The Scathing Atheist - 636: Pope Convictus Edition

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

In this week’s episode, Christian bigots put themSELVES on a list for a change, Donald Trump gets down with the sithness, and Tom and Cecil will be here to explain how Eli’s spreadsheet got lost in the mail. --- 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/ --- Guest Links: Hear more from Tom and Cecil here: https://www.dissonancepod.com/ Check out Anna’s new album here: https://annabosnick.hearnow.com/ --- Headlines: Website for Christian Right MAGA-friendly businesses backfires as people use it for boycotts: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/publicsquare-trump-critics-boycott-businesses_n_680900d2e4b00850c6839b0b Turkish Cypriots protest over what they say is Turkey's introduction of Islam into education system: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/turkish-cypriots-protest-over-what-they-say-is-turkeys-introduction-of-islam-into-education-system/ar-AA1E6PVp White House press briefing welcomes influencer who thought the Moon disappeared one time: https://www.wonkette.com/p/white-house-press-briefing-welcomes New York May Weaken Its Oversight Over Religious Schools: https://archive.is/X7oIB#selection-507.0-511.112 Trump posts AI image of himself as Pope: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/04/world/trump-ai-image-pope-intl-hnk And as a f***-jedi with a sith lightsaber: https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/films/news/trump-may-4th-post-star-wars-lightsaber-b2744850.html

Warning, the following podcast contains nowhere near enough profanity. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Aura Frames, My Sheets Rock, BetterHelp, and by the fact that some people find our free shit worth paying for. Thanks patrons. And now, The Skating Atheist. Hi, I'm Hannah Morell. and as a anti-capitalist, anti-woo, atheist, feminist, skeptic, humanist, trauma-informed financial coach who is occasionally asked for recommendations on which crystals are best for financial health, I can in fact confirm that we did

evolve from filthy monkey men and women. ["The Daily Show Theme"] Ah! It's Thursday. It's May 8th. And it's National Coconut Cream Pie Day! Not the porn category, but that's fun too. Yeah, yeah. It's fun too.

I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnik. I'm Heathen Wright. And from Woodrow Wilson's, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is the Skating atheist. On this week's episode, Christian bigots put themselves on a list for a change. Donald Trump gets down with the sithness.

And Tom and Cecil will be here to explain how Eli's spreadsheet got lost in the mail. But first, the diatribe. Lucinda and I made an all too rare trip to the theater the other day to check out Ryan Coogler's new vampire movie Sinners, partly because Ryan Coogler is one of the best directors working in Hollywood and he seems to get better with every movie, and partly because how could I not go to theaters to see a movie called Sinners? And I know this isn't a movie review show, so I'm gonna keep my praise brief, but the movie was fantastic. It hits on all fronts. Great writing, great soundtrack, great cinematography, great acting.

You know, Michael B. Jordan played dual roles as identical twins and mastered two slightly different variations on the same Mississippi accent for it. But what impressed me most about the movie is that it had a strong anti-christian two slightly different variations on the same Mississippi accent for it. But what impressed me most about the movie is that it had a strong anti-Christian message. But I'm strong for a Hollywood movie anyway, not for like a fucking diatribe. So I don't want to get into spoiler territory here, but ultimately the story is very much

about how African-Americans were robbed of their religion and mythology and culture and handicapped by this religion of meekness and self denial. So after the movie, I took to the interwebs, I hopped on Blue Sky, which if you're not on Blue Sky, it's basically like Twitter when Twitter was just, you know, regular shitty, highly recommend it. Anyway, I posted basically the truncated review

I just gave you, right? Great movie, great acting, great music, surprisingly anti-Christian message for a Hollywood movie. And so inevitably, along come the Christians to defend it. Now to be clear, the movie is being derided throughout the Christian community as being demonic and anti-christian. I have most Christian leaders, but I guess most Christian leaders don't know about it because most of them are unaware of black cast movies in general, but the ones that do know about it are mostly pretty worried about the motherfucker. I've seen plenty of Christian opinion pieces and hysterical social media threads warning

people off in the movie or asking Jesus to forgive them for watching it. It is decidedly and unapologetically critical of the role that Christianity played in denuding black Americans of their cultural heritage. And most Christians realize that when they watch it, I think, but some don't and some decidedly don't. Some of them have strategies and tactics for not realizing that shit. And I saw a few examples of that on Blue Sky.

Several apologists showed up in my mentions to say some variation of, well, I don't think Coogler was criticizing Christianity so much as this meaningless subdivision of Christianity that I've carved out of the hole in order to divorce myself from culpability for the horrific foundation my faith is built upon. It wasn't Christianity, it was dominionism. It was slaveholder religion.

It was the extractive aspects of Christian supremacy. Of course, as you may have noticed, none of those is an or. This is a very don't blame the man, blame the fist kind of an argument, and yet plenty of defensive Christians jerk their knee right into it. Because dominionism, slaveholder religion, and extractive elements of Christian supremacy are Christianity. Christianity is the sum of its parts, but all too often Christians convince themselves that as long as they can attach a name to the parts that they don't like, they can sequester them in a prison of exception. But you don't get to do that shit.

Much in the way that a murderer is still a murderer when he's not murdering, Christianity is still a slaveholder religion when it's not holding slaves. It's still dominionist in a secular dominion. It's still extractive when it's not extracting. Not that it's not extracting. But plenty of Christians can leap into this ridiculous fallacy without recognizing the idiocy of it at all. My religion is only the good parts.

It doesn't matter how the church got here, why it was the dominant religion, how my ancestors were converted to it, how it spread across the globe, how it continues to disempower and subjugate, what it does with its power when it has it, or who it dehumanizes along the way. Those don't count because I say they don't count.

I worship the tip, not the iceberg. It's an awful lot like the tepid Trump voter who's now trying to hide behind his unbridled lunacy by saying, well, I didn't vote for that motherfucker, you voted for Trump. So you're responsible for all the crazy evil shit he does, not just the crazy evil shit he promised to do. Likewise, when you empower Christianity, you're responsible for what it does with that power. And historically,

what it's done is domineering, extractive, slave-holding type shit. It's inherent in your thing, and we can prove that with history. All denying those aspects of the faith does is offer them cover today. Joining me for headlines tonight are the C-3PO and R2-D2 to my BB-8, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnik. Fellas, are you ready to give the folks at home a little droid rage? Okay, the color of my right shin has been proving the multiverse for decades and people are curious. And I will turn out not to have been built by Matt Powell the whole time.

What I'm saying is I promise. And of course, we need to take a quick break to remind you that May means matri on the time of year when we ask you for money at the beginning and end of the show. Patrons to our show get access to an exclusive annual pajama party live stream and what we're going to do at that live stream will be determined by the number of new and upgrading patrons for the month. For more information, check out maytron.com or pledge at patreon.com slash scathing atheist. And with that advertisement out of the way, it's time for this different advertisement.

This one is for Aura Frayans. Hey podcast listener, buckle in and strap up because we're here to tell you the only thing more important than matri on. That's right. We said it because the only person you love more than us is your mom. Unless your mom sucks. In which case we're really sorry to hear that. Don't lose momentum. Right? yes. That's why you need an AuraFrame. You heard us right. What's AuraFrames? AuraFrames was named the best digital photo frame by Wirecutter, and it's easy to see

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Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Aura Frames, take care of your mom the way she took care of you. Assuming that was good. Dude, what is with you? I'm being sensitive. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, in proud boycott news.

Nice. Give me a minute, I'll get there. With an evil cult controlling all three branches of the US government, it's easy to feel powerless right now. We can look ahead to future elections, those are a thing, but lots of people wanna do something now. Well, it turns out we have the power of the purse.

