The Scathing Atheist - 661: V4C Meets RFR Edition

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

In this week’s episode, we’ll learn what the hell all those deadly Teslas were swerving out of the way of, Colorado takes the everybody out of PUBLIC schools, and we’ll sell you profanity even more directly than usual. --- Donate to Vulgarity for Charity here: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/ Learn more about Vulgarity for Charity here: https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/vulgarity-for-charity —- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: [e-mail] To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/ --- Headlines: Ken Paxton to sue Tylenol’s manufacturer for giving kids autism: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce9d3n1r08do Christian musician, who sang the national anthem for Trump at 2022 rally, is facing felony child pornography charges https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/jon-paul-sheptock-church-musician-arrested-b2849918.html Ex-Intel CEO seeks to create Christian AI and hasten the coming of Jesus: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/patrick-gelsinger-christian-ai-gloo-silicon-valley Tesla detects ghosts!  https://insideevs.com/news/776769/tesla-ghost-detector/

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given that one of the richest organizations in the fucking world could look at this torture day after day and do nothing to provide shade while rubbing their hard nipples confirms that we did, in fact, evolved from filthy, needlessly cruel monkey people. It's Thursday. Oh, that was really good. It's October 20th. And it's National Text Your X Day. Don't do that.

I have no illusions. I'm Mila Bosnick. And from Bruce Springsteak's, New Jersey, and Waycross, Georgia. This is the skating atheist. On this week's episode, we'll learn what the hell all those deadly Teslas were swerving out of the way of. Colorado takes the everybody out of public schools. and we'll sell you profanity even more directly than usual. But first, the diatri.

It's getting harder and harder not to sound like a conspiracy theorist these days. But look, when the big holdup that's gridlocking the government as well, whether or not to strip away health coverage from tens of millions of Americans and the health secretary is aggressively pushing anti-science policies that chip away at vaccination rates, food safety regulations, and sound dietary recommendations. It's hard not to conclude the Republican health plan is just poor people dying, right? I saw an Associated Press report the other day

where a couple of journalists tracked down all the anti-science bills and state legislatures that are attacking vaccines, water fluoridation, and milk pasteurization requirements. Just those three conspiracy theory hobby horses, guess how many they found? 420. 420 bills designed to ease vaccine mandates, remove fluoride from drinking water,

promote raw milk consumption, undermine the scientific consensus, and replace sound health policy with conspiracy theories that Robert Kennedy learned about on YouTube. The vast majority of those 420 bills targeted vaccines, and they came in a variety of forms. Some would ban discrimination against the unvaccinated.

Others seek to criminalize the kinds of harms that naturally arise sometimes out of vaccine programs. And there's even a bill in Minnesota that tries to label MRNA vaccines as weapons of mass destruction. And given the level of stupidity that we've been dealing with out of the anti-vax movement over the years, it's easy to think of this as the byproduct of like a stupidity critical mass, right? There are just so many people out there that.

are so fucking dumb about this shit that it's inevitable that we would turn against science and mass. And maybe that's true, right? Maybe that's what happened. But when these reporters dug into those 420 bills, they didn't find an organic groundswell of support for whooping cough and measles. What they found instead was a politically savvy network of operatives closely connected to RFK Jr.

And look, I'm inclined to believe that people like RFK Jr. are true believers, right, who actually think big milk is out to get them. When you've got a fucking brainworm tunneling through your gray matter to the point where you don't even know not to swim in raw fucking sewage, it's really hard to apply any argument based on him having to know better.

But Kennedy's support necessarily spills over the rim of conspiracy nutters. Just, you know, like every respected medical body in the world damn near has come out at this point against Kennedy's woo driven policies. And yet, he maintains the unwavering support of Donald Trump, the most fickle and disloyal human being that ever existed.

