interesting. Okay spoilers. I think JD and NBC have some explaining to do but in the meantime

We're in a period called Sede vacante or seat is vacant and this is very serious so of course there's a series of magical items to be dealt with and a Steampunk mousetrap chimney device to keep track of everything. So right after Francis died They took his magical fisherman's ring and smashed it with a magical Ring hammer that they have. So they just bring the broken pieces to Mordor, I think, and then that's taken care of.

But now they have to decide on the new guy. All the cardinals from around the world, under the age of 80, that's 135 cardinals total, are going to lock themselves inside the Vatican guesthouse for a murder mystery election period, also known as a conclave. They need to agree on the new pope with a two-thirds majority vote that's done by secret ballot. So they'll argue with each other and fuck each other on piles of Nazi gold and murder each other and keep doing votes until they reach a decision.

After each vote, the ballots get burned in the official ballot stove that they have, along with an additive that gives the smoke a certain color. If the smoke is black, it means they're still not decided, but if it's white, we have a new pope. So it's the same way health insurance decides if something's covered, everybody. Yeah, except for they use an additive that sometimes makes it white at the end.

So here's the field of top contenders among the Cardinals. I'll start with Pope Frankie's second in command, Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin of Italy. The Marco Rubio of the Holy See. He's nailing it. Another option is Frideline Ambongo from the Democratic Republic of Congo. That's cool, his name rhymes and I'm not gonna mention it

or think about it every day for the rest of my life. Well, his last name rhymes with the last word in the country, sure. The Catholic bigots are torn on him. On the one hand, he's a DEI candidate and he'd be the first ever Pope from Africa. They're not loving that. But on the other hand, he's been a hardline conservative

on continuing the Catholic tradition of ridiculous, horrible homophobia. Oh, he was in the movie. Okay. And rounding out the list, we have the top liberal candidate, at least relative to other Catholic cardinals. That would be Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines. He's known by papal pundits as Asian Francis.

Not great. And no, not great at all. I'm told he has a nice smile, according to an article. Well, there you go. We also have the top conservative candidate, Peter Erdo of Hungary. We have the top Swedish guy, Anders Arborelius of Stockholm. And my personal favorite, just because of the name, which is all that really matters, Pierre Battista Pizzaballa.

Pizzaballa! Yeah. Pizzaballa! He's from Italy, by the way. He's Italian. Oh, is he? And listen, I know they pick another name if they become the Pope, but whatever. I'm not using the other name. You're fucking Pope Pizzaballa. That's all there is to it.

No, if Pope Pizzaballa becomes a Podcastiverse character, shit is going to get weird, everybody, okay? You're going to need a fucking skeleton key to listen to this podcast. If I get my hands on Pope pizza, I feel like the podcast verse can branch into a timeline where there's a schism and pizza, Bala wins regardless, but I'm really just proving your point by saying they take out the upper. This is how it never, we never get out of the April fool's day episode. Everybody. Okay, so naturally a bunch of the news coverage is talking about the amazing life and career of Pope Francis.

And most of it was hailing him as the woke pope with big compliments about all his progressive, liberal influence on the church. So congrats on that, I guess. The bar for being the wakest pope is lodged in a ball of iron nickel alloy in the inner core. You may have to clear it. Great work. Whatever. I will give him some credit on being an advocate for immigrants and refugees,

being anti-war, message of love. Okay. And he told JD Vance to go fuck himself with his dying words. So you get a bunch of Heath points right there. Sure. But otherwise, he's just Elmer Fudd in a sillier outfit saying homophobic slurs and not fixing stuff. And that's the big key for me. He was the head of a giant organization that's responsible for centuries of sexual abuse and centuries of bigotry and persecution, including this century right now.

Yes. Yeah. They own about 177 million acres of land across the world, and they have an estimated net worth in the hundreds of billions. The pope is the king of that and the conduit to the god of the universe as they understand it. So at any moment, Frankie could have been like, bring, bring, oh, hello, God, what's that God? You want me to let women be priests

and pay all the abuse victims and bless all the same sex marriages and create a giant endowment for UNICEF? Okay, no problem, God of the universe. Guys, guys, that was the God of the universe. We gotta do a thing. But Frankie did not do that. He never did anything like that. No problem, God of the universe. Guys, guys, that was the God of the universe. We got to do a thing. But Frankie did not do that.