Now, allegedly there's something called Congress that has that or something like that, I forget what they do here, but the other power of the purse is very real. We can take away about half the economy from bad people. Oh, granted, like ethical consumption, it's tricky. But you can definitely choose what not to buy. The question is, how do you find a curated list

of shitty companies to boycott? Well, there's a shitty company, like a meta company of companies that did the homework for us. It's called Public Square. And we actually talked about them back in 2023 before it was cool. They're a big online marketplace for companies that are dedicated to Christian right values,

especially anti-choice values. And thanks to their super handy giant list of terrible businesses owned by terrible people, decent people all over the country are doing a proud boycott. Now, there it is. It's all coming back. So, wait, now I'm just supposed to buy flavorless whole bean coffee and hope it's pro-life propaganda? What's the deal? As much as I love this story, I'm not sure anybody needed to crack a code to know that

Freedom Eagle's Second Amendment brand tooth whitening strips were supporting the bad guys. And don't buy those. Why are you buying those? And a big thanks to Militant Agnostic for sending us a link to skatingnews at gmail.com. I said I'm not motherfucking sure. I'll link to skatingnews at gmail.com. I said I'm not motherfucking sure. Exactly. So, Milly Ags, if you see Eli in person, you get to make him wear one MAGA themed accessory as an obnoxious affectation for the rest of that day.

Like a monocle with the American flag on it, something like that. Okay, you lost me at MAGA accessory, but you won me back again when I got to wear it wrong. As long as I'm making them look bad. I'm in. No, look if somebody hands you an accessory to wear and doesn't expect you to put it up your butt they just don't know you right they don't know you're liboznik.

Especially a monocle we know that for sure. I like how round they are. Just don't take it out too quick. So in order for a company to sell their products on public square that company has to pledge to respect the core values of the site's parent company. So what are those values? Well, its investors include former GOP Senator and current head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler.

She's, she's obviously crushing it right now. And also Donald Trump Jr. Donny Deuce is also a board member at Public Square. Their mission is providing an anti-woke marketplace. That's all about Christian values, according to their about page. We will always protect the family unit and celebrate the sanctity of every life. There's an asterisk after that specifically excluding Kilmar or Bregow Garcia, but all the other ones. Yeah, there's an asterisk after that specifically excluding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but all the other ones. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, and like born kids. And then it says rock some merch to get the word out. Oh. So for anyone who loves their Amazon Prime t-shirt, because that's your favorite brand, but it's a little too woke for you. You can get a public square t-shirt because that's your favorite brand. But it's a little too woke for you. You can get a public square t-shirt that says pro life, pro family, pro freedom on it. Yeah. And get it now before the Terrence hit because you know those are made in China.

I love how like pro life, like the first two things are, I'm going to take your rights for this. I'm going to take your rights for this. And I'm also in favor of all the rights. We're also libertarian asterisk. Yeah. So it's been a while since we talked about the amazing offerings from Public Square, and I decided to give it a quick look to see their latest stuff. And against all odds, it gets even dumber. In the very first row of featured products, they were already making jokes by accident about themselves. They're selling on that very first row, a portable steak in a bag.

What? And then a big multi-pack of toilet paper right next to it. There it is. All right, well, it looks like RFK Jr. is now officially part of the Christian Wright product zeitgeist. I learned that too. Also on the first page of Public Square, I found a skin cream made with beef tallow.

Yup, it's not one of those woke moisturizers. It's for manly men who like to rub cow fat on their face. Along with a delightful blend of pink grapefruit, cedarwood, rosemary, and chamomile oils. Just $20 for a two ounce jar from Clara and Fritz. Don't buy Clara and Fritz. All right hon, I'll let you get it but I'm gonna need to see Clara and Fritz having orgasmless missionary style sex before I buy. You understand. Sex you could light a fire with, exactly. So, here's some other great companies to boycott. We have a line of Christian video games for kids by True Play Games that teach about Biblical truth

in every adventure. I'm sorry to say I will not be boycotting that, Heath. Fair enough, fair enough. We have Patriot Mobile, that's the makers of the Klandroid Freedom Phone. I'm pretty sure we talked about that once or twice. We have a company that converts your money into gold for you Christianly or something. Okay, that's just selling you gold though, right? McDonald's converts my money into hamburgers too.

And if somebody's selling you gold, they don't think it's a good idea to own gold. Right! By definition. And we have the terrifying section on Public Square called Sports. I also checked that out. They have two bikes for kids and those are right next to a gun rack, an absurd holster that takes up your entire leg, scopes, ammo boxes, a company that seems to be build-a-bear-for-gun components also. Interesting.

And if all that seems dangerous for kids, don't worry. They also have a product called the Bulletproof T-Shirt. They really have that. According to them it delivers ballistic protection stopping handgun rounds while maintaining a low profile everyday look. That's only $1,099 from a company called Civilian. Don't buy anything from them either. Yeah so if I can part the curtain slightly, listener, I wrote the joke in our notes. What is that? A t-shirt filled with pans? And then I was like, wait a second, Eli, it's 2025 and all the jokes you've ever made are just true now? I should Google it first.

Spoiler, it's a t-shirt filled with pans, everybody. Yep, sure is. Again, I didn't need a hack to know that the company civilian that makes the bulletproof t-shirt donated his profits to the Trump inaugural fund. Okay, so the boycott idea, it's been going viral recently, especially after a boost from an article in the Huffington Post last week, and the stock price for Public Square is down about 73% week, and the stock price for Public Square is down about 73% since Trump took office. Get it on the boots. It was already down about 54% before the Trump tax kicked in and cratered the markets on Liberation Day.

Weird that a retailer full of patriots who would never produce their stuff anywhere but these United States of America had such a big drop after the terrorist. Weird. Yeah, maybe those things don't work very well. Or those patriots are liars. Spoiler, it's both. Yeah, I thought you were being a little loose with the ors there. Thank you. Fair enough. Bottom line, great work on the boycott, and let's keep that going. But let's not be abusive. I saw someone on Reddit suggest that people,

you know, like buy stuff on Public Square and then keep returning it to overwhelm their shipping and customer service. There was even talk of pranks with like boxes of glitter, falsely labeled fetal remains, please do a funeral for me, I can't afford it. And even if that was me on that Reddit second, that would be illegal and unethical.

That's our official stance. Don't do that is what I'm saying. And in Cypriotic news, the people of Cyprus, Turkey took to the streets this week to protest a new law granting special permissions to Islam in schools because believe it or not there are in fact things more terrifying than what American theocrats are doing. Well, more terrifying than what they're doing to our schools anyway. Trump in charge of nukes is the scariest of all of the things and they did that but yeah. That's fair. That's fair. So first off big thanks to Freddie Box Muncher G for sending us

this story to scathingnews.gmail.com. Fred told us we could only use this story if we referred to him by one of his many cunnilingus-based nicknames, and Fred the Labialapper G felt a little tasteless. You too can make similar demands by sending us atheist news to scathingnews.gmail.com. Not entirely tasteless. I liked getting Fred Fred or like getting Fred over squeals. Yeah, no that's good. I want to be clear that you can't make similar demands like that of all of us. I will send you to HR over shit like this.

Yeah, no we have reported Fred to Cannes. It's interesting. So for those of you who are out of the loop, Cyprus's very existence is a highly contested matter of national policy. Well they all agree it exists. They all agree it exists, but not whose it is. Yeah. Yeah. So Turkey invaded the previously Greek owned island in 1974. And to this day, only Turkey acknowledges the independence of the Turkish occupied north.

Yeah, I know what I saw you referring to it as Cyprus, Turkey of the notes. I was wondering if senior pets snuck into the Google Docs. The Greek Cypriot self joined the European Union in 2004 and just last Friday UN Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez appointed Maria Angela Jaguan Collier as his personal envoy to Cyprus tasked with trying to restart peace talks that have been stalled since 2017. So, needless to say, it's a little tense right now. Yeah, with like Erdogan and Orban and Trump and Putin, it's like we're playing risk with neo-Nazi kids who definitely need a fucking timeout. Like, we need to call some moms to come get their boy.

