The Scathing Atheist - 642: Newlywed Edition

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

In this week’s episode, our little Heathy Enwright gets married! Or… well, he doesn’t do that on the episode, but that happens. And we get a little mushy about it. --- 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/

Warning sailors wished they could cuss like this podcast this week's episode of the scathing atheist is brought to you by my sheets Rock and by vaccines Vaccines without them a lot of us would be dead how is this hard for these idiots to understand and Now the scathing atheist as a cis het white woman who grows facial hair I assure you that we did in fact evolve from Filthy Monkey Men. I can also assure you that it cost people employment opportunities due to transphobia. Seriously, the guy was terrified of me.

All 100 pounds of me. Reached out to shake my hand, and then just couldn't bring himself to do it. It's Thursday. It's June 19th. And it's Juneteenth, baby! Whether Donald Trump likes it or not, that's right. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnik. I'm Heath Henwright. I'm from Derek Cheaters, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan and Waycross, Georgia. This is the Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll give you prophetic bullet

points about the future. A guy at his birthday party gets run over by a tank on autopilot? Possibly, possibly. And by the time you hear this, Heath will be Mr. Heath Enright. Ooh! Still, because our system is sexist. Hmm. But first, the diatribe. I didn't make my mind up to go to the local No Kings protest until about 20 minutes before it started.

I may have mentioned before that I'm a bit of an introvert, and Lucinda's still at the early stages of being a non-smoker, so as much as possible, she's still sequestering herself in the house like a morning Victorian mother or something, so she wasn't coming with me. My 18-year-old nephew might've joined me, but it was at 9 a.m. and there's no fucking way you're gonna get that kid out of bed

before 10 30 during the summer, so I had to go alone. And even once I tucked myself into the car, I wasn't sure if I was actually going or if I was just gonna drive by it and go alone. And even once I tucked myself into the car, I wasn't sure if I was actually going or if I was just going to drive by it and go home. Because to be honest, it wasn't just my crippling social anxiety holding me back. It was also my subterranean opinion of this city. To be honest, I have expected to be the youngest of four people out there with holding our feeble signs while we dodged spit and impromptu beverage missiles hurled from passing pickups, while

malicious people in red hats copied down our license plate numbers and local cops dropped in to tell us to stop resisting. But when I got there, about 10 minutes before the official start time, I was surprised to find a dozen and a half people or so already lined up along the city's main road, all carrying messages with signs like, no kings, my immigrant dad works harder than the president. And the delightfully succinct, Trump is a fink. The organizers gave me a sign and a flag and I took a spot along the line. And I genuinely thought that the 20 or so people we had

was pretty impressive for a small town in Ruby Red, rural Georgia. But within 20 minutes, that number had doubled. And then it doubled again. And then it doubled again. And at its height, there were over 150 people lined up along the streets chanting, waving their signs and being heard. What's more, there were at least a dozen honks of support from passersby for every middle

finger or MAGA shout. Even better, there was this feeble little pro-Trump gathering a couple of blocks down and it couldn't even draw enough people to fill out a fucking lacrosse team. And look, I know that 150 people is tiny compared to the tens of thousands of people that were showing up in protests all around the country, but 150 protesters in Waycross, Georgia somehow feels more significant than 100 hundred thousand in Philadelphia or Seattle. A hundred and fifty people who were no doubt overcoming the same fears as I was to be there.

Right? I mean, significantly more fear for most of them, since most of them were black, Hispanic, and or LGBTQ. And yes, there was one asshole going down the line trying to sell everybody as Jesus. Apparently, he saw a line of people protesting against tyranny and oppression and thought, well, obviously those people aren't my religion yet. But with that one exception, everybody I met was a stellar reminder of why these parts of the country

are still worth our time and our effort. And the thing that hit me the hardest, the thing that really drove all of that home was a sticker. See, there was a group of women all prided up and they were going through the crowd, finding their fellow LGBTQ folks folks and they were giving them stickers. We're in a very homophobic part of the country and I think that was just

their way of breaking the ice and saying, hey, if you're more comfortable around your people, there's a bunch of us all hanging out over here. Anyway, so I'm standing next to one of these exchanges and I looked down at the very cool assortment of stickers and I made a joke about how I would have been way gayer if I knew that there were stickers in it for me. So the chick who's handing them out, she gives me a sticker for making her laugh and the sticker, which I quickly affixed to my no king sign

was shiny, sparkly silver and sort of a heavy metal font and it just said, y'all means all. And I gotta be honest, as silly and trite as that message is, it damn near brought a tear to my eye because it just perfectly encapsulated the lesson of the day for me. So, when I think of Southern culture, I probably think of the same stuff that you think of, right? Slavery and lynchings and snake handling Pentecostals and racism and Confederate flags and country

boys rolling coal. But encapsulated in that simple slogan was a reminder that it also has redeeming qualities. Southern hospitality isn't entirely a myth, and the 149 people at the rally that weren't there to pester a captive audience about their religion were a stellar reminder of that fact. These were people that by and large approached their culture

with their eyes open to its horse in a spirit of redemption and reparation. People who want to rest the mantle of southern culture away from backwards politicians and Republican bootlickers and make it stand for welcoming strangers and spicy food. I've lived half my life in the South. The single best person I've ever met is a southerner. Many, if not most of my best friends are products of southern culture that I'm so quick to scorn. Good secular progressive people devoted to equality and human flourishing. And yet, when I want to sound dumb for a bit,

I still can't help but don southern affectations. It's a bias that I'm aware of and one that I'm consciously trying to overcome. But it doesn't just show up in my derision of their accent. It's also the bias that had me in such a panic about going to a protest that I almost skipped. The truth of Waycross, Georgia is far better than my prejudice-laden mind gave it credit for. And if that's true for the worst part of America, it has to be true for America. I mean yes the majority of people in my county are Trump voters and remain Trump voters despite the colossal ineptitude

of his well his everything but there are genuinely good people who are still fighting to shift the river down here and a lot of them were too old to reap any of the real benefits from the changes that they're trying to make so they have to be doing out of the goodness of their hearts. These people are good people, good, charitable people that are worth fighting for. How when you fight for him, sometimes they even give you stickers. They're talking about you, Jesus. You need to wrap this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is nobody, because we're all in New York,

either getting married or participating in the getting of married. But we knew this was coming, obviously. So we've been saving up a few extra headlines for you over the last few months. So yeah, sure. These stories may be a bit out of date, but the joke should still be fresh. But before we get to that, we're going to pause for a word from our this week sponsor, My Sheets Rock. I'm me.