He never did anything like that. So I don't know, fingers crossed for the pizza baller becoming the new shot caller and doing the right thing or maybe the smile guy from the Philippines. But sure, not holding my breath. And in putting the ding dong and non non-binding-dong news tonight. So good! Oklahoma and Indiana are in varying states of passing state resolutions about how swell their Lord and Savior is.

And since the only thing that such a resolution can do is alienate non-Christians, belittle non-believers, and shove the wedge of theocracy just a little further into the door The sponsors of those resolutions insist that they actually don't do anything at all is Their argument their argument is that they're completely wasting the time of the state Legislators because the truth is far worse than that. What do you do? It's like they had a sub that day at the legislature just like alright slow day at work guys Uh, everything in Oklahoma is fucking great yeah you wanna you want to resolve a thought and write it down I don't know okay but only if it definitionally excludes a tremendous amount of humans yeah right I'm not just

doing it for fun and that's are you an Oklahoman that doesn't sound like that's what I was aiming so so we're gonna notes today You're all the way up in Minnesota man. Yeah. Yes, you're quite far north. Yes. Join me over here in the Quick word with you away from the people from Minnesota move to Oklahoma sometimes Okay, so we're gonna unlike Eli's accent we're gonna start in Oklahoma where a resolution is already passed accent we're gonna start in Oklahoma where a resolution is already passed on a 71 to 16 party line vote right this is already passed now into the wording of this resolution it was very clearly crafted by some fucking lawyer who is desperately trying to find a way of saying Jesus is the best of the gods

without violating the First Amendment he she or they fails right but it's filled with a bunch of language about how they're all just, they're just recognizing Jesus, not worshiping him. Like, you know, you see somebody across the street and you know them, but you can't cross the street at the moment. And they're not saying that we should join his religion. They're saying that we should look to him as, quote, a source of hope, unity, and moral guidance, end quote.

It honestly, it might as well end with the words, not violating church state separation can't get mad. Stop resolving yourself. Why are you resolving yourself? We just think Jesus was his swell fella. What you do about the fact that he was the son of God is up to you. You know, that's none of our business. Exactly.

Now, of course, Democrats in Oklahoma did get mad. They used a tiny little window Republicans provided for debate to emphasize that point, which is easy to do when your minority whip is also a regional governmental affairs manager from the Freedom from Religion Foundation that is non-monkey with both an EYN and E.E. Mickey Dollens. And he fucking nailed his time. After he wrapped the bill sponsor in a nod about how all the RevSolution is doing is acknowledging that many Oklahomans find Jesus inspirational and a great moral foundation and no non-Christian should have any problem with that whatsoever, Dahlin says, okay, so you would sign onto a similar resolution about Allah then?

To which the dude responded, dot, dot, dot, like, you know, just a long fucking pause. And then he says, quote, that's not addressed in this resolution, so I'm going to decline to answer that one. End quote. I'm sorry, what dot dot dot? Give me a second. It's not. I'm dad.

Dad. Mickey's switching out single words and making me look dumb again. Dad. Yeah. Right. Look, I know this isn't funny and I know that people have to like keep doing their jobs, but just once when this happens, I would like when someone responds in that snake-like way for the other person to go, no, you have to answer the question, Greg.

I know the magic hammer rules say you don't, but I'm here and a real person and you have to. Yes, and I just asked you a fucking question. Right. Can I have the Steno read back, he has no answer, he's an idiot? Great. Yeah, right. Dot, dot, dot.

Yeah, so I guess once they saw this one pass, Indiana decided that they wanted in on the action, so they crafted a far less lawyerly resolution that just says, we all love Jesus the most possible times infinity squared or whatever. It even says in the resolution that the state house is, quote, unified in its steadfast commitments to individually and corporately returning to God

and upholding the biblical principles set forth in the word of God, end quote. Which is a hell of a statement for a resolution that has zero chance of passing unanimously. Okay. It's all the kids at the Model UN conference who got ignored completely, just like hundreds of nerds figuring out carbon sequestration or whatever.

And then a Christian kid interrupts, can we resolve that God is the coolest? Yeah. And he's like, all right, there's the magic room down the hall. How about you check that out. And like I said, the people defending these bullshit resolutions, they're going to emphasize the fact that they're not laws, right? These are more like legislative press releases. And that's true.