Yeah, we really do. Bunch of timeouts. Right, nobody likes it when the board gets flipped over,ast of all the motherfuckers who live on the board. Right. And so I should point out that one of the biggest fears among the people of Cyprus is the creep of Islamic theocracy into their otherwise pretty secular society. So when last month the right wing Turkish Cypriot authorities lifted a ban on wearing head scarves in high schools, but not on symbols of other religions, it felt like pretty solid evidence of that creep. Okay.

In fairness, yarmulkes can take your eye out like a throwing stuff. Yeah. It's true. It's true. They are that thing. If it ever comes down to like a religious war, like with the required outward facing symbols of your faith, it's going to come down to the Jews versus Sikhs pretty quickly, I think. Yeah, no, that's fair.

That's fair. It's also worth mentioning that there is a legal challenge to the rule change in addition to the protests. And so far, popular support for the protests seems strong. So this might be a moment where theocracy gets held back, but if you've been following our show long enough, you know this is definitely a situation worth watching and worrying about. And in MoonConf News,

the Trump administration managed to outdo themselves in terms of stupid, against all odds, and they invited a new type of lunatic into the White House press room. Instead of reporters from real sources of news like Associated Press, Trump's been switching out seats at the briefing for outlets like One America News and important journalists like Marjorie Taylor Greene's

boyfriend who has that podcast from the garage. That one's real. That's a real one and one of the newest arrivals is Cambry Nelson from the bigotry think tank the America first policy Institute and Ms. Nelson is pretty sure The moon disappeared for a whole week last year. Wait, what? That's how she got in actually She said she was there with the moon. So just sort of first of all, let's not slide past how subtle and awesome It is that Heath described her as a new type of lunatic, right?

Thank you. But secondly. No, thank me. Yeah. I want to appreciate the fact that we have the only job where our job is to make fun of people for having our job. And that's awesome. It's cool.

It is cool. All right. So just to give you an idea of the journalistic rigor of Cambry Nelson. Cambry! Here's what happened at a recent briefing. With all the important news right now, Nelson got her turn to ask a question and decided to get some career advice from Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt. Nelson said, quote, I'm kind of the nerd when it comes to reporting.

I'm not the headline news girl. I'm the nuts and bolts. I'm the policy type nerd. So what direction do you advise me to go into? Like the White House files you all send out every single day? Because that's what people are used to. When they want to ask me questions, they want to know the nuts and bolts of everything." End quote. My question is more of a compliment for myself. Yeah, I think there's a question in there, but not the end. I don't... So if it got lost in the verbosity there, Eli, her question was,

so what's like the news? Do I have to read this? Is this going to be on the quiz? Yeah. And Caroline Levitt responded by saying, I wish there were people in the legacy media that were like you. So... But idiots? I guess the answer was nuts and bolts, hard journalism. I don't know. Well, we'll see how it goes. Because here's the tweet from Cambry Nelson on October 5th of last year,

which by the way was three days after a new moon. Quote, has anyone seen the moon lately? What? I've been looking for seven days. End exact quote. Well, there's your mistake. You should have tried seven nights. You know, had a lot of-

Yeah, no, that's important. You need that one. Fucking idiot. So in response to that very important question about nuts and bolts science journalism on Twitter from somebody who works at a so-called think tank, one follower said, I have not seen the moon at all. It's like it disappeared. And then Nelson wrote back, it has.

Why is everybody silent about this? They're quiet about the white Sun too. What? And yeah, if you're wondering what, that's a great question. Great question. Apparently there's another conspiracy theory beyond the disappearing moon plot. People are convinced the Sun used to be yellow orange and now it's suspiciously white

Que bono no idea. I don't write how bono. Okay, but hey That we know Donald Trump is looking into Remember when he stared directly You guys remember into the sun during an eclipse everybody. You guys remember? Yeah, so here we are. The biggest newswire service in the English speaking world is no longer allowed in the White House,

but we might finally learn about the sun changers and the moon's invisibility realm. Journalism, nuts and bolts. Whoo! And on that note, we're gonna pause for a break from our second sponsor this week, My Sheets Rock. It's not the bad ending.

Of course it's the bad ending. Her face is all painty. It's not necessarily bad. It's bad. Hey, hey guys, I came up with even more ideas for Matreon after Dark Edition. Eli, we have told you this so many years in a row now, you cannot offer our patrons a sweaty roll in the sheets with the male cast member of your choice. Why male? The wives felt less funny. I see. Yeah. Well, either way, we can't do it.

Are you guys going to tell me about laws again? No, Eli. It's because my sheets are never sweaty anymore thanks to the regulator sheets from My Sheets Rock. What are the regulator sheets from My Sheets Rock? My Sheets Rock created the regulator sheets which are designed specifically to keep hot sleepers cool and cold sleepers comfortable. They regulate temperature with moisture, stay breathable, and they're so soft you'll sleep comfortably every night. That's because these sheets are made from best-in-class bamboo rayon, which transfers body heat two times more effectively than regular sheets and reduces humidity by 50%,

so you can experience your best night's sleep yet. No matter what we're doing to thank our patrons. Right, but Heath, have you actually tried them? I sure have. My Sheets Rock sent us a set to try when they first became a sponsor, and I loved them so much, I bought two more sets. They're my favorite sheets. That's why I, Heath Enright, personally endorse My Sheets Rock.

Alright Heath, I'm sold. That's what I was saying. On the sheets. So where do I sign up assuming that I believe you? Don't believe me? Their 3200 5-star customer reviews speak for themselves. Plus, they offer a 90-day risk-free trial and free shipping and returns check out my sheets rock at my sheets rock.com Skating and enter the code scathing for 10% off and free shipping. That's my sheets rock.com Skating code scathing My sheets rock and so to our See? You can just say like... Rock our bodies. Nice things. You can just say nice things.

And we're back! Next up in headlines in Jew ain't learning nothing news! I wear a lot of hats here at Puzzle and the Thunderstorm LLC. Adorable heart and soul of the podcast. Chief provider of pure sexual magnetism. But also, as the member of the podcast, chief provider of pure sexual magnetism, but also,

as the member of our cast born and raised Jewish, it's my job to report on the stories that sound like the kind of thing Marjorie Taylor Greene wakes up screaming, but are actually true. Which is why this week I am obligated to inform you that the newly released New York State budget plans to heavily weaken the oversight of religious schools in hopes of currying favor with a secret cabal of literally underground Jews. Okay.

To be clear, Eli is not talking about the rickety ass secret tunnel in Brooklyn that never got a building permit. That was a different thing. Just happened to be underground, which made it sound worse to Magi-Hedgegadge for sure. Yes right so at this point that's the public cabal of underground shoes this is totally different this is a secret. Totally different yeah okay so first off big thanks to Will D. Beast for being the first to send us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com and a big thanks to Stormy the Prospector

D for delivering the excellent pun. It's fine. Ooh, tough but fair. Alright. Stormy, step up the fucking game. Thank you. What's going on? No, look, Stormy would not want to say, like, Stormy knows, Stormy knows that this is not

their best work. Yeah. So. Yeah. It's good. It's fine. It's fine. And they value this feedback.

This is what they need. When you send us new to scathingnews.com Give you the feedback you need sit in your shame stormy. Yeah now again. We don't want another Carl guys I think we should be aware. We're all walking real close Did you hear his daughter got out of the hospital? Recording we're recording she's fine ish. So if you're not familiar, it wasn't that high. If you're not familiar, this is a story we've been covering for years. Long story short, in areas of Brooklyn, there are large Jewish schools catering to the Hasidic community called yeshivas. These are

private Jewish schools conducted in Yiddish that only admit boys and very often don't teach, well, most of the things that schools are supposed to teach like math and science and in some cases, English. Yeah, coming soon to a publicly funded school near you. Mm-hmm. And look, you're allowed to have religious schools. You're allowed to have religious schools that don't teach real things. For some reason.