I think it's like Khan at the end. We should watch the video again. I think we should. Yeah. Hey guys, what are you doing? Oh, we're getting ready for our big move to Oimea Khan. Where's that? It's a small Siberian village, pretty remote.

Okay. Why are you moving there? Did Eli rejoin Twitter? No, no. Oimea Khan wouldn't help us on that. No, we're getting away from the summer heat. Yeah, Heath and I are both warm sleepers and we are not going to put up with another sweaty summer.

You said it. Guys, you don't have to move to Oimiakan. Why don't you just try the regulator sheets from My Sheets Rock? What are the regulator sheets from My Sheets Rock? Okay, sometimes you pause between regulator sheets and My Sheets Rock and it feels like you're soft launching a second point I'm not soft launching. I'm just taking My time totally soft launching my

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endorse My Sheets Rock. But Noah, what if I don't believe you? Why would you not believe me? Because the copy says... Don't believe me? Their 2,200 five-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 mysheetsrock.com slash scathing and enter our code scathing for 10% off and free shipping. That's MySheetsRock.com

slash scathing code scathing. All right. Thanks. Looks like we won't be headed to Russia after all. Yeah, but now we bought all these blue jeans for nothing. Okay. Speak for yourself. My ass looks amazing in this. It really does. It does. It does. Thank you. And now, headlines from the past already in progress. And in our caucus's growing news. There's no doubt that the insane parts of politics are more insane these days.

Comments and actions that would have been career ending a decade ago barely make it above the digital fold in today's world. Okay, you're still old if you say above the fold. Adding digital doesn't fix that, man. Everything's computer. You nailed it. You are. A lot of notes this week, Heath, Ed Wright.

A lot of notes. I'm getting a lot of on air feedback. You enjoy a good piece of fish recently? I do, and I did. You always ask for a booth. You excited about a booth? I do like a booth, but it's because I'm fat who doesn't want a boom thank you outvoted you should give up your drivers like it's just good to like embrace it early

I was like hey voice in my head special guest all right but it's important to remember that the insanity of trumpism will not last forever. And that, in fact, the sane parts of the world are growing more sane, more just, and more reflective of the world we want to live in. Which is why I'm pleased to announce that the Congressional Free Thought Caucus has two new members this legislative session, because Your Invisible Friend Shouldn't Make Laws is getting gosh darn trendy everybody. Ain't it though? Great.

Somebody tell Chuck Schumer though. Well he canceled his book tour so I don't get to talk to him. You stopped at the top of the stairs of the Ark of the Moral Universe, you unfolded a fucking paper map of the city of the moral universe. But I guess I'm glad there's two more people

to be disappointed by him. That's something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So to be clear, when you said, Eli, that Trumpism wouldn't last forever, I expected the next sentence to be about how long it would take the nuclear fallout to kill us if we were only allowed to treat it with horse paste.

So I love your optimism. Thank you. This is good stuff. Straight up Pollyanna. All right. So first off, big thanks to Hammond Metta over at the Friendly Atheist blog for bringing this story to our attention. By signing up for his newsletter, Hammond gently laid this news story in our inbox over

at scathingnews at gmail.com. If you have an atheist news missive that you'd like to send to scathingnews at gmail.com, you can and should know that the lingering scent of Hemet's perfume will always be there in our hearts scathing news at gmail.com Lavender leather and a hint of pencil shavings. It's delightful Stop pausing when you guys do this like I also want to sexually harass our colleague on air He's there's already a lawsuit prude prude. I love is an ocean. Anyway, it was possible. Thank you Prude prude our love is an ocean anyways possum. Thank you

Anyways, the members in question are Andrea Salinas a Democrat from Oregon and Emily Randall a Democrat from the state of Washington Now you might already be familiar with Salinas for when she beat the shit out of the Democratic opponent bankrolled by Sam Bankman freed and then two Republicans in short order afterwards Yeah Fried and then two Republicans in short order afterwards Yeah, it was nice that Bankman Fried hired a bunch of crypto bro missionaries to knock on doors and remind everyone he fucking sucks Missionaries being like hey, have you you heard the good news about the blockchain? Yeah, you got a moment to discuss money based on a dog meme Yeah, right to which the electorate rightfully said hey, whoever didn't make you talk to me, I'm, that has my vote. I vote for them.