But just because they don't carry the weight of law doesn't mean they don't matter. I mean, think about how they argued that in God we trust had been so bleached of meaning that it was actually secular. And then they used its presence on so much government shit as proof of how the government always endorses Christianity and that's okay. Right? And that's to say nothing of the literally any useful or even the harmless thing that they could have been doing with the same time. And while you're wondering how the fuck I'm not having another heart attack trying to cover these stories, we're going to toss you over to word from our second sponsor this week factor

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Damn you straight to hell. Yeah, they're not going to pay for it. And in super duper intendant news, when a few of you sent us word that a hate pastor was trying to stop a school administrator from becoming superintendent, I have to admit I was trying to stop a school administrator from becoming superintendent, I have to admit I was hesitant to cover the story. We see enough gay person loses their job for being gay stories during the good times and it feels downright sadistic to talk

about it now. But when I learned this week that he was a miserable failure at said attempt, I knew we had to talk about it. Okay, I love it when a pastor loses to a teacher because the pastor thinks they're a teacher, but with like real magic too. And then they still lose. Like that's gotta hurt. Yeah, no, that stinks. Right. Well, because yeah, your cognitive dissonance now has to choose between questioning your God's existence, questioning your God's valuation of that other person's morality or questioning your God's view of that other person's morality, or questioning

your God's view of you in comparison to that person's morality. There is no easy out from there. So big thanks to Foxfucker for sending us this story to scathingnewsatgmail.com. Foxfucker understands that when you send us atheist news to scathingnewsatgmail.com, we'll read your name as Fox fucker with no judgment at all. Assuming this is a furry thing and not an animal abuse thing. Fingers crossed.

Okay, if it's news abuse, I'm still cool with it. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Get right in that logo. At least as a metaphor, do what you got to do. Okay, so here's the story. Tiffany Reagan is a former assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in the Deer Park Independent School District in Deer Park, Texas. So when the current superintendent retired, it made a ton of sense for her to take over. The board

announced Reagan was their choice for the job in March and invited public comment before offering her the post. And as is literally always the case when you offer public comment on literally anything, Psychos for Jesus decided to ruin it because she's a lesbian. Sure. The whole idea of public comment sounds great until you meet the public. So the psycho in question was Pastor Douglas Harris, who took to the pulpit the following Sunday saying,

who took to the pulpit the following Sunday saying, quote, when you live a lifestyle of sexual immorality and that is your corrupted worldview, everything that you do stems out of the worldview of which you have, which means it will only be a matter of time before the woke-ism and the liberalism and the sexual immorality begins to be pushed at a fast pace in our district end quote Oh in the same world she would like put that on like on a yard sign for her election to something right the wokeism

Liberalism and sexual immorality begins to be pushed at a fast pace Tiffany Reagan Exactly so as you can imagine the same people in the district were horrified that Harris was attempting to speak for them. They circulated a petition demanding an apology from him and his church, which gathered 2,400 signatures. And in response, Harris wrote the petition a letter from some of his big pastor friends, a letter that said in part, quote, Dear petition, dear more people than me. Pastor Harris is standing solidly on thousands of years of Judeo-Christian doctrine, as well as the biblical and historic role that the pulpits have served in being a moral anchor

to communities. The fact is that Miss Regan cannot separate her worldview and deeply embedded sexual identity from her actions. Our concern is that the profoundly disturbing sick pattern of LGBT, disturbing pattern of the LGBTQ plus to push that agenda on our children is simply irrefutable. End quote from the letter of my friends. Have you not read the Bible story about the angels fucking the kids that the pastor was reciting in detail?

Your sexual identity is too deeply embedded. Yours is what I'm saying. Yeah, that's the thing. They cannot separate her worldview from her sexuality. But it is really telling when your fucking argument is like, hey, our morals are thousands of years old over here. Exactly.

Well, it turns out that it is, in fact, refutable by quite a few people. And the board has awarded Tiffany Regan the position this week. So keep your eye out for a series of sexually predatory lesbians out of Deer Park, Texas in the next decade or so, because now we know where it all got started. There you go. And finally tonight, in desistuous news, there are a lot of parts about the job of President of the United States of America that seem really hard. Right? Like I'm pretty sure there are a lot of them I couldn't do. None that I couldn't do better than the tish and tit we have in there right now, but many

that I'm not qualified to do. That being said, there are at least a few that I think most of us could breeze through. Right? Like I could pardon the shit out of a turkey. I could probably meet with the Girl Scout troop that sold the most cookies without fucking that up. And I'm pretty sure I could nail the series of uplifting cliches and banalities we've come to expect from our leaders on holidays.