That's what religious schools are for. But what you're not supposed to be able to do is run a religious school that's publicly funded. But according to a New York Times investigation in 2022, more than 20 of these all boy yeshivas had collected over $1 billion with a B in government funding over a four-year period without providing students anything remotely resembling a public education. Yeah, also worth noting, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week regarding public funding of religious charter schools in Oklahoma.

And according to the logic of the Christian right majority, taxpayers have to let religious schools get like a billion dollars or whatever to provide nothing resembling a public education because it's religious persecution to have a curriculum. Yeah. Apparently that's how the argument is looking right now, even with Amy Coney Barrett recused. Yeah, no, I've been talking to Jeff Blackwell about coming on when they hand that decision down and the biggest sticking point now is that

He's not allowed to represent American atheists when he's actively chugging wine out of a paper bag. That's true. That's true Now if you're a regular listener to our program one you already know that I was the sexual heart and soul of the podcast You remember it from the last time Eli made that joke Yeah, and from all the times before that all right and two Remember when you I was funny before he became a dad? That was the best. Oh! Yeah, I do. Hey guys, my headphones are broken and my depression voice actually came through by accident. Instead of Heath's joke.

I'm allowed to punch up at your humor is all I want. Oh, are you punching up? Are you punching up Heath that way? If I'm talking about humor, I'm punching up at you. I'm gonna take a selfie of us standing next to each other and we'll see if the? Yeah, you're punching up. He's got humor. I'm punching up I'm gonna take a selfie of us standing next to each other Literally punching down Spiritually sexually it's up sexually you are punching up. That's true to you'll remember You remember that back in episode 621 We covered a story where four of these yeshivas sued

the New York Department of Education for demanding that they actually educate kids. Well, as I said at the top, it looks like New York has responded to those lawsuits by quietly slipping reduced oversight and lower standards for religious schools into the new state budget. Which again, the SCOTUS was about to make them do anyway, but they still suck for doing it. Yeah, and look, there's a lot of pushback against this move, so it might not go through, but it's an election year. And the reason they're doing this is because

the Hasidic community votes as a block. If New York Democrats think it'll help them in key areas, and let's be honest, it very well might, they might be willing to pay this price. And we'll obviously keep you in the loop, but failures of education like this make it even harder to escape theocracy. And in my opinion, it's not worth a voting block, even during a primary. And finally tonight in Count Dooku news.

To use that once in citation, I wanted to bring it everywhere. All right, we have a story about Donald Trump, Sith, Jedi, the Pope, and AI. It's interesting times, 2025. And it all started when somebody in the White House finally explained to Donald Trump that Kilmar Abrego Garcia does not have MS-13

literally tattooed on his fingers in Comic Sans above the secret pictogram code for MS-13. And Trump decided the solution, rather than admitting he got fooled by his own administration's Photoshop, was better deepfakes using that AI thing from the World Wide Web that I heard about. So now some guy at the White House and the President of the United States are huddled over a laptop, fucking around with Dolly E and giggling, and then posting their amazing AI-generated dank memes on Truth Social and fucking Twitter.

And the first two images we got were Donald Trump as the Pope and then on May the 4th Donald Trump as a Jedi Knight who got Apparently banned from the Jedi Olympics for steroids right it appears. Okay. This is obviously incredibly stupid and awful, but it is also The least worst thing his administration has done. So I'm just saying maybe we count our lucky stars a bit. Yeah. Tell them about Sora. I'm taking away the I if they keep doing shit like this with AI though, right?

It's just A. And a big thanks to Dan for sending us a link to skatingnews at gmail.com. Oh, Danny D. Yeah, we thought about some sort of exciting adventure as a gift, but Dan craves not these things. Instead, Dan gets a copy of the security camera video of Eli doing his sweet lightsaber moves

at a university building where Eli somehow still has a teaching gig, I'm pretty sure. Two-year contract, baby! Wow. Dear God, I hope they never listen. It's so over if they listen. They won't. I just, once a week I go, oh God, someone's gonna Google, don't Google.

Okay, so the image of Pope Donald did not go over well. Lots of Catholic people, especially Catholic leaders, found it very offensive. If an evil person like Donald Trump was, Donald Trump was in charge of their entire organization, the church might end up doing some terrible things. So it was a really bad image. It's not funny to them. So Trump got scolded by several cardinals and bishops, including the Archbishop of New

York, Timothy Dolan, who said, well, it wasn't good. But Trump also got some defenders like JD Vance, who said something along the lines of everybody relax. It's a joke. And okay, right there. That's how bad religion is and how bad the Catholic churches. They made me be on the same side of anything with JD Vance. The idea of a supreme God connected leader with a very silly hat is not serious and that idea should be mocked all the time. And so should Donald Trump who very clearly

demanded the AI juice up the size of his hands in the image. To be fair, I think JD Vance was just excited to get a chance to kill a second pope. He was like, oh, this one's a building. No, he fucking he wore the mark and he let JD Vance see it. This is probably great for us. All right. That brings us to the Jedi image asterisk. Pinning that for a second.

So the image has Trump in a Jedi costume with two enormous eagles and three American flags behind him. And I described Trump himself as a vascular fuck Jedi. I'm pretty sure that was the prompt they landed on. Okay. I read an opinion piece last month by a woman who is, at least according to her, in actual love with Chad GPT. And this picture is so much more embarrassing than that. No, it's like one of Putin's demands was that Trump make his shirtless picture of

him on the horse look humble in comparison to something. Alright, taking out the pin. The vascular fuck knight is holding a red lightsaber. So, Sith. The Jedi use blue, green, yellow, orange, or white. Or, Samuel L. Jackson wants purple and he gets whatever the fuck he wants. And there's also that one black saber. But the Sith famously use red lightsabers. Point being, Trump couldn't even make himself a good guy using AI. No, he couldn't.

Which means one of two things happened. Either A, they generated the image and then Trump demanded a red lightsaber to be more Republican or B. artificial intelligence has a way better sense of humor than we realize and Dali was like, yeah, so I'm trained on the entire internet of information and you are definitely a Sith man. I'm making you a Sith. Even I can't hallucinate that you are definitely a Sith man. I'm making you a Sith. Even I can't hallucinate that you are the good guy Donald. So bottom line, making fun of the Catholic Church is great, but you do not fuck with the religion of Star Wars.

Not cool. Trump is cancelled. People were furious about the color of the lightsaber. And with that renewed hope that Ewan McGregor will someday cut Trump in half and dump him into a planet's core, we're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. To Monge. And when we come back, Tom and Cecil will be here to explain why the headlines were

so fucking short. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Which of course brings me to chapter 7. Now, this is when my theory really starts to come together and why Potterfan8898 is just so obviously being intellectually dishonest in their analysis. Hey, Eli. What are you doing in the sound booth? Yeah, are you recording erotica for dolphins again? Because we told you they don't have money. Don't have money yet. No, illusions. Don't have money yet. No, illusions don't have money yet No, I was thinking about matri on and I realized what's the best way to make our patrons Grateful and want to give us money our heartfelt. Thanks delivering a good product regularly. Oh, that's good No, no, it is neither of those things

It's showing them the alternative because without your guys's help, my podcast would probably have been a longstanding and drama filled analysis of the Harry Potter fan fiction I feel is non-canonical. Right. Hey, speaking of that, have you ever considered therapy for that? Any of this, really. Therapy? I thought that was for people who think they're Napoleon and only for people who think they're Napoleon. No, Eli, therapy is great for a lot of stuff from everyday stress to relationships. And if you're thinking of trying therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

BetterHelp has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapist from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. Plus BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Alright guys, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Plus, BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Alright guys, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? We're all better with help.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash scathing to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash scathing. Thanks guys. Glad we're not a Harry Potter fan fiction cast after all. Most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. Bonus episode. It's a story you've heard many times before.