I vote for not you. So Randall, on the other hand, is a newly elected lawmaker. Her religion is officially listed as non-uwu and she's also the first openly queer Latina in Congress. An achievement only slightly marred by the realization that it took until 2025 for that to happen. Yeah, no I wonder how long it'll take federally operated websites to admit it. Yeah, or un-admit it, yeah. So for those of you keeping track that brings the CFC to 24 members and I point that out for several reasons. First is that when we

started this show that number was away less than 10. So it's important to remember how far we've come, even when things are awful. And by way less than 10 Eli Wiggins is zero because the Congressional Free Thought Caucus wasn't even founded until this show was five years old. Time is of let's or no. That's how new this shit is. Yeah. Atheism was nascent. Yeah, right. We did it. I always say we did it. But on that note, it's easy to despair in times like this to feel helpless and unrepresented

in politics entirely. But if you live in these districts, these are your Congress people and they do in fact represent you. And long after Trump is gone, the work they did for and with you will remain. Because that's how history works. 100% of the time. And in When You Bible, you get bull news tonight. One of the identifying traits of the MAGA Republicans is their ability to remain total

fucking losers even when they win everything. Right? Like, you know how Republicans control the executive branch, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, but despite writing the laws, executing laws and interpreting the laws, Trump can't accomplish any single agenda item without still breaking the law? It's like that. And perhaps the most striking example of this baffling ineptitude comes in the form of Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters continued impotence in his effort to buy Trump Bibles

for every Oklahoma classroom. In Oklahoma? Dude, you're not even playing on easy mode. This is like demo mode. You're a Christian Republican in Oklahoma. You need some gutter guards for doing the theocracy over there? How are you losing the tutorial? Press A to punch.

Yeah, that's it. Just is telling you the thing. And look, we've been taking victory laps around Walter's pathetic efforts for so long that we have worn grooves into the ground about him. At every turn, he's been thwarted by people from within his own fucking party, most notably Oklahoma Attorney General Gettner Drummond, who I only bring up in case we want to make fun of his name again. Okay, he sounds like the grandfather

of the dad from different strokes. Like, I keep picturing Colonel Sanders arguing in court with Gary Coleman about something. Okay, sure. But last week, Walter suffered his biggest defeat to date when the Republican-controlled legislature just left his dumbass request out of the budget talks altogether. They were not even discussed on the floor.

As a Democratic state senator told the press afterwards, quote, Oklahomans are very familiar with the Bible. They're very dutiful in picking their pastor, youth group leaders and Sunday school teachers. When you really listen to people, they're just not in favor of having the government involved in that." Anyway, I'm off to go protest a government book burning. I'm a Democrat in Oklahoma. Bye. Rough.

Say what you will about the bad times, but it makes for some strange bedfellows. You can feel the comma man cut from that quote a couple of times, right? But despite the entire lack of support from within even his own fucking party, Walters isn't given in just yet. He hasn't given up on forcing Bibles into Oklahoma's classrooms. He's just given up on paying for them with taxpayer funds. Instead, he's now teamed up with one hit wonder and part-time Bible hawker Lee Greenwood to start some dumb fucking adopt-a-bible grift that urges idiot Christians to pay for the Bibles themselves so that he can then send

them to the classroom. He sent out a funding request directly to the people on official fucking letterhead asking them to pay Lee Greenwood for his ridiculously overpriced Trump Bibles so that he could then put them in Oklahoma classrooms where taxpayer funds would presumably be used to pay for the ensuing lawsuits that the state's own Republican attorney general might just spearheading. And over to Jeff Blackwell, side tackling chickens in a montage. I like Fun fact also RFK juniors current proposal for dealing with the bird flu. Yeah. No it is though. It is now I wanted to be clear to anybody who is

Sorry No, there you go. Yeah now I want to be clear to anybody who isn't doing the math here. The actual cost of a Bible is nothing. Right? Like personally, I can't not own a Bible. I've paid for one Bible in my life and I own seven of them. And if I took every one from everybody who shoved one at me, I would have one for every Oklahoma fucking classroom. There are literally thousands of charities in the world that exist only to donate Bibles

to people. Instead of like bringing water to places that need water. That is what they do. Exactly. To bring to people a book which is already free on the internet. If the actual goal was simply to have Bibles available for teachers, the cost would be literally zero dollars. Hell, as much of a historic low as being proud to be an American, no doubt is.

Something tells me Lee Greenwood could afford to just donate the damn things himself if he wanted to. But as ever, the point of the Bibles was always the grift. Yeah. We do have one listener who always takes Gideon Bibles and makes them into furniture, and that's pretty cool. Oh, that's nice. That is awesome.

That's like making the chair out of the Crown Royal bags. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Next up in headlines in overrated news. Nice. Elon Musk can't even do eugenics right. No, he can't.

He thinks he should be involved. Right. That's not how you do it. It's the classic coming Kruger effect. Elon is very concerned about the declining birth rate, and he's going to solve that with his amazing DNA. His cum is so valuable that he's been paying women to take it off his hands, often using IVF to become pregnant

as part of his natalist eugenics project at his terrifying culty compound in Texas. And it appears he's been selecting embryos to get boys only, because the only way to pump up the birth rate is more dudes. And of course, he's an abusive sociopath towards the women involved. That's according to a report by the Wall Street Journal last week entitled, the tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his legion of babies and their mothers. Okay, so I know you were using

different words, but I heard you say, Elon Musk would pay millions of dollars to get back a vial of his own cum if we took one hostage. That is what I heard. Yeah. I heard that too now. I just love that he got this close to a consensual fuck, Harum. The only thing worth doing with a billion dollars

besides giving it away. And he added test tubes in Texas because he's the fucking worst in all possible scenarios. So here's what we learned about Elon's male birthing startup. Let's call it XY. He'll enjoy that. He strongly believes that he needs to seed the earth with more human beings of high intelligence. So naturally that means him and alt-right influencers.

Shocking. For example, Ashley St. Clair. Soon after she gave birth to their son, St. Clair asked for a paternity test and Elon responded by sending his fixer to offer St. Clair $15 million plus $100,000 a month for the next 21 years if she agrees to sign a crazy contract full of one-way non-disclosure clauses and one-way non-disparagement clauses and financial clawback rules for breaking the agreement in any way. St. Clair refused to sign and eventually spoke out publicly. That includes showing some of the insane texts that she got from Elon. For example, he told her that a C-section allows for a quote, larger brain.