Or failing that, I'm pretty sure I could get all the way through them without railing against my perceived enemies or baselessly accusing anybody of crimes, which is of course more than we can expect from our shart stain-in-chief. Yeah another president thing I think I could manage, I could talk to a little kid on Christmas without saying Santa's not real by accident. There you go. So if Trump ends up yelling at a kid here like, oh yeah there is no Easter Bunny, it's just a guy in a suit like Willem from All Rats. I will be 0% surprised. Yeah, well, I can't do any of those things.

So now I think I'm next to get elected. I need a suit. It's what I'm wearing. Yeah, right. You have a suit. You have one. It's just got pigeons secreted away in it. It's true.

Which would be great for a lot of presidential shit, right? We've got to break everybody bad news, but hey! Magic! Check out the pigeon. Ba. I make your rights disappear. So Trump's Easter message is too long and rambling to quote in its entirety here, but the highlights include accusing Democrats of trying to fill the country with quote murderers, drug lords, dangerous prisoners, the mentally insane, well-known gang members and wife beaters, end quote, railing against judges that

have ruled against him whining about how incompetent Joe Biden was, and of course, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen. That was his Easter message. And it's not like a toadstool. It's a good shape. It's a good shape. Anyway, he is risen. God bless America.

Right. Whatever. Also, I know this feels like a minor point, but you're a court adjudicated wife beater, Donald Trump. Why would you come for your own people? Yeah, I just don't I don't get it. Yeah. Okay. So for obvious reasons, the wall of text with all that shit in it is the Eastern message that's gotten all the press. But I want to draw your attention to another missive that he finger shat on the social media on Easter morning in which he promised to make America quote bigger better stronger wealthier healthier and more religious

Than it's ever been before and quote okay ridiculous Easter thing my favorite part of the day though was Trump and Pete Hegseth trying to defend the insane breach of national security that happened while standing next to the Easter Bunny. Bunny checks its phone, shows the press a bunch of blueprints just pointing. Circling back to that message, look, nothing encourages me more about the future of American secularism than knowing that Trump is going to nothing encourages me more about the future of American secularism than knowing that Trump is going to make America more religious with the same means and competency with which he's making it wealthier and healthier. But the very fact that he thinks that's a goal that

he should admit to publicly is a potent reminder that you don't have to be able to define theocracy to create one. And on yet another terrifying reminder of why we're here in the first place, we're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, that music that just started will fade back out. So Don gets her in a leg lock, right? No way!

Totally, totally. And she's screaming for the ref, right? You can't do that. I'm fucking pregnant. Okay, so what does the ref do? Okay, get this. Takes off a mask. Also, Don Ford.

I cannot believe I missed this. Yeah, well, be careful of expulsion spells. Tell me about it. Man, mobile has cheap cell phone deals. Don't even of expulsion spells. Tell me about us. Mobile has cheap cell phone deals. Don't even try man. It's not worth it. Yeah. So how does Woldasher missile feel about the duplication magic? Okay, so this is where it gets interesting. It's become a bit of a tradition on this show that after we attend big atheist and skeptic conferences, we devote a segment to our top 10 memories from the event. Now, partly that's to encourage people who have never been to a con to attend, and partly it's a shout out to attendees who helped create all these great memories, and partly it's because after a con we don't really have time to read a whole chapter

of a book or break down a whole Christian song and what I did last summer is an easy assignment. Yeah, I always cheated and just told everyone the plot of I know what you did last summer. I spent a lot of time in the counselor's office. Bet you did. That's best. However, this year, because of wedding planning obligations and babysitting requirements, respectively, Heath and Eli were unable to attend this year's American Atheist Conference, leading us to the conundrum of whether we'd still do another segment about that, even though it would just be me telling the guys all the great shit they wanted to do, but couldn't, which seems cruel. So without further ado, here are my top 10 memories from AACon 2025.

Sounds so fun. Number 10. Winning at trivia. So for the last few years, AACon has been kicking off the conference with a Thursday night pub trivia quiz, and until now, I've never been on the winning team. Because Heath has always been there and not been on my team. But this year, I was on the fucking dream team, which is Katie and Fred and any other number of warm bodies.