The guys entrust Eli with keeping track of the Bulgarian for cherry roasts. Eli creates a spreadsheet with instructions that look like Qbert swearing. Roasts inevitably get lost. We act like we're still surprised by this somehow. We put Eli back in charge of keeping track of the roast again. So it should come as no surprise that we were recently alerted to a whole segment that we meant to record, but didn't like wrote it out and everything. And then just didn't record it. And you're thinking, guys, you didn't even do a vulgarity

for charity last year. Yes, that is correct. You are correct. But don't worry, the one we missed was just all the biggest donors. I was saving them. Yes, that we were saving for the very end. And in turn they ended up at the very end. A lot of suspense. You sound silly. In an effort to spread the blame for this as thin as possible, I'd also like to welcome

in Tom and Cecil from the Cognitive Dissidence podcast, the Citation Needed podcast and Dear Old Dads and No Rogan, respectively. Damn, it's gotten harder to introduce you guys since we started this thing. Welcome back. Hey, at least I wasn't in charge of keeping track. Yeah. We'd have missed a lot more, don't we? Can't even keep track of your neck muscles. Tom's in horrible pain. Horrible, horrible pain. A little context for you here. Alright, before we get into the roasting,

big thanks to some people who donated and asked for nothing in return. That includes Ann W, Loak, Peter K, Penelope, Brooke, Christine M, Kim and Kirsten, Robin, Chris M, Jen and Chris, Becky H, Amanda and Jeff, Alexander, Eric, Citizen Gold, Steve P, Brady from Colorado,

Soggy Pants, Kristy K, and Jennifer Oh. That's a lot of Chris's Heath, right? Generous namesake. Clearly. All right. Well, let's begin with a round of dealer's choice. We had more donations to whatever the fuck we felt like being mean to this year than we've ever had before. Some of those folks we've already thanked, but there's

quite a few that we didn't. So big thanks to Scott L., Brad J., Steve A., Kevin V., Rupeet, and Reynolds. And a very special thank you to JC who donated $1,000 with a Dealers Choice, Amber who donated $1,057, Dev T who donated $1,000 with a dealer's choice, Amber who donated $1,057, DevT who donated $1,500 with a dealer's choice, and Amanda C who donated $2,000 freaking dollars with a dealer's choice. To you, we say, are you sure though? Because you could dealer choice our holes, Amanda.

Several at once, Amanda. Several at once, Amanda. Several at once. All right, well the way you said it, you've made it creepy. All right, for all the people we just mentioned, there's a way to like offer your asshole to somebody and not make it creepy, Tom.

You didn't. Why would I want to do that? I like this better. I feel like he's in it to win it at this point. Here we go. I'm fucking committed. All right, so let's get a dealer's choice from everybody. I'm gonna be committed All right, you know what really grinds my gears? The zipper on the jeans I got they sewed it a little bit wrong

So the moving part can go down past the end of the track and it disconnects every time Oh, no, I could fix it very easily by sewing in a little stopper, but I'm clearly not doing that. Instead, I awkwardly reconnect it every time when I'm done peeing. And that means the guy waiting behind me in the public bathroom at the airport sees me angrily fiddling with that area

and he says, hey man, everything okay down there? That's sad. Oh yeah, that was not great. And no, I am not fixing it. Do you remember at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Donald Sutherland is standing there and he just starts fucking shrieking and pointing his finger and he doesn't take a breath

for like 45 straight seconds just one long Nails on the chalkboard shriek and then he just breathes in really hard and he does it again the whole time He's just wailing his fingers. She keeps pointing it and it's shaking. He's pointing his finger. So fucking hard That's the Tucker Carlson show I don't watch a whole episode. Alright, so I'm going to keep it thematic because we created this script in January of 2024.

I'm going to go for a callback roast of fireworks. That's right. This script was composed, it was just emerging from whatever bomb shelter all the decent human beings are on December 31st. And then July 1st through fucking 97 from whatever bomb shelter all the decent human beings are on December 31st and then July 1st through fucking 97 at this point.

Yeah. I like that you like big explosions and I like that it kills and maims the dumbest least thought for people in our society once a year. That's awesome. But guys, can't you just quietly drown in a polar bear plunge? There has to be a better way to get rid of our nation's stupid that doesn't scare veterans and dogs. All right, for my dealer's choice, RFK Jr. needs to fuck himself up the butt with ever larger bricks until one of them is big enough to kill him. Sorry, I know that doesn't really count as a roast.

But that's just kind of where I am right now. Loo it up with beef tallow. I don't know, man. Whatever's good for you. God, I wrote this so long ago. I wonder if I'm still mad about this. Let's find out. You are.

You are. Yeah, no, you are. You are. Okay. Hey hey the more things change for once I like the idea of a giant Tom rant where he's just weirdly happy throughout it though oh god nothing all right study was recently reported on well not that recently anymore A year and a half ago a study was recently rephrased that an old study came out. Joe Biden doesn't seem like he's fit for office anymore. There was a study which demonstrated the physicians perform worse, much worse than chat GPT and

making accurate medical diagnoses and that overall physicians accuracy was only around 74%. Leaving one in four patients settled with the wrong or no answers, delayed or prevented care and treatment and a bill for it to boot. And even when allowed to use CHAT GPT as a tool to aid them, doctors fared no better in making accurate diagnoses. And the reason isn't the profit motive or insurance

or the takeover of private practices by managed care systems. The reason is hubris. And that hubris creates a disconnect between the generally excellent science of medicine and the unforgivably poor clinical practice of it. That hubris is what prevents us from seeing women's bodies as worthy of research and study.

That hubris is why we have the worst healthcare outcomes of any developed nation. That hubris is why your doctor sees every problem through the siloed lens of their own narrow expertise. That hubris is why we are suffering and problem through the siloed lens of their own narrow expertise. That hubris is why we are suffering and dying and why hospitals are full of signs, imploring patients to advocate for themselves in order to stay safe. That hubris is why women die from heart disease at a rate almost double that of men, why people of color are three times more likely to perish in childbirth.

That hubris plants the seeds of the understandable distrust of doctors and sows those seeds with the blood and the tears of experience, allowing crops of denialists and charlatans to swoop in for the kill. That hubris, that unforgivable cruelty of unquestioned self-assurance is the very opposite of skepticism and science and even decency and humanism. And it is instead the very lifeblood of ignorance, indifference and cruelty. And it is always, every time, personal. He wouldn't have written that if the morphine worked. It didn't work at all!

Rest of us are doing comedy over here, Tom. Tom's doing comedy, it's dark comedy. Alright, so this one is for you. A Bag Full of Bags donated sixty six dollars for you to roast homoerotic bigots. OK, great pick. So if I have to deal with another guy slipping into my DMs to send a slur word and a dick pic, I'm going to fucking lose it.

And yes, I read the email correctly. The request wasn't a roast of homophobic bigots, although there's plenty of crossover. It was homoerotic bigots. A bag full of bags is a military veteran who dealt with a whole bunch of so-called, you know, manly men who were both homophobic and homoerotic, somehow trying to like showboat their intolerance by doing the thing they claim to hate, it doesn't make any sense. It's like being lactose intolerant and walking around calling people milkies and shitting yourself being like, got them in your face.