He asked her to come live in his birthing compound, quote, with our kid Legion. So that was his word there and he also added quote to reach Legion level before the apocalypse will need to use surrogates The fuck Legion was his word Yeah, I feel like we should spend the rest of our lives Apologizing to James Bond and Batman screenwriters for making their jobs harder than they had to be all these years Yeah Batman screenwriters for making their jobs harder than they had to be all these years. Yeah. I just love that the richest guy in the world got tricked by incel forum trolls into actually

creating the fantasy that none of them wanted. Right. That's how capitalism went everybody. In case you're wondering, that's how it went. Yeah. We also learned that Elon was going on Twitter to solicit more potential mothers. Of course, he wanted all different sorts of intelligence, so it wasn't just alt-right influencers like Ashley St. Clair.

He also focused on crypto influencers. In one example, he started liking and commenting on posts by crypto influencer Tiffany Fang to get her attention. Based on the interaction with Musk and his 219 million followers, her earnings on the platform jumped. And then he literally slipped into her DMs with an offer of common money. She refused the offer and he got mad and her earnings went way down. On her cryptocurrency.

I mean, look, the one bright side to this is that everyone in the story sucks. Can we arrange sort of a group mediation inside a big vat of lava maybe? Yeah, right. So I guarantee you, given what we know so far, that Musk has accidentally tried to sell his come to at least one AI fuckbot at this point. Some guy in India is just like, I don't know what to do with this, Craig. I don't, I mean. Yes.

We gotta build one of those AI things and get a vile and hold it hostage like you're talking about before. We could do some good stuff. I got a lot of ideas. I got some ideas. So the Elon story got me into a crazy rabbit hole about this natalism movement.

Apparently it's like a whole thing now. It starts with the basic observation that the human birth rate has been declining since about 1950, and that's true. But from there, the movement goes completely off the rails. In its current form in the US, it's turned into a toxic political thing with elements of Christian fundamentalism,

white supremacy, and tech bro lunatics, also known as the Republican Party. JD Vance and Elon are both high profile voices now. JD from the Christian family first angle and Elon from the tech bro angle. They're arguably both from the white angle. Well, yeah, right, yeah, but you can make a strong argument that regardless of their views, JD and Elon will always be strong spokespeople against the concept of white supremacy. Yeah, no, that's fair.

They will. It's fair. And speaking of which, I learned about a big event in Texas last month called Natalcon 25. They claim they're not a white power eugenics conference, which is already suspect that they said that. Yeah, neither is QED, but they don't have to point it out. And it's even harder to believe when one of the main speakers was white nationalist, pizza gate lunatic, and former Game of Thrones podcaster Jack Posobieck.

He told the crowd, Western civilization isn't just worth preserving, it's worth fighting for. This is a war, and natalism is our sword and shield. Yeah, a lot of guys in the audience need to think about swords to come, so this conference is serving a lot of guys in the audience need to think about swords to come, so this conference is serving a lot of purposes here. And the rabbit hole continues. This was insane. Natalcon 25 also included a couple named Simone and Malcolm Collins, two of the main leaders

of the natalism community. They currently have four kids. One is named Industry Americas, by the way. What? Yep. And they're planning to have a total of seven to 13 kids. As part of their natalist philosophy, they advocate for using IVF to select embryos with desirable genetics. And okay, like you can do some of that stuff ethically without racist eugenics being involved. But the more I read about the Collins's, the less that seemed possible. They claim to be atheists, but they don't seem to know what that means as a word.

They invented a religion they call techno-Pyrotanism. Yeah, atheism fail. And it's partially based on the Bible, which they consider to be a divinely inspired scripture. Oh, big fail. Yep. And not surprisingly, the couple believes in corporal punishment of their kids. And that's based on Simone's observation of lions and tigers during a safari trip. Oh, and all 24 of your kids work for mine. Oh, it's too bad I wasn't busy building a fascist army

to hug him, huh? Yeah, right. Okay, first of all, you didn't see a fucking tiger on a safari trip or on continent. And also, is what lions do a good model of human behavior now? The fucking gayest animals in the Savannah are our model now, guys? Really, are you sure?

Okay, so you're probably wondering, how does Christmas work in techno-puritanism? Great question. Instead of Christmas, they have Future Day. And here's how they celebrate with the kids on Future Day, according to Simone. Quote, the future police come and take their toys. Not great start.

And then they have to write a contract about how they're going to make the world a better place and they get their toys back with some gifts and stuff. They get more gifts when they do whatever they said they were going to do. Yeah, you know, I've said for years that the real problem with Christmas is that it's all giving and no taking away. It's so fucking crazy. Hey, these people's kids in the future, I will help you load their stuff into the old age home.

I'll bring you pizza for this move. Just hit us up. Yeah. Also worth noting, the Collins's look like happy side characters from the Eugenics B team in The Handmaid's Tale. Yeah! But allegedly they chose that. They claim they're doing that look on purpose when they do interviews. They dress like they're activating a school bully winter soldier on purpose? They do. To whom, T felt in against I don't yeah, you know not clear

But um, yeah, okay the birth rate it is declining But it doesn't matter at least not in the way that natalism activists believe right now the rate is about 2.3 births per woman over the course of her life. And the replacement rate to maintain the current population is 2.1, so we're still growing as a world population. But it's about 1.7, that rate, here in the US. And people like Elon Musk think we need more babies

with amazing DNA like his, but no we don't. No we do not. And more importantly, none of the answers involve the politics of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and JD Vance. If we're worried about growing the US population, we should be encouraging immigration from all the parts of the world with much higher birth rates. But those places are and not always Christian. So the bigots don't want to do it. Right. Yeah, exactly. So you can't have worried about declining population and anti-immigration without having white supremacy. Those two cannot otherwise come by.