And he manages to do all that, by the way, despite the vast majority of his past policies vis-à-vis abortion, equality, environmentalism, and all that should be an anathema to the mag of movement. I mean, again, I don't want a tinfoil hat here or anything, but you've got to ask at a certain point, who benefits from all this? You know, other than America's adversaries, who benefits from a population that's being actively turned against science. I mean, no matter how nefarious you imagine the corporate bigwigs to be, it's hard to see how they profit off a fucking resurgence of polio, unless, of course, they're after the exact

population decrease that they keep telling us that they're after and they want to concentrate it amongst the least educated. And look, given how speculative all of this is, I normally wouldn't bring it up, especially in the diatribe right? It's ultimately irresponsible to promote unevidence theories based on this level of presumption. But the point I'm out to make isn't even the potential conspiracy. It's about the fact that the biggest flaw in it is that it smacks of wishful thinking. How fucked up is it that we've genuinely reached a point we're thinking that a cabal of power mad conspiracy theorists are intentionally undermining public health and a genocidal effort to eliminate the porn uneducated might be too optimistic.

Because the other possibility, the more likely one, if I'm being honest, is that the stupidity. is genuine and self-sustaining at this point. Because look, if there's a bad guy or even a cabal of bad guys, they can be eliminated. You can take out or expose or arrest or disempower the bad guys, and we can start to rebuild the trust in science that they've set out to undermine. But if ignorance is seeped all the way into the foundation, there might be no way to save it but to rip the whole fucking thing out and start over again. They're talking about your Jesus.

I interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news. Joining me for headlines tonight is the ebb to my flow Eli Bosnick. Eli, are you ready to tide the people over? Grip it and rip it and rip it tight, that's good. That's good. And of course, before we get going, I need to announce that it's vulgarity for charity time once again. Fuck. Yeah. This year, we're raising money for recovering from religion. I'm in the crane stance. A fantastic charity run by fantastic people, one of whom is going to join us later in the show. But the way it works is this. You donate $50 or more to recovering from religion, preferably more,

and you send us a note on who you'd like us to roast along with pictures of them. If they're not a public figure, we're going to be selecting 100 subjects to roast on the air on this show and over on cognitive dissonance. That's going to be the 50 biggest donors along with another 50 chosen at random. And, importantly, we're going to start choosing those random ones before the fundraiser is over. So the earlier you get them in, the more likely yours is to be chosen. So head over to Recoveringfromreligion.org, make a donation, and look for the web form there. where you can submit your roast request. Exactly.

And people, it is 2025. I know you know somebody who deserves the Robbie Starbuck treatment. So, again, that's recovering from religion.org. Click Vogarity for Charity. Top of the page. Give till it hurts someone's feelings. Ooh, I like that as a tag.

Right? Yeah. And with that out of the way, in our lead story tonight, Texas Attorney General, Senate hopeful, and man with an inordinately shiny visage, Ken Paxton, has announced that his state will be suing the makers of Tylenol because Donald Trump is an idiot.

Following on Trump's fictitious accusations that the pain reliever causes autism, Paxton figured that he'd throw a little red meat to the plants crave electrolytes crowd by threatening to hold those autismers accountable. And he'll no doubt rally another round of funding when he accuses the corrupt courts of being in big pharma's pockets for dismissing his bullshit publicity stunt of a lawsuit. man, these judges sure do know a lot about legal minutia. Holy shit, they've been turned. Yeah, right, right.

Now, to be clear, there is no credible evidence linking Tylenol or paracetamol to autism. Of course, it's true that a lot of pregnant people who go on to have children with autism did take Tylenol for pain and or fever during their pregnancy, but that's mostly because acetaminopin, the active ingredient, is the only analgesic that's known to be safe for pregnant women to take. There are decades of research into this shit and not a single credible study has ever demonstrated a link between acetaminopin use and autism. And that's despite the fact that this Tylenol-caused autism shit is not new. It's a conspiracy theory that's been floating around so long that it's already been dismissed once in court back in 2022. Okay, but ironically,