I mean, no offense to any of my other teammates, but the two of them could have teamed up with eight empty duck costumes and have won that damn thing. Yeah, two amazing people to have on the team. In my experience with Fred, we'd get the question and everyone would talk through their ideas for the answer. And then Fred would very quietly say the correct answer every time. Yep. And he's such a nice person that he

wouldn't jump in and tell everybody to shut up because like, no, I got it. I got it. I got the answer. If it was me and I had all the knowledge that Fred does, I'd be such a loud asshole about it. But he just softly gets it right every time and lets everyone talk about their stupid wrongness ideas without interrupting. Once I learned how it works though,

I started just staring directly at Fred after each question and waiting for him to say the right answer. I mean, to be fair, Fred was there for when most of the history questions happened. So it's kind of cheating. That helps. So, okay. So, but here's the key. Fred was great and everything, but Katie, who you may know as Nine Finger Lesbian Online, an art mutual friend, is a fucking savant when it comes to music. Nine out of 10 in your program, 11 out of 10 in our. And one of the rounds in this thing, there were 12 songs about Minnesota or by Minnesotans or that mentioned Minnesota or whatever, because the con was in Minneapolis and you got one point for naming the song and another point for

naming the artist. And Katie went 12 for 12 on that, just like she had the previous year in Philly. And she was so fucking confident and so quick that I got to do this awesome power move. All right. So because when they went to the songs, they do it once. And then there was a second time that they were going to go around to give everybody a second go at them. But Katie had already nailed all 12 of them. And so as they were playing the songs,

I just walked to the front and hold the fucking answers up and let everybody know, we're already fucking done with this shit. Awesome. Just dancing to the front, like you have TSA pre-check for Soul Train and Trivia. Yes, yeah. That's awesome.

Side note, I feel like it's necessary to point this out. Nine figured lesbian is her online username. It's not like a pirate reputation. Yeah, well, it can be both. It can be both. It can be both, but I figure, you know. Right. But yeah, between her encyclopedic musical knowledge and Fred just knowing a lot of random shit and Ian growing up in Minnesota and knowing a lot of the Minnesota questions, we ended up winning by like six or seven fucking points. It was ridiculous. Hell yeah. Number nine, the service project. All right.

So my number 10 came from the first official event of the conference and my number nine is the last. That would be the service project. Every year, a con puts together a charity project of some sort that attendees can participate in on the last day of the con, which is of course Easter Sunday. And this year we were bagging up food for food insecure families in the Minneapolis area. What are they scared of macaroni? I'm kidding. They're starving because society is evil.

Right. That's it. Exactly. And so Lucinda and I, we happen to get placed at the same table as Seth Andrews. And there are like 10, there's 10 people at our table, I think. So we've got Lucinda, me, Seth, our mutual friend, Jamie, and six super fans of Seth's show who have no idea who the fuck I am it was exactly as humbling as a service project is supposed to be okay It's really good Eli didn't make it that would have been a scene with a meltdown and then like a hitting phase and then like a

Safe hands reward map on the wall. Lots of fallout. Yeah. And to be clear, that all would have been for me. If history is any indication, my toddler would have just been making Lucinda do calisthenics somewhere. Right. Yeah.

He loves those conferences. He does. Yeah. So also, and I know this kind of undercuts the whole humbling thing that I was just saying, but we kind of won the service project, right? They like, we actually, we had to start slow because one of our scales didn't work. So we actually were at a disadvantage, but still somehow we filled the most boxes in the first hour and we ran out of shit and had to pack up first.

So they didn't exactly declare a victor in the service project, but if they had, it would have been us. And for the record, I think it was pretty shitty of Jeff Blackwell to make you apologize to that other table because you told them to suck it. You didn't even tell them what to suck. Thank you, Eli. Number eight, winning the icebreaker contest. So yeah, so not having Heath around really brought out the victor in me, I guess, because

they also won the icebreaker contest and this one had money in it. The trivia, that just got us a box full of candy, but the icebreaker contest and this one had money in it. Right, the trivia, that just got us a box full of candy, but the icebreaker contest came with a $25 credit at the American Atheist merch table. Woo! Did you take my suggestion and go see, cause that'll get your t-shirt every time. Hey, it will.

I'm gonna tell ya. Yeah, no, so okay, so they've got this app called Hoover that they're using for a lot of the conference stuff. And among the various things you can do on this app is this icebreaker thing. It gives you a list of six or seven different icebreaker questions and you can answer those and then people can upvote the ones that they like best.

So I chose the question, what kind of fruit or vegetable would you be and why? And my answer was banana, because Ray Comfort seems like a gentle lover. Nice. Nicely done. Okay, if it was QED, I'd be lettuce so I could be a PM with staying power. I get nice.