Yeah. And even if we're just focused on the existing US population, you increase the birth rate by having, you know, better public schools and universal pre-K and paid maternity leave and expanded child tax credits and universal health care. In other words, we take Elon's money, none of his cum, just his money with a Liz Warren wealth tax and we unplug his giant cum freezer and then bury it under a metal dome like Chernobyl. There you go. Whatever we got to do. That is the tactic, yes. plug his giant cum freezer and then bury it under a metal dome like Chernobyl. Whatever we've got to do.

That is the tactic, yes. Have a mass funeral as per Texas law, I guess. Be a great party. That's right. And on that pre-recorded note, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our other sponsor this week, us. Hey, podcast listener, as you're enjoying this episode, our very own Heath Enright is getting married. That's right, I am. Hey podcast listener, as you're enjoying this episode, our very own Heath Enright is getting

married. That's right I am. And you might be wondering, what can I get Heath for a wedding gift? After all, he's like my cool older brother who lives in my basement. That's specific. Well, why not congratulate him in person at our God Awful Movies live show in Cleveland, Ohio on July 19th? We'll be breaking down a terrible Christian movie on the CLE with all the uncensored,

uncut on-stay shenanigans I defend you from on a regular basis. Plus, my entire family will be there. It's gonna be weird. Sure will. But don't wait. Tickets to our shows sell out fast. Like really fast. Like so fast that by the time you hear this, they might be gone.

And if that's the case, we apologize fast. But just in case, you can learn more and get your tickets at GodawfulMoviesLive.com. Godawful Movies Live. It's like Heath's wedding, but with ticket prices. I wanted the real wedding to have ticket prices, but my grandma lowballed me. We know she did, buddy. She bragged. She's a really good negotiator.

And now back to headlines from the past still already in progress. And in O Canada news, with each passing day in the American political hellscape, the siren song of our neighbor to the north grows ever stronger. Free healthcare, the ability to stay in the country for six months with a US passport before having to apply for an extension, and a traditional music tradition where the songs all sound very, very different from each other. And this week, they added one more drop of sugar to the syrup pot when the BC Court of Appeals ruled that your cult does not have religious right to the private notes they kept about

you while you were a member. Oh. And their legal system is run by a team of Santa clauses. There's just so many good reasons. So good, right? So first off, big thanks to patron Mockingbird Nation for sending us this story to scathingnewsatgmail.com. Mockingbird Nation gives us the only thing we love more than emails about atheist news to scathingnews.gmail.com

Money, but if you can't give us money and even if you do you can send us atheist news and that is almost as good Scathing news at gmail.com. Yeah free labor is pretty much the same, right? Exactly Anyways, our ex Jehovah's Witness listeners will probably already know what I'm talking about But for those of you who never had to lug copies of Enjoy Life Forever with Your Mom and the Burning Heat in Long Sleeves, one of the ways that Jehovah's Witnesses keep control over their membership is with extended mutual... Narcing. It's narcing.

Yeah. This narcing can be done openly, things confessed in testimony, or just overheard gossip, and is often used for blackmail and harassment against members who step out of line or, Jehovah forbid, ex-members. Yeah. So, really glad about this new law. But also, if you're in a cult, well, stop. Stop that.

But if you're stuck in there, and some people are stuck in there I get it and they have like an activity at the cult called Secrets time with Stevie Steno like don't Make shit up at that point. Yes, right make shit up and make shit up that makes your like your friends sound awesome Right like I heard Eli took the Lord's name in vain while he was like saving a bunch of lingerie models from terrorists on his Speedboat and they were buying them exactly Go through narrow. Right.

So in this case, two ex Jehovah's Witnesses used Canada's Personal Information Protection Act to request those records from the church. The church refused on religious grounds, lost and has now lost again on appeal because it turns out that in this case case they didn't have the sincerely held right to their ex-members mom's cell phone number. I love their court system so much they're super polite they let the religious cult come in make an argument and they're like yeah no go ahead with your argument explain your sincerely held blackmail no I'm just yawning with the gavel up high like

this I'm just yawning. Go ahead whenever up high like this. I'm just yawning. Go ahead, whenever you're ready. Go ahead. Ah! So yeah. So yeah, this is obviously great news and will make the incredibly difficult decision to leave faith behind even easier,

which is important if only so that those people can send us atheist news or dare I say it, become patrons at patreon.com slash scathing atheist. Long live Canada and all that. Next up in headlines in, we ain't in no common era down here news. The children of Texas don't need that fancy C-E-B-C-E bullshit or at least that's the opinion of Senate bill 2617 which the Texas State Senate recently passed on a 22 to 9 vote

The bill would bar the use of CE BCE in public school textbooks just by the fact that those are the Academic standard and pretty much all the fields of study and for schools to use the antiquated ADBC and both their textbooks and their verbal instructions. Because those are the ones with the most Jesus in them. Yeah, and they're not even getting it right about Jesus. Jesus was born around 5 BCE. So, AD is actually the year of our Lord getting better with gross motor skills and emotional regulation. So stupid.