there actually is some evidence that a high fever during your second trimester does increase the risk of autism. So by spreading this bullshit around, there might actually be more autism as it resides really. Yes. It's a whole package. Certainly a lot more pregnant people in pain. But as his lawsuit about the 2020 elections, his lawsuit against media matters for picking on Twitter, and his lawsuit against the Texas State Fair for not allowing people

to openly carry guns on the tilt a whirl aptly demonstrate, lack of merit has never stood between Ken Paxton and a high visibility lawsuit. He announced the suit against both Johnson and Johnson and Kenview, the, the four, and current makers of Tylenol by saying, in part, quote, these corporations lad for decades, knowingly endangering millions to line their pockets, end quote. A statement which itself is a lie that knowingly endangers millions to line Ken Paxton's pockets. Also, these companies weren't told that the skin of your forehead wasn't part of the comb over. So they kind of incorporated it into their look that the companies did.

The Tylenolns. That's what they did. And look, the whole idea that you're going to. going to find the cause of autism is fucking stupid. Okay, anybody who knows anything about autism knows that it's a broad spectrum of behaviors that have a bunch of genetic and environmental components and the whole idea that we're going to find one drug that's been fucking thalidomiting our babies into autism this whole time does a grave disservice to people who are on the spectrum because

it reinforces stereotypes that stand between the neurotypical and an understanding of what autism really is. So even when you set aside all the health complications and needless pain that will arise from all of this random scaremongering about Tylenol during pregnancy, this lawsuit and the trend it represents are still dangerous as hell. They sure are. And in unarmed and dangerous news. According to the Independent,

49-year-old John Paul Sheptock, a Christian musician born without arms, who sang the national anthem at a Donald Trump rally in January 2022, has been arrested on felony charges of producing and possessing child pornography. And while we usually try not to cover Christian child abuse stories because they're depressingly hard to make jokes about, I have way more arm jokes than just that first one. So we will be making an exception. I'm not sure that don't worry. I'm just going to make fun of his disability as doing the work you think it's due in there, Eli's. You know, I thought

I would, you had a really nice thing at the end of that story about autism and I figure we got going to balance it. Okay. No, okay. I kind of care of it. Right. It's a very very, very like inclusive, well-thought-out statement. Now, I need to do a bunch of armed puns to just keep us batting 500. So, first off, big thanks to Ed, who sent us this story along with the fantastic opening pun to scathing news at gmail.com.

Ed, I've got to hand it to you for sending us this story. But if anyone listening is up in arms about it, I'll tell them to point the finger at you, Ed, scathing news at gmail. Okay, so I'm going to do all the sense myself. That's a lot of responsibility to shoulder. I'm sorry. I can't get you.

Right. So, to the facts, Sheptock worked as a worship minister at the First Montgomery Baptist Church in Texas, though the church insists he never worked with children. After all, you know how out of hands kids can get. Okay. According to the arrest affidavit, one victim told police that Sheptock took a picture off her eye cloud when she was 17 and then attempted to blackmail her into sending more. When that didn't work, he reportedly sent her a video showing someone being physically assaulted, accompanied by the warning, I don't want that to happen to you, end quote. Not adding by someone else, of course, what am I going to do? By you? Right. You got to wonder about the thought process that ends on intimidation for this guy, right? Right? Yeah. So for their part,

First Montgomery swears they're working hand in hand with the long arm of the law to make sure this guy ends up in cuffs. Well, under arrest. What matters is this, thanks to the bravery of this victim, and the swift action of law enforcement, this guy will never put his hands on another child again. We made it. Finish line. And in NoLM News,

after getting fired as the CEO of Intel so hard that the shareholders sued him for ever having the job, you might think it would be hard for Patrick Gelsinger to find a job helming a technology company. But dad's only because you weren't thinking of the Christian one. How many of you might be asking yourself, what the fuck is a Christian technology company? Well, apparently in this instance, it's a company called G-L-O-O-O-Glu, and its goal, among others, is to create a Christian AI in order to hasten the return of Jesus.