Oh, well done. So yeah. So, but I won with four more votes than the next nearest competitor, which I felt really good about until I started reading the second and third and fourth place answers. Cause like the second place was, it was like a civil rights attorney talking about having the, like the joy of having his dream job of helping protect the rights of marginalized people. And then the third place was a woman talking about how she wants to start a blog that rates

travel destinations for accessibility. And then the fourth one is about a fucking, I don't know, saving a family of puppies from a burning refugee camp or some fucking thing. And here I am with a fucking dick joke taking the top prize which sucked to be fair the Trump Administration is probably gonna make our thing illegal way after they do it for those other guys So it's about staying power. Yeah, I think about you know number seven Just Minneapolis in general

Okay, so finally we have one that has nothing to do with me winning anything of Of course, the American Atheist Annual Convention, it moves around every year. This year we were in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is a city and state that I've never been to. And it turns out I am a big fan of both. Southern hospitality has nothing on Minnesota nice. Literally every interaction I had with a Minnesotan was charming as fuck. And they even did the voice for me. It's a fun voice.

I like when the best word for the accent is also the name of the accent. So Minnesota pro tip. This does not apply to sexual advances in their truck stop bathrooms. You're you're just going to get beat up by a guy who sounds like a weatherman. Yeah. Learn from my mistakes. Number six, winning at the photo contest. All right. So back to me winning this shit. So in this instance, I have to admit I didn't actually win. I took third place. I lost to a fucking rat. So much like the icebreaker

contest, the conference app also had this thing where you could upload your picks from the conference and people could upvote their favorites. And my pick of our winning trivia team took an early lead because it was like the third picture that was uploaded and had the instant advantage of all 10 members of our trivia team upvoting it. It's a great photo. I saw it on Facebook. My favorite part is that everyone's smiling,

except for Apof, who decided it was like a team picture for middle school football and you got to establish dominance Right all serious never apologize for having the eye of the tiger April Hide your light under a bushel girl. Oh, no, I applaud this. I like it fuck Yeah, but okay, so but here's the truly remarkable thing about the photo contest So I never had a chance at this thing because and here's where I try to ensure that Heath never misses one of these again Our and Rob brought his dog to this one his great Pyrenees named

Falcor he big and if you are not familiar with this breed that we're talking about a white dog the size of a fucking Motorcycle right like if it stood on its hind legs this thing would have been taller than me So the photo that took first place of fucking course was Lucinda with Falcor In fact three of the top ten photos were Lucinda with Falcor Okay, so I love the idea of a great Pyrenees named after a luck dragon and it fits perfectly If you met Arn Ra and you knew nothing about him, you'd be like, cool, good to meet you. Where's your luck dragon that you definitely have as a pet? Yeah.

Right. But here's the thing about Neverending Story. It traumatized my entire generation. They made us watch our tacks die in the swamp. So we're already weeping uncontrollably from that. And then they also kill Falkor. We don't see it, but it's implied that the nothing consumes him. And the movie claims they didn't show that explicitly because it might traumatize an

entire generation. What the fuck? Side note, do you guys think Aaron buys normal stuff? Or does he have to order like goth wizard karate themed toilet paper too? Cause if he walked up to me at the checkout in Walgreens with a package of like Charmin, I'd be like, you can't have that. You have to be black.

You have to use tree bark. Yes, right. Also, a big shout out to the second place photo as well, which was Eve was framed, who you might remember from episode 357 of gam chilling out with a rat that belonged to Trinity pixie who you might remember from episode 430 of gam So when you consider the competition the fact that our trivia team took third is still pretty impressive. Hell. Yeah number five Fred at the drag show

So one of the best decisions that American atheists made this year was that on Saturday night instead of having some boring magician or some podcast or whatever to a live record, they had a drag show, which was fucking awesome. They brought in a local drag group that was crazy talented, genuinely one of the best drag performances I've ever seen, even though the room set up might not have been ideal for it. Yeah, I would really like the drag performers experience here. They did 11 boozy brunches this month and a conference room of retirees who hate God. Like I want to where do we rank in their performances in terms of money made?

I think we did pretty good. But the highlight of the drag show was not any of the performers or at least not any of the drag show was not any of the performers, or at least not any of the paid performers. It was watching our mutual friend Fred, who is in his 70s and living his best life, sitting right up front, dancing with the drag queens, making it rain, and very visibly having the fucking time of his life. Okay, my atheist drag name would be Bianca Infidel Rio.

That's pretty good, dude. Keith has been shaking while he waited to tell you that podcast just so you know. I'm so happy about that. Like a chihuahua in a car. Okay, if I was a furry drag persona atheist, it would be Madeleine Furio here. Okay, so...