Honestly, if there was a book of the Bible about Jesus's hitting phase, I would love to read it. It would help me out. I would like to know what it was like for the other kids. So yeah, so just turn in the other cheek after hitting. So yeah, so to be clear about exactly how old the fangled this shit is, the idea of replacing ADBC with something less explicitly Christian dates back to the mid 1800s, when Jewish scholars were finally like, okay, all right, look, we will agree to use your years

if we don't have to call them the ours is the right religion years. Okay. call them the, ours is the right religion years, okay? Now of course, AD stands for Anno Domini, which means in the year of our Lord, which is a weird annotation to use for those whose Lord he isn't, right? It's the calendrical equivalent of when Christian influencers give their name as Jesus is our Lord and Savior at Starbucks

in hopes of forcing the barista into an involuntary religious declaration. Yeah, but it's kind of fun at Starbucks when it's like Jesus our Lord and Savior you had a cinnamon dolce latte kids temp Jesus cinnamon dolce kids temp. Okay, Christian influencers wish they had an understanding of the skull temperature of oat milk in order to have a good temperature. So anyway, so scholars who are like, how about we don't make saying who's God is the best God a prerequisite to using our calendar, looked around and they found the term CENBCE, meaning Common Era and before Common Era,

which had been in use in astronomy since the fucking 1600s. And they said, well, how about that? And then the Christians of the mid 1800s were like, well, sure, no one could be prudish enough to oppose that. Anyway, fast forward to Texas public schools in the modern day. Yeah, flash forward to Texas public schools in the modern day. Yeah. Flash cut to the guy threatening Galileo with the pair of anguish. Do you hear what

those idiots in Texas are doing? Anyways, I'm going to put this up your butt. So. And look, I think it's worth noting the way that they're framing this is that like they're rescuing the religious specific designations from a liberal attack on Christianity. Right? The bill sponsor a Republican by the name of Brandon Creighton. He did an interview with CBS apparently fresh from sleeping in his fucking car. He looks so bad. He looks so bedraggled. It's like he would like somebody says, what does that word mean? And he says, I'll show you. So he claimed, quote, by putting this into law, the Senate bill protects Texas's long standing approach to teaching history clearly,

consistently, without political distortion, end quote. As though, yeah, as though common era was the politically distorted version of since our religion became the correct one. Okay, if you want to be consistent like Texas apparently has been, you got to use Latin for both. So it's AD for anti-dominant and AD for... It's AD and AD, you piece of shit. Why do you hate the Holy Roman Empire? Also when I think about teaching history without political distortion, I got to admit I do

not think about Texas. Oh really? Texas isn't the first in your mind? Well yeah. So as much as I agree that this bigoted nonsense does protect Texas's longstanding approach to teaching, I still oppose it. And for anybody tempted to see this as too petty to spend our capital on, I want to remind you that all of Trumpism was built upon shit that was too petty for us to spend our capital

on. Yeah. That's a good platform. And in getting red-pillowed news. Oh, dude, no country that would vote for Donald Trump deserves you. It's true. It's true. Mike Lindell talked again. It's fun. So as usual, all of my alerts went off at the same time. It's got a siren. I do. There's a big, there's a klaxon. I get faxes just for this. I have a dedicated machine. We got a large string of emails

of course to scathingnews at gmail.com. And I learned that Mikey Pillows continued failing just so very miserably in the multiple court cases against him and just at life in general. Honestly, the fact that he hasn't died yet seems like a failure at this point, right? Right? So one of those court cases started up this week in Denver. And during a press conference outside the courthouse Lindell finally revealed the identity of the nefarious Election stealer who controlled all the algorithms for counting the votes in 2020 that would be

Satan the prince of our oh should have seen that coming just picturing Satan standing behind the camera. Hey, this is all you man I'm mostly just watching and retweeting Wait, it makes more sense how Hugo Chavez got involved now though. Sure if you think about it so you might be thinking that a supremely evil demigod warlock would be acting alone, but Lots of regular people were also involved. Oh, according to Lindell, quote, the people that did this to our country, I believe it's four. It's the Uniparty, the Deep State, globalists and the Chinese Communist Party. And quote, those were the four people involved.

Oh, I see. It was three racist dog whistles for Jews and the Chinese. Okay. But I do like the idea that the CCP has a fun side project to ruin Mike Lindell's life. It started as a team building exercise at a retreat somewhere. Yeah, support. There you go. And here's the part about the spirit realm when they'll continued

We're in a battle of biblical proportions. Oh shit lock up your cattle Of evil and good this isn't a party thing and when you say who's behind it all Satan there's one. This is a nation that turned its back on God He also explained that control of the computer algorithms is much bigger than all of us and added that whatever happens next is quote, up to God. I mean, if Mike wants to argue that whoever is coding the algorithms that dominate society isn't human, I'm ready to agree. But that's just because I've seen Mark Zuckerberg.

Sure. But he's not bigger than all of us though. Or any of us, really. I don't think. He's a small man. He's a small man. Okay. So the trial in Denver is a defamation case against Lindell filed by Eric Kummer, a former executive at Dominion Voting Systems. Lindell very clearly lied about Kumher and Dominion, but now there's a lawsuit about it with consequences. So Lindell continued lying and pretending computers are cheating. According to Lindell, quote, we will not stop until we have paper ballots counted and we're going to melt down all the voting machines and

turn them into prison bars. Except the plastic parts. Those will be the sporks in the cafeteria. We haven't allocated all the materials yet, but the metal is going to melt them down. What will we vote with then? So, okay. And, um, here's my favorite part.

On Sunday, Lindell did an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast, and it was just so sad and desperate and flaily. The Pillow Company is obviously failing, and MyPillow.com actually has a dedicated page for a legal defense fund asking people to donate amounts ranging from $10 to $1,000 or other amounts. Oh. Bannon was clearly feeling some pity about that. So Bannon started the interview by saying, quote,

Mike Lindell, your struggle session really starts on Monday, a federal trial. Talk to me about it and sell me a pillow and a sheet so you can underwrite this." End quote, like exact words. Amazing. So can we take a second to revel in the fact that somebody could say, of the guy whose ongoing national humiliation has been a bomb to us for half of a decade now, so things are really going to get bad for you next week. That is the punchline to a fucking joke,

if you know what this guy's been through over the last few years. You made it out of the claw machine, but here comes a federal trial, you dumb piece of shit. Sell me a sheet. I don't know. Guys, guys, I didn't look at the website until Heath mentioned it just now.