I feel like if your company was named for people to buy your stock, like they're accidentally renting transmogrifiers on a hotel TV, you're not going to crack theistic AI. That's just my opinion. We'll find out. So first of all, thanks to Ardvarc 97 at Al for sending this story to scathing news at gmail.com. Ardvark 97 for sending us this story, I'm bumping you to the very top of the alphabet. Ooh, all real monsters will be heartbroken.

Well, hey, you know, they had a good run. Anyway, so I should probably point out that glue isn't as pipe dream as I made it sound in my initial description. The whole hastening the return of Christ thing comes from a throwaway line that Gelsinger added to make himself sound more Christian and a lot of the media is running with it. The reality is that this AI product seeks to serve a real need in the market, right? Because regular chatbots that are programmed to say true stuff are a constant pain in the ass if you want to ask questions where you want false answers.

And on questions of faith and the origins of the universe, a huge swath of the population really want false answers. So glue is trying to tweak existing LLMs so they won't keep contradicting the Bible. And if they can do it, I feel like there's money in this. that. Oh, yeah, there is. Okay, so fun fact, I was actually just watching a YouTube video about this. And did you know that you cannot make an LLM that actually believes the Earth is flat? Like, you can have it play a character that thinks the Earth is flat, but when you try to, like, weight a model towards the answer that the Earth is flat, it's just, it's not physically possible

to entrench that level of stupid into an LLM because of the large language it's model. What I'm saying is there are some jobs AI will never take. You know what I'm saying? We're safe. We're safe. Well, we aren't. But yeah.

So it's also worth noting that the AI isn't their only product, which is a good thing because during a recent hackathon, one attendee was pretty easily able to coax it into giving them a viable recipe for meth. Now, apparently, in addition to Christ-hastening AI products, they also provide a bunch of technological products for churches. And they insist that their goal is to make products that are non-denominational. In fact, in their promotional material, Glu points out that they don't even prohibit Muslims from using their technology.

Oh. Which would obviously be illegal as fuck. And how would you do that? But, you know, for Muslims who want a chat bot that will tell them Jesus is the one true Lord and Savior, that's got to come as a relief, I guess. We'll even sell it to a Jew is not the brag you guys think it is. Clearly. Now, of course, to this point, it's been hard for glue to attract much attention in Silicon Valley

and not just because their CEO was just drummed out of there at the point of a lawsuit. When asked about traditional sources of tech funding, Gelsinger admitted that these ideas haven't generated any real interest, but he added, and I will leave it to you, to imagine the tone of self-abasing desperation that these words must have ridden into the world, quote, I want Zuck to care, end quotes. And in Ghost in the Machine Learning News, a TikToker decided to see. if his Tesla could detect ghosts, drove to a cemetery, and sure enough, the dashboard started populating with phantoms. That or

one of Elon Musk's companies is making a thing that's unreliable technologically, and some people are idiots. Either way, we're going to talk about it. Yeah, from what I've seen, it detects the ghosts of trucks and bicycles in your blind spot as well. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. It does. So first off,

big thanks to Paul for sending us this story to scathing news at gmail.com. Paul, for sending us news to skating news at gmail.com. We will check your house for ghosts for free. And ghosts aren't real. You're welcome, Paul, Skating News at Gmail. There, yeah, yeah, well, we were there. We also checked it for gods, mermaids, and moderate Republicans.

You're all good. I don't understand. How are you socially liberal, but all he's gone. He disappeared. So, here's a story. TikToker, Evan Ira, drives his Tesla through a graveyard because it's almost Halloween, and apparently Ouija boards are for poor people.

I don't really know what the thing he was here. But as he's rolling past the headstones, the Tesla screen starts popping up these people walking around his car. Now, it's important to note no one's there. There's no heat signatures. There's no motion because Tesla doesn't have either of those sensors. But it did.