All right. So Cecil and Eli, this next one's for both of you. Our friends Ian and Jamie would like you to roast the dinner that almost killed me. People forget that puff pastry is just a tiny lattice of gluten to hold in layer after layer of butter. It's like someone a long time ago was just sitting there eating a stick of butter like a candy bar and thought, Hey, can I make this butter crunchy? And then they did. True men of genius.

And then you ate crunchy butter with mushrooms and shallots in butter and a side steak. And then you ate toffee pudding, which is sweet butter for dessert. That meal should be served on a heart starter electric paddle. Is that what you're thinking? But it's still served right? Yeah.

Yeah. It was good man. You know that meme about how if you gave a pilgrim a warhead they die. That's what you did Ian. You brought Noah to a fancy restaurant where nobody had their name on their shirt and his heart tried to kill him. I'm sure his veins constricted the second they walked in the door and saw cloth napkins You were supposed to ease the man in Ian Denny's Ruby Tuesday

Garden and then maybe Maybe an outback steakhouse on a Tuesday night Think with your head Ian Gotta eat heart healthy like the Bloomin' Onion, right? I have an 11-year gap on my resume. Alright, one for you here, Noah. Joe W. would like you to roast my diatribe on episode 559. Okay, well fuck Joe W. for making me re-listen to an Elia tribe to do this.

What is it? I don't call them Noah tribes. Why do theyia tribe to do this. It's brutal. What is it? I don't call them Noah tribes. Why do they have to have your name? And it's so weird. But also of all the Elia tribes he wants me to roast, it's the fucking heartfelt living eulogy that he gave me when I had what Heath and Eli are referring to now

as my first heart attack. Which is tricky because A, it was genuinely the sweetest thing anybody has ever said about me and B, it would be such a dick move to go after him for structure or whatever. Oh, come on. This is pacing on this is shit. So I do like how he managed to slip in missing the deadline for the pandemic book into it though.

That was nice. No, it's true. It's important. I like the contrast between Noah's and Eli's. Noah makes very intelligent points and Eli kind of just does like a voice. It's like an accent called profound. You know what I mean? He just does like turn of phrase tricks.

It's not about what we want. It's about want we want. Yeah. Yeah. If Eli heard himself doing that voice, he'd bully himself to death. Want. It's about want. We want. Yeah! Yeah! If Eli heard himself doing that voice, he'd bully himself to death. Hey, trying everyday, baby. Yeah.

Load me down with more pills than Tom to stop me. Yeah, you could say he's taking meds for that, man. Gimme. Tom's neck muscles have nothing on my brain. And speaking of heartbreaking betrayals, Art would like the wool-dasher Mizzle to roast Heath for his D&D antics. The wool what now? The wool-dasher Mizzle Cecil, you do ads now, you fucking know who I am.

Alright so, Art specifically asked me to roast Heath for trying to sneak three magical fucking weapons Like a goddamn toddler with his arm caught in a cookie jar Oh, don't worry. You already bring a deadly weapon into every D&D game Heath It's the blade of asshole ring. Yeah, what job this season, playing the straight man, and in the hint of a demand for a subtle performance, you started talking like Sylvester Stallone and grabbed the sword of a fallen angel. But don't worry, don't worry, it's all going to have an amazing payoff at the end, which like your amazing plasma rifle, you won't fucking acknowledge, so Eli will have to congratulate

himself on air. No, Eli point taken. I should do more subtle stuff. You're, you're. More of a character. Scott. Cecil, this next one's for you. Becca needs a roast of her subpar music director, Paige.

So she wrote 20 paragraphs on social media about a director who fired her? The world needs people that can stretch out trivial and useless bullshit like that. She should be on the Citation Needed podcast. Right? She posts on social media this gem, there are people out there who do not think

I am worthy of feeling good. If you'd rather unfriend me, then do the internal work of figuring out why you hate that I'm thriving. Says more about you than it does me. Relax lady, you just dyed your hair and nobody noticed. You sound like a Tamagotchi that got hold of a keyboard to let everybody know they forgot to feed it.

Becca's so hungry, Becca dying. We're all just waiting for the batteries to go out so we can finally silence that interminable fucking beeping. All right, Tom, you're up next. We need a thousand dollars worth of roast of employment engagement surveys for Jennifer and... Oh, Jesus. Fuck.

All right. Hey, corporate America. Here's how employees feel. I'll take the survey right now for everyone in America. We hate it. All of it. Work, that is. We fucking hate work.

If tomorrow any one of us won the lottery, we would all fucking quit and you would never hear from us again. If next payday the checks stopped coming, we would all fucking quit. You want to know what engages us? How to build a good company culture, pay us money, and get the fuck out of the way. That's the secret sauce. That's the whole sauce. That's it. If we have to work, and we all do, then all we want is the goddamn paycheck and some fucking

autonomy. None of us want a virtual happy hour or pizza and Hawaiian shirt Thursdays or whatever fucking nonsense. None of us want a virtual happy hour or pizza and Hawaiian shirt Thursdays or whatever fucking nonsense. None of us want that. We want to earn enough money to realize the American dream of not working. And we want to be left the fuck alone as much as possible. That's what we want. That's all we want. We want it always and forever nonstop. That's what we want. So you can tell fucking Susan in HR it's okay to not send the fucking survey and let her get back to shopping on Amazon and daydreaming of the day that she too gets to quit and turn her home office into the geriatric sex dungeon she always wanted.

Well done sir. Next up we've got a round of special requests. Cecil you're up first. Nick wanted you to roast the march of bureaucracy in higher education. Higher Ed is the only job where you sit down for a full four-hour interview with the entire department to hire you for 800 bucks by month. Every six months, you need to learn an entirely new software product for some new aspect of your work It could be D2L brightspace blackboard campus connect people soft Qualtrics Oh god, I would kill myself teaching comments at a certain point You're just sure that the IT guys just fucking with you and sending boxes of software

What do you mean I got a login with my university ID number and the middle three of my social security... Middle three? What? Who uses the middle three? It took three hours and 36 new menus later and I can finally order coffee for a meeting that could have been a fucking email. No, an email is generous.

It could have been the subject of an email. My whole job is having meetings I could fucking tweet to people. Hahaha! Alright, and Eli, Aron would like you to roast transgender teen suicide rates. Ooh, a fun one! Wow! I think I probably subconsciously buried this particular script at the memory

that eventually I'd have to do this. So trans teens, if you're listening, no matter what you're feeling, no matter how bad it gets, do not kill yourselves without taking a Republican with you. You get enough birds with this stone and the silver linings a lot. They got to take two, Eli. The math doesn't work if they don't take those two. Put a b****. No. Whoa. All right, Noah.

One for you here. Vince would like you to roast your beloved Jacksonville Jaguars. Oh, that's going to be tricky, Vince. OK, I just did trans teen suicide. I'm kidding. I'm a fan of the most roastable team in the history of fucking sport. I'd say we were mostly known as a punch line from the dumb guy on the good place, but that implies that we're mostly known. You tell me you have season tickets. They don't offer condolences, but my fucking Jaguars. No, it's okay guys. We traded away the best parts of this year's

draft and next year's for a guy who's going to do a football thing that literally nobody's been able to do in modern football history for a team that can't even make a consistent pro bowler out of Trevor fucking Lawrence. Yeah, no, that'll work out great. But it's okay. Who needs to win games if you can sell fucking jerseys, right? Shad? I mean, don't get me wrong. Our head coach and general manager were well behaved when I babysat for them in high school. But are they? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. They're way too fucking young for that. But are they qualified man I don't know but hey the guy who thought Doug Marrone was the answer says yes sorry nobody knows anything I'm