The banner says, Please Help Now. I didn't look at the website until he mentioned it just now the banner says please help now It says please help now Act now okay. Well, I have to do I'll do it I don't matter and then he has the same image like an inch below it the same Please help now call in the next 10 minutes or other amounts of minutes. I don't fucking care. I really need the money. So from there we got a long collection of, well typically sentence fragments from Mike Lindell. Let's see if we can patch them together for some kind of meeting. Lindell

starts talking about the trial and then he says, quote, and they attacked my pillows being sued everybody. By the way, Steve, this is the same lawyer that in the deposition called my pillows lumpy. And that's when Lindell grabs one of his pillows from below the frame with a pillowcase of the American flag on it. He holds it up to the camera and he says, I told my lawyers, maybe I should bring him one inside. My lawyer said, Mike, let's not go there. Okay.

He just stands up halfway through the trial. Tears streaming down his face. Pillow fight. No. streaming down his face, pillow fight. No. Somebody's still going to hit him really hard. Yeah, well, sure, sure. And quick reminder, the dude never called his pillows lumpy, right?

So the lawyer referenced a phone number that my pillow maintained for both customer complaints and people calling with evidence of election fraud. And to differentiate those two types of calls, the lawyer said, quote, I'm not talking about the lumpy pillow calls, end quote. And Lindell lost his shit so completely during that deposition that he still hasn't found it. He's still pissed about that now. Yeah, that's just like a general case of what could be a complaint about a pillow.

Lumpy. That's like the only thing. Yeah, right. Oh, they're lump proof. It's the whole point. So maintain their song. He's ready to fight the guy on a beach at dawn over this shit. Fantastic. Bring you one as a gift.

He really wants to. Here's hoping he does. In fact, here's hoping Mike Lindell ignores his lawyer completely and comes to court with a my pillow and demands to have the lumpiness level adjudicated in court because he thinks that's something. I don't know. Looking forward to all my alerts going off again soon. I'm picturing like the mayor calling 34th Street, but they're just dumping pillows onto the judges.

Right. Out of pillow cases. Yeah, right. Right. And in more like orthodix news. Fantastic. Thank you. We talked last week about the way that young men are leading the much-bally-hoo Gen Z revival by flocking to homophobic, misogynistic churches that tell them that the possession of a Caucasian

penis is too good enough. And because churches are A, moved by market forces, and B, not tethered to any kind of objective reality, it was inevitable that there would be a spiritual arms race for these newly available souls in the form of manliest version of Christianity. And we learned this week that the current leaders in that race for testicular theology are coming from Russian churches, which are signing up young American men in droves. Guys, this information campaign was good, but how are we not using church for that? Let's use church as the perfect information campaign.

Yeah, exactly. So first of all, huge thanks to Gretchen for being the first to send us this story at scalingnews at gmail.com. Gretchen, as recompensed for sending us this amazing story, at some point in the future, Eli will randomly pop into your life and offer you a potion or elixir that will get you out of whatever jam you find yourself in. But it will only come when you least expect it. So don't expect it. And the jam may be strawberry under promise over deliver. There you go.

So, so the story that Gretchen sent us was this piece the BBC did about the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia or Rokor. And it mostly focuses on an American convert named Father Moses McPherson, a priest slash MRA dude bro YouTube misogynist who decries random things as being too feminine for manly men. Things like wearing skinny jeans, shaping your eyebrows, crossing your legs, masturbating, or eating soup. Okay, really lost me at the end there, man. Yeah, he lost me at the beginning too, but yeah, mostly at the end.

He basically, he's one of those guys where when you see his shit, you go, surely this is parody, but it isn't because this is the bad place. Hey, man, just because you had gay thoughts while you were eating soup doesn't make it gay. You're just a you're just a self-hating gay guy. You understand that, right? Who's eating soup. Yeah, that's a really fuckable guy soup.

It's possible. There you go. You haven't dick soup. But anyway, so so the Russian Orthodox Church apparently saw a bit of a boom in America during the lockdown because they mostly stayed open during the fucking lockdown. And their message of rancid homophobia and rigid patriarchy really struck accord with the kind of assholes that would go to churches that stayed open during the lockdown.

And the BBC reporter, by the way, didn't have to dig very far before she found some of these new members questioning the mainstream media's take on the invasion of Ukraine and blaming Putin's notoriety and misguided boomers still infected with Cold War hysteria. Just a bunch of shirtless dude bros on horses, clip-clopping into their new church. The Wokes are way too sexually confused. That's why I'm here. That's a problem. I just love Russia discovered that bullshit slides downhill in 2015 and we've been declaring

them super spy mind controllers. Yes, right. So yeah, so as easy as it would be to dismiss a person who is quoted in the BBC article saying quote, a lot of people ask me father Moses how can I increase my manliness to absurd levels and quote I don't think a lot of people ask him that we ignore that kind of shit at our own peril their message is virulently anti LGBTQ and anti-woman and it's ultimately under the thumb of Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine says Rokor is subservient to Patriarch Lapdog Kirill.

You know, the guy who dubbed the invasion of Ukraine a holy war and Putin a modern savior. That fucking guy is calling the shots for a significant number of young American men. Definitely not the kind of thing you want to dismiss. Yeah, you got to scare them away with soup, everybody. Yeah, well, just leave it in the can is all. Right, exactly, yeah. And on that pre-recorded note, we're gonna wrap up the headlines for the night.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always. To Monge. And we will come back. I'll have just enough time left in the episode to get a little mushy. ["The Time Is Now"] Obviously, this isn't a typical episode. Our very own Heathy Enright is getting married on the day that we normally record. I know what you're thinking.