There it is. There it is. So, okay. So just to be clear, I did not win the drag show. Fred did. Yes, he did. Nicely done. Number four. Winning at Codenames. Now the great benefit of Heath's absence was that I was able to dominate Codenames, or at least go two for two. After the Talks of the award dinner on Friday, a bunch of us were hanging out at the hotel bar playing code names.

So much fun. Such a great game. I played like a million fucking games and I still love that fucking game. My team won and then I went out to smoke a joint, which is legal in Minnesota. I came back, joined the other team and that team won. So two for two on two different teams.

Just APA 500 feet away from the answer key, like Megan's law. I'm picturing her in like the Hannibal Lector dolly like Rainbow Frog. Paris Rainbow Frog. Number three, winning at a one legged standing contest. All right. I'll admit stretching for that. Yeah, I know I didn't win enough stuff to make this whole thing work. But so on Saturday evening, they had a VIP event, which I was allowed to attend because I paid for a ticket for it.

But but during that event, our mutual friend, Phil Ferguson of the aptly titled Phil Ferguson show, he comes up and he's talking about his fitness regime. And as part of it, he starts talking about how he's been practicing standing on one leg. So, of course, I immediately challenged him to a one legged standing challenge. Extended. I love it. Yes. Right. Well, and Phil is such a great sport, right? He did it. And look, I know this is weird given how much weed I smoke, but I've got really good balance, right?

So I used to walk slack lines. I used to walk on stilts. I used to ride a unicycle. I have spent a lot of time standing on one foot. I own a one footed balance board for people who just don't have enough trouble standing on one foot normally. Needless to say, I crushed him like a grape. And then I felt like a bit of a prick because he was just trying to make some fucking point and my hyper competitive ass ruined it all together.

Right in his face. You didn't ruin it. His point almost ruined the amazing contest if it hadn't happened. Thank you. Hey, podcast listener, if this is your first episode, it might seem like anytime anyone ever says anything, Noah challenges them to a contest about it. But I want to assure you that that is also true of Heathend, right? So it's not your true story. If you're a first time listener, you stopped listening at the weird fake ads. They were proud. That was probably your note moment.

Yeah. But if not, you're in for a good time. Number two, Arden Hart's talk. So, okay, so you're listening to my top 10 list so far, and you're tempted to think that the talks must not have been that impressive given how they haven't even come up yet. But there were a bunch of great talks. A friend of the show, Jeff Blackwell, gave a rousing speech

about the state of the Supreme Court's current session. There was a data in on the lakes guy named Joe Navarro Rivera, who gave this great talk about population trends that was absolute candy to a demographic nerd like myself. And I thought American atheist president Nick Fish really rose to the occasion with his talk on Friday. Nick Fish's atheist drag name would be Nick Fish. Yeah, no, that's right.

Works nicely. I was thinking Nick Fishnets, but yeah, no, you're right. No need. But the standout talk of the weekend, and I think damn near every attendee who saw this would agree, was Arden Hart's talk titled, A Guide to Confronting Transphobia in the Secular Movement. Starts to lay out a bunch of karate mats. Okay, lady, I'm listening. So yeah, so at a time when some atheist groups are maybe getting a little iffy on trans rights and some skeptical groups are planting their flags firmly in the transphobia camp. It was really nice to see American atheists

make their position clear with this invite, right? And holy shit, what a great talk. Arden basically just laid out all the transphobe arguments, dismantled them in a way that was logically unassailable and did so with more applause breaks than the politician that was there the day before and brought his own audience plant to yell, Yeah! And start clapping loudly every time he made a point. Okay, I tried to do that plant thing the first time I saw Eli's magic show, but I picked a stupid time to get up and be like,

Yeah, and nobody was with me. And Eli was like, Please sit down, sir. That was weird. Heath, I told you painting your body with a big E was too much. Right. Start small and then... You want me to spell out the whole name?

Yeah. Okay. And I should note that I asked some folks with American Atheists and they assured me that that talk will be available online in the near future. So if you missed it or if you just want to be able to share it, you know, you saw it, you still want to be able to share it, we'll keep you posted. Definitely worth an hour of your time or so when it comes out. And at number one, I'm actually going to diverge ever so slightly from tradition because normally I always have the same number one and that number one is meeting our