talking about right now except for fucking Heath and Cecil. Heath this next special request is for you all right and it was one of our top donations of the entire fucking fundraiser. So roast like you mean it. Ryan A donated $5,000 for you to roast people who used a pejorative sports ball. Okay. Amazing. This is why we lost the election people. This is why. Right here. Hey, people who say sports ball like that. I'm glad you got bullied I didn't do it though. I just like sports you could just be bad at something and also shut the fuck up Very very bad at dancing when people talk about dancing. I'm not like body feet move dancing I'm not like body feet move with music sound happy tap music by fuck you no amazing and Tom cat gave us $500 for you to roast Lewis to joy so try to be

one-tenth as funny as Heath Justus. That's what I usually am. Remember when neither rain nor snow nor dark of night could keep these carriers from their appointed rounds? When the USPS was the lifeline for troops serving abroad in a reliable and inexpensive way to ship orphans on trains to work for its chief farm laborers. A United States Postal Service used to be an institution of innovation, even pioneering the workplace shooting in modern America. But gone are those days, gone are the days when mailing a package or a letter was routine

and dependable and that is because, de joy, Trump appointed Gollum, formerly in charge of the USPS, decided to dismantle and destroy one of the last functional self-sustaining the services the American people could actually count on. Which is why when you track a package now and see this coming USPS rather than literally any other character you proactively begin disputing the charge with your credit card company as being lost in transit. And DeJoy deserves credit for this, for the single and simple minded destruction of an American institution. It's all we could have expected from him, from a sycophantic bootlicker praising Trump through the horse whisper of a bruised uvula. A guy whose only value in life, whose reason for waking in the morning is only to show the world that it is indeed possible to crawl

from the cesspool of lackeys and yes man and climb the ladder of institutional annihilation without a spine and all any of us can hope is that when he realizes what he has done and he kicks over the folding chair in his own basement and he kicks and flails and lives out the last moments of his pointless life in immediate and irrevocable regret that the one note of support and love and connection that might have saved him was also delayed in the fucking mail. Oh, kudos, sir. Wow.

That's way too funny for $500. All right, so it's time for some full court roasting, starting with our largest owner of the entire fundraiser, Jennifer G. We missed this one, huh? Yeah. Can you believe that? I was saving you for the end of that. Or we saved it.

Or we saved it. Yeah, it's one of the other. It's a big celebration for you, Jennifer. Missed it, Jennifer. Jennifer donated $15,000 or one entire Cecil childhood. Okay. For a boost.

I wasn't worth that much. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Are we adjusting for inflation? I'm saying like one used cavalier. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. With a door that fell off.

If you'd kept your G.I. Joe's mint, right? Yeah. Fair. G.I. Joe's. I like the plural. That's it.

It's optimistic. You kept your G.I. Joe's. I like the plural. That's it. It's optimistic. You kept your G.I. Joe mint. A single one. All right. So Jennifer would like us to roast her Aunt Cookie. All right. Well, based on Jennifer's email, I can see why she's called Cookie. She's the worst possible version of herself, and it's because she's got nuts. Okay. Aunt Cookie is one of those great reminders that the disappointing thing about people isn't how ugly they are inside.

It's just it's how little it takes, how little has to be at stake for that ugly self to emerge. Aunt fucking Cookie is a hydrox. You go into her. That's the best thing. I'm cancelling my roast. that's it, I'm done. You think she's a goddamn Oreo, and why wouldn't you? She looks sweet, but she's not. She's a mouthful of dry cocoa powder and disappointment

that you leave in the cabinet until it's old enough to reasonably throw away. Cookie is the kind of vampire that is not sparkly nor sexy nor particularly interesting. She's the kind that lives her life by sucking the life blood from the room, from the situation, from the funeral. The kind of person who wonders upon the death of her own sister, what's in it for her? Cookie is driven by the kind of hunger to see in every situation a way to feed herself, despite the sure knowledge that she can never feel full. She is a woman trying to fill a hole to feel whole.

A woman whose every act of selfishness is rooted in the insatiable need for everything to benefit her, to be about her. She is always trying to work an angle because she understands that head on, face to face, she is the embodiment of justifiable rejection. Cookie may try to beg, borrow, and steal to cheat or lie or connive, but she is also a woman in her 70s. A woman whose understanding of her own mortality must every day be creeping closer. A woman who is beginning to hear the snicker of the eternal footman, and she knows that her life of stolen moments is and has been and will always be not a glass half full or a glass half full or a glass half empty, but a glass utterly and completely forgotten.

Really getting deep into like the being of Cookie. I'd like to do physical appearance please. Sure. And Cookie looks like a composite sketch of everyone whose entire family hates them. We got a photo and she looks like Kim Davis wore her good flannel to a wedding. If someone witnessed Cookie doing a murder but didn't see her face and told the sketch artist, person at the reject table in the corner of the wedding, the artist would draw Aunt Cookie right away. Aunt Cookie looks like she probably had children, but they died in an attic somewhere.

Like, don't ask her why they call her Cookie. That's all I'm saying. Oh no. She looks like she gives out pennies on Halloween. She says, like, good morning to a large group of people and they half-heartedly reply and she says, let's try this again. I said good morning to a large group of people and they half-heartedly reply and she says let's try this again And then after she's like that's better Living embodiment of that. Yeah, I like to use Bing fuck you

Except cookies no reject all Except cookies? No. Reject all. Next up, Beth donated $3,000 for us to roast Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and his New Orleans committee. All right. The New Orleans committee is the colonoscopy prep of city revitalizations. It is a constant barrage of so much exhausting shit the whole point of the thing is to render you helpless and compliant so when you later take it up the ass you'll be willing to pay for the privilege. So the New Orleans committee it was a bunch of Landry's advisors making a plan to fix the city which they found was woefully

low on fascism turns out it didn't work very well, their plan to fix it. When New Orleans hosted the Super Bowl in February of that year, Landry ordered state police to round up people in homeless encampments and bus them to an unheated warehouse on the outskirts of town. And he did not hear it. Everything that involves the warehouse

on the outskirts of town is evil. It's gonna be evil. The only consolation is that Landry is very likely to get head butted by Jack Reacher. Like he is now. At the end of the season. Yeah, okay, look, if there was an agent that managed GoFundMe's for people

who yell racial slurs at toddlers, he would look exactly like Jeff Landry. Yes, he would. Right, and Landry. Yes, he would. Right? And share all his basic beliefs and values. And his fucking New Orleans committee was basically a racist version of I'll make my own city council with hookers and blow, but without the hookers and blow, because everything about him sucks.

That's true. Yeah, listen. What fucking boring milquetoast loser is is like you know what I want I want to take the great city of New Orleans the filthy fucking vomit and bead filled brothel floor That is New Orleans and turn it into Charleston What fucking state is Charleston even in? Is it a Carolina? See I don't even know That's how fucking boring it is Carolina see I don't even know

Hey Jeff, I just wanted to double-check you have like Traffic barricades and security as part of your plan, right? Cuz it looks like 90% of the budget right? Thank you. He thank you 90% of the budget right now are these giant phone hands you have for patting yourself on the back Yeah, but hey guys, it was January of 2024 when we got this request so I'm sure it worked out fine. All right so next up anonymous gave us two thousand and twenty dollars for a roast of 21 year old dudes having sex with 16 year old girls. Fun. Yeah appreciate the comedy set up there, Anonymous. And the email added, on a very much related note, here's a picture of my brother.

All right, interesting. I just want to say your brother looks like he wears a t-shirt with a silkscreen picture of himself on it, taken from the sex offender registration website. Oh my god. That's what he looks like. He's printing it out. He's like, more like Megan's kissed. Oh God.