Wednesday wedding? It's a long story. And Eli, of course, is the actual, the efficient at the wedding and I am just invited. Just a guy who's there. Not that I'm bitter or anything. Anyway, so the end result is that we had to save up a bunch of headlines for you. We didn't have time to do a typical C segment like an interview or a Bible Peace Theater or whatever. But I did want to at least subtly preserve the typical format of the show by spending a few minutes at the end of the episode talking about my friends Heath and Ann and this not that they're about to tie or just tied from your temporal perspective. Now, I should state my bias upfront. I suffer from the

affliction that a lot of happily married people do where they're perpetually trying to marry off all their single friends. And look, I know deep down that marriage isn't the right answer for everyone. And marriage isn't the thing that I want for my friends. It's happiness that I want for them. I just know what a bountiful well of happiness my marriage has been for me. So it's kind of my go-to solution when my unmarried friends seem to be low on contentment. Now I want to be clear. I don't, I don't think marriage is a panacea or anything. When my married friends are low on contentment, one of my go-to solutions is divorce. But when it's done right, marriage is a thing of beauty. It stands out from those other steps that we take towards our own happiness and how

discreet it is. It's like an ACBC moment in your own life that you choose. Most of the time, if we're moving towards contentment, we do it a little bit at a time. You earn the knowledge you want one page at a time. You earn the health you want one exercise at a time, the skill you want one try at a time. And yes, eventually there comes a point where you have that thing that you've been chasing after, but there's rarely a discrete moment that you can point to and say, hey, this is

where the culmination of happiness that I'd worked so hard for and sought so long for was achieved. Even rarer that those moments are ones that you can share with your friends and family. But marriage is one of those moments, that paradoxical point of both arrival and departure, that liberating moment of bondage, that moment where you find yourself by giving yourself away, where you become whole by becoming a half. Now, of course, that's not every marriage. We've all been to weddings where there's sort of an implied asterisk around the till-death-to-us

part bit, but Ann and Heath adore each other. They're one of those couples where all their friends knew they were going to be married before they did. Hell, I had known Anne for like 20 minutes before I was like, well, if he doesn't fuck this, he'd have to fuck it up pretty hard actually to not wind up married to this woman here. But like they had to be married. They get each other's jokes. They have complimentary pet peeves. They're both high brow and low brow and all the other brows in between. They're both fun to play board games with, even though, you know, that they're secretly keeping a win loss record in their head about every goddamn game that you play with them.

And as I said on the skeptic, they're the kind of couple marriage is lucky to have. But that leads us to an obvious question, right? Because Christian homophobes assure us that marriage is a religious thing, damn it. Now, of course, they try to claim everything good in the world, up to and including good in the world. But I've had people genuinely ask me before, what is marriage to an atheist? I've had atheists ask me that before.

And it makes sense, right? Like, we're not swearing before God to remain forever yoked. We're not even swearing to remain forever yoked. Neither Ann nor Heath would have opted for that no divorce version of marriage Republicans keep pushing for it had it been on the table. Right? They're swearing to have and to hold in sickness and in health unless you turn out to be a complete asshole about it. So, you know, beyond the tax advantages, what does it even mean? And granted, from the secular perspective, marriage isn't really that much when it's

stripped of its pomp and circumstance, but that's because the pomp and circumstance is what marriage is. Once you've stripped away all the religious bullshit, all that's left is a really expensive celebration of how much two people love each other. And in that sense, its separation from the religious root makes the commitment more powerful, not less. Used to be had to marry somebody just to get your junk wet with them. Now you know, you don't need a piece of paper to validate that kind

of shit. Now you're marrying somebody even though you're already having sex, you're already going out together on Fridays, you're already living together, you're already doing all the things that married people do. Now all the marriage is doing is shouting from the rooftops about how wonderful your love is. I mean, consider what we're actually doing in a marriage ceremony and try to strip it clean of your familiarity with that ceremony.

Imagine that marriage didn't exist at all and Anne and Heath were the first people to think of it. And they were just like, hey y'all, all of our friends and family, we're so in love that we wanna throw a party where people come from all over the country and the world in this case, and Anne's going to wear the most beautiful gown that she's ever worn and she's going to keep it forever. And everybody's going to dress up and we're all going to eat like kings and we're going to proclaim to everybody how committed we

are to one another's happiness. Imagine that and the question dissolves. Happy zero-eth anniversary, Anne and Heath. Thank you for somebody who's 28 years into this shit. They just get better from people. Before we throw the bouquet tonight, we want to congratulate the newlyweds one more time. Heath, Anne, we love you and we wish you the best in the world. You both offer each other so much and it's nice to finally be able to move on to trying to marry off a different friend.

I'm not thinking Jeff Blackwell. He's going to be my next project. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend God awful movies debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday and an even new episode of our half-sister show Citation Data debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this and an even new episode where I have social citation

needed to be at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this episode wouldn't let her if I neglected to thank Ethan Wright for letting me share his special day. I want to thank Eli Bosnick for the beautiful job he did officiating the wedding. I'm recording this in advance, but for all the shit I give Eli, I have no doubt that he's going to do an incredible job. I want to congratulate Lucinda Lujans for another cigaretteless week. Again, we're recording in advance, but I have boundless confidence in her as well. But most of all, of course, I want

to thank this week's best people. But not by name, right? Because like, obviously, we're recording this several days in advance, and I'll be flying to New York for the wedding. But I promise to thank you by name next week. And I'm sure your genitals will have only gotten more impressive in the interim. Incidentally, that's why I'm not thanking whoever it is that winds up having provided the Farnsworth quote as well. I don't know who that is yet. But I also get you taken care of next week. Anyway, this as yet undetermined

number of people join forces to keep electricity flow into these microphones every week. And if you'd like to help empower us, you can make a per episode donation of patreon.com slash scaling atheist whereby you'll have access to an extended ad 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 scaling atheist.com. And if you'd like to help but in a less high voltage kind of way, you can also help us out by leaving a five-star review, 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 Morton Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used

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