listeners. That's the main reason we go to these conventions in the first place and it's always the most fun that I have. And it was again this year, but instead of just giving that blanket answer, I want to focus in on one single listener that I met. Noah if this is you and you declare yourself the winner you're not allowed to go to stuff alone anymore just so you know. That would be a great use of a technicality though. Put it on the board. Who am I Michael Marshall? No of course it's not me. Now I didn't ask her permission to share this story so I'm not going to give her name, but I met her on the first day of the conference and she clearly suffered from some pretty serious social anxiety. She was so nervous to meet Lucinda and myself that she was literally shaking, right? It was clear that she was overcoming some serious shit to come up and introduce herself,

but she did so and we were flattered that she considered meeting us to be worth so much social anxiety. Yeah, I usually tell people they're not shaking enough when I meet them. So it must have been a nice change. No, yeah, right. Then we saw her again the next day and she was a little less nervous and the next evening she was a little less nervous. And by the final day, we were chatting like old friends. Our sort of weird extended convention family had pulled her in close and she felt so comfortable that she was already planning to come to our next live event that isn't

sold out. I love that. And for anyone else feeling that social anxiety, so am I. So like come right over and say hi. We'll be social about social anxiety together. I learned to fake my way past this as a bartender, but it's there all the time. So, yeah, bring it in. Well, right. And look, I get that podcasts are particularly appealing to people who have social anxiety, right? Because for a lot of people, podcasts serve as sort of a social simulacrum

where where you can like feel like you're sitting in a circle of friends, but you don't have any like contribution that you have to make. Right. So we meet a lot of people that are in friends, but you don't have any like contribution that you have to make, right? So we meet a lot of people that are in her position and we don't meet a lot more because they never get up the nerve to introduce themselves. So it feels really good when you're able to help somebody break through that

and sit in the circle for real. Yeah, one of my favorite moments at a conference was realizing that me and another guy in that conversation circle you're talking about, we were both running the same play because we both landed on the same forced eye contact schedule. We were both doing like, look up, person one,

person two, person three, done. And I realized we're both the other guy's person two at the same time. Like our cycles matched up. Right, yeah. Every so often we'd lock eyes at the same time like our cycles matched up right yeah every so often we'd lock eyes at the same time because we're both the two so after the third time that happened I was like hey I think we're doing the same social anxiety cadence do you want to talk about it? Do we get off rhythm?

Do we want to syncopate? Take a moment podcast listener to empathize what it's like for me and my typical neurons as I watch everyone else at these events choreograph their eye contact like a show. Yeah. Eli thinks he has typical neurons. That's adorable. They're just sad. They're typical. They're just sad.

So anyway, so that was my top 10 memories of the con. I couldn't easily have written out 20 if I'd had to. And if you'd like to help be part of those memories next time next year is gonna be in Washington DC. It will not be Easter this year though they're doing it in conjunction with some other groups but we'll keep you posted on dates and stuff and thanks again to all the wonderful people with American Atheists who made this whole thing possible. Before we melt back into the background I want to remind you that if you see any pigeons who seem like they're up to some shit, you can report them to anti-christianbiasedreporting

at va.gov. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with Morph. Can't wait that long to be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend God awful movies debuting at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday and an even new episode of our half social citation needed debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. I got most of the words that time. Obviously, I can't call this an episode of a neglected thing. He then write for the epi part and Eli Bosnia for the so part. Also want to thank Lucinda illusions for always being a

fucking delight to be around. Also want to thank at what's brew on Instagram for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Normally we try to keep those under 30 seconds, but yours was too good to pass up. Thank you. Appreciate it. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people. Robert Lessimer, L.O.L. Mahmoud, Lilith, two 10 Seth Ekins, Erica and Dennis Nigel and Shadow Hammer. Robert Lessimer and Mahmoud, whose intellects are so vast that James Webb Telescope would have to get further away to see all of them.

Lilith, Seth Ekins and Erica, whose skills with a blade would be a plausible explanation for what happened to the dinosaurs if we ever discover time travel, and Dennis, Nigel, and Shadow Hammer, whose cocks are so infamous their name is an acceptable term for rooster. Together these nine naughty non-believers nudged a nub in a normalcy towards non-belief this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, but if you do you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com, so that's scathing atheists, whereby you'll have access to an extended every 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 scathing atheists.com. And if you'd like to help, but you must first defeat the dark half of yourself in the realm between realms, get on that shit.

And 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 Robertson handles that for us and our audio engineer is Morton Clark, who also wrote 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 skatingadvice.com. There's seven new people listening to our podcast.

Yep. Statistically. Baffled seven people. Hey, hon, I liked it. The smart guy at the front. And then I think, you remember we did acid and I had that. I think them fellers are having one too. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, I think them fellers are having one too.