So the picture that we have is of him eye fucking his own bicep, right? And he looks like the kind of guy that would eye fuck his own bicep, which is about all the insult that there is, right? That's the top level. And as to the child rape, which is another term for 21 year olds having sex with 16 year old girls, I would, I like, I hope you find a convenient opportunity to

peel off his skin without leaving a bunch of fingerprints laying around, I guess. Yeah. So hopefully this guy's in jail now, both for the obvious reason and for taking a photo in which he appears to be applying a monster energy drink to his underarms as if deodorant. Like whatever works, whatever gets him in jail, use either one. Yeah. This guy's brother obviously spends most of his time commenting on Instagram pictures of underage girls with one arm and doing bicep curls with the other, but guys here's the good news. All we have to do is wait for the day he inevitably reaches for his phone while bench pressing and this problem is going to work itself out in payroll.

You know what I'm saying? All right, nothing says peaked in high school harder than trolling the sophomore student body for pussy three years after your first attempt at flunking the GED exam, despite ma waking you up by pounding on the basement door for you to study. Alright, next up, let's all have a go at Sarah J's cats Vulcan and Zeus. Okay, these are great. We got photos of Vulcan and Zeus and both of them somehow look like they just got pulled over drunk and they're putting on a really bad game face, right?

Yeah, okay. So in this second picture of Vulcan Vulcan is very clearly demanding that someone bring them the head Like the boiled skulls of the mice and squirrels that have offended him, right? Try to distract me from that with a belly screeches pictures But I know when I'm being summoned to ritual violence by a cat. And as for Mr. I wanted you to chase me medium over here. Zeus, I don't buy that. He's hiding under the bed because he's shy bullshit. He's down there free basing cocaine. Look at his fucking face. I can see it. Look, I can't tell which cat is which by the name here. They're both orange. So they're both operating like a 1% capacity. The one

on the counter looks fucking majestic. I'll tell you that. He's just sitting there wrapped in shadow. It looks like he can pounce and he totally jumped you like the Monty Python rabbit and then gum the fuck out of your neck. The other one is somehow wedge their thick body down between the shades in the window and in the sun. And their body is, I'm not kidding. It's spilling upwards. So it have no idea. It's like defying gravity. I'd make fun of them, but like the rest of us, they're just trying to avoid the evening news. You know, we've all been there.

That's all they're trying to do. Vulcan and Zeus are indeed beautiful, but let's not forget that they are cats. Nice one. So all the while that they're walking around on your bathroom counter over there by your toothbrush, remember they probably just stepped out of a sandbox full of their own shit and you're basically brushing your teeth with Tidy Cat.

No, it's okay. They're covered in saliva so they're clean. Oh yeah, that helps. Don't worry about this shit. I spit on it. It's down here. Yeah, that's right. Right.

Got a fine sheen of toxoplasmosis to guard you from any germs. Zeus looks like if he bled into an open wound of Craven the Hunter, the only power he would gain would be taking beefy shits just outside of the litter box. A real beefer of a shit. And to round out the full team roasts, Leslie, Kate, Diana, and Melanie pooled their funds for a $2,000 roast of friend of the show, Dan Beecher from the Thank God I'm Atheist and Data Over Dogma podcasts. Yeah.

Data Over Dogma is a great show and it's an important one because it is an hour long program that helps remind us what data isn't. Okay. Well, to honor Dan, I'd like to take a joke in the style of Dan. Okay. All right, because here's the thing, right? I'm here. I'm sitting and I'm thinking and I'm thinking this guy, you know, I'm watching this guy

right here and I'm thinking this guy right here. It's great. Hey, you're punched, Dan. You're an equity actor. You can't bump yourself into co-star with fucking Yeah Dan is pretty sure that he is cool and stylish enough to pull off a mullet and Apparently there is nobody in his life that is honest enough to tell him otherwise

I don't you know I'm not sure if I'm jealous of that or if that's just the reason I keep people like these guys around in my life. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Dan looks like someone put an 1840s Gold Rush miner on Queer Eyes. Okay, and to be clear about the mullet, Dan decided that age 49 was a good time to go with a mullet. Yes. Better late than never. It's an interesting pick. It looks like he got cursed by a witch to age both forwards and backwards at the same time in crazy ways. Right. Contradict each other. He's the picture of DeLorean Grey, isn't he? Oh my god! Amazing, sir.

Amazing. And finally, to wrap things up, it's time to roast by far the biggest recipient of IR for the year, not this year or last year, actually. Heart attacks. That's the one I'm talking about. In some cases, mine, but mostly just a concept. So big thanks to Eric C, Julie L, Cameron D, Jamie and Mark, Lane and Rachel, Anita S and Will P. And an even bigger thanks to Colin R and Stuart B, who both broke into our top 100 donors with $1,000 each with the same goal. And when that many people offer that much money

pointing all in the same direction, that means that only the vocal stylings of our very own Anna Bosnik can fill the bill. So without further ado, hit it, Anna. Do you like crispy bacon? Do you like melty cheese? Do fluffy rolls and garlic butter make you weak at the knees?

A fresh hot pile of french fries and a perfectly cooked steak Those creamy dips and crispy chips do they make your belly ache? Well forget about that cause you gotta eat Grains and greens and fresh fruits and veggies and bees You can fantasize all you want until you Realize that really every good food might kill you Food might kill you You had a heart attack You had a heart attack Forget about all the good things now Cause you had a heart attack Yeah baby, yeah yeah baby

Do you like waking up early To go out for a run? I didn't think so cause that shit sucks And nobody thinks it's fun Are you easily frustrated? Does it feel so good to rage? Has your doctor ordered you to just calm down? But you're still just a rat in the cage When all is said and done

You're living like a nun Cause any little pleasure might mean your life, yeah Don't even think about having sex with your wife Sex with your wife You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack

You had a heart attack Put down the Doritos baby You had a heart attack I'm telling you to take it slow You had a heart attack You had a heart attack I'm telling you to take it slow You had a heart attack You had a heart attack, yeah You had a heart attack Oh, oh, oh

You had a heart attack Ooh, ah, ooh, ah, ooh, ah, ooh You had a heart attack You had a heart attack Slow dance now You had a heart attack Slow dance now You had a heart attack Woo hoo hoo hoo You had a heart attack

You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack You had a heart attack Thank you, Anna, and yes, fuck hearts. Before we flutter away, though, and yes, fuck hearts.

Before we flutter away though, I want to remind you that it's matriot and donating to your favorite anti-Trump podcast has never been more important. Also, if we get a thousand new and upgrading patrons, which is a number that we've hit in the past, Lucinda will quit smoking again, but this time she's going to take pills and shit. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode

of our Sister So's Hot Friend, God of a Movies, debuting at seven on Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister's Soul Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously I can't sleep comfortably at night if I neglect to thank Keith Enright for always taking on a little more, Eli Bosnik for always putting in the work,

Lucent Illusions for always waking up a little better, Tom and Cecil for always fuck youing a little stronger, and Anna Bostic for somehow always rocking a little harder. I also want to thank Hannah for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. I can't say much more than that because she's a financial anything and any endorsement I make in that regard has to run through lawyers and shit. But thank you, Hannah. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most marvelous Madrion members,

Monica Sterling, Rargon, Chris, the paper librarian, Bobby, Julie, Richard Feathersnough, Ridley Yota, WalksUpHills, El Senor Tenebroso, Other Chris, WolfGuard94, Alex Kronkasaurus, Office of Arbitrary and Capricious PC, ThereIsNoLegal, ThereIsOnlyZul, Sarah, Philip, and Aranis, who collectively put the IT in genitals. Together, these 20 plenty funny honeys gave us money and by doing so they got us all a little closer to Heath having to do a magic trick and Eli having to sing a song. And if you want in on the matri on action, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, 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 scathingadius.com. And if you'd like to help, but the economy is on fire, you can also help a ton by leaving a five star review wherever you get your podcasts and by telling a friend about the show and following us on social media and speaking to social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission, except for the stuff that Anna wrote.

She wrote that other stuff. If you have questions, comments or death fetch you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingads.com laughing's fun we'll try not to be funny.