It did show several people were standing outside the car. Conclusion, Tesla's can detect motherfucking ghosts y'all. Yeah, for those of you who haven't ridden in a Tesla, I should point out that they have these like clunky iPads inexpertly soldered onto the dashboard, like some kind of dumbass afterthought, and they show your car and theoretically the auto and pedestrian traffic around you. And from what I've seen in half a dozen Uber rides, it's approximately as effective as the X-ray specs that you got out of the comics in the 1980s. Yeah, exactly. So naturally, the internet loses its mind, right? Tesla detects ghosts, headlines flood, TikTok, YouTube, and inside

eVs.com, you know, only the best sources for you podcast, let's hear. Because the internet, which now has an established problem of falling in love with its Rumba, is going to think their car is a paranormal investigator with Bluetooth. Well, it's about as much of that as it is self-driving, so I get it. Exactly, yeah. Now look, experts have pointed out that it's not ghosts. It's sensor confusion. The radar and cameras bouncing off gravestones, tree branches, the occasional squirrel with body dysmorphia, and then the software just interprets it as man with legs. But this isn't just Tesla. Lee Otto, a Chinese EV brand, said earlier in the year that their driver assist system also detects ghosts on Tomb Sweeping Day, a day of ancestor worship

celebrated across the country. So weird that ghost detection would be called. culturally specific. It's weird, right? It's weird, right? It's when they didn't hear about Halloween, I guess, over in China. But honestly, if the afterlife did choose to appear through the one thing we all stare at instead of the road, that tracks. Because apparently even the dead no, Tesla drivers aren't going to see people until it's too late. Oh, no. Either way, I think we ought to put 30 seconds back on the clock for names of our new ghost-busting vehicle go.

Okay, Mitsubanshi Okay, a reason for this segment Buwik Bubaru Oh, Bougari Nice, nice Lamborghini Ooh, I was impressed

you didn't go with Lambuccini Again there How about a haunt de Civic? I almost want to boo MW The Kia Soul Okay, last one, Ford Pinto Oh no, that's a good one And while we all lament

how much better that segment would have been if Heath had been there. We're going to wrap up the headlines for the night. Eli, thanks as always. Chee-Monging! And when we come back, we'll recover from some fucking religion already. That time has come once again, the time of year when we at Puzzle in a Thunderstorm and Tom and Cecil at Glory Hole Studios, ask you to reach into your wallets and your hearts and support a secular charity in exchange for.

prolific profanity. So here's how vulgarity for charity works. You make a donation of $50 or more, and when you do, you submit a subject that you'd like us to roast. It can be a person in your life, a celebrity, a concept, or just whatever, grind your gears. And over the next couple of months, we're going to be roasting a hundred of those submissions on the air here and over on cognitive dissonance. Now, for reasons that are obvious, if you follow the nonprofit news, we're raising money for a new charity this year, and it's one that I've admired for a very long time. Recovering from religion is a secular toolbox for people harmed by religion that offers a suite of different in-person and online resources. They can help people dealing with the isolation, ostracization, and psychological ramifications of a life spent under the church's thumb.

And it's also run by several of the very best people that I know, one of whom is on the line with me today to tell us a little bit more about the organization. So without further ado, I'm excited to introduce my friend Sherry DeSuzza joining us all the hell away from Australia. Sherry, welcome to the show. Oh my God. I cannot believe I'm here. I'm so excited. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you on the show. And also thank you so much for juggling the time zones to make this happen. It's never easy to interview somebody in Australia. So first of all, what is your position within recovering from religion? Okay. So I am on the board for the international board. I have been since, oh my goodness, January 21. And I am the international development. director because I'm in Australia and because I started the first support

group here. And I'm also very excited to say that we now have an Australian board. We're incorporated as a charity here and I am the public officer and treasurer for the Australian board. Right on. All right. So obviously, I asked you here so that we

had learned a little bit more about RFR, but I think one of the best ways to introduce our audience to all that recovering from religion does is to learn a little bit more about your story and how you wound up a part of the organization. In other words, before we talk about the recovery, we should talk about the religion. Can you tell us a little bit about your religious upbringing? Oh, yes. So I was raised third generation Jehovah's Witness. And there's a lot of baggage with that. I was quite a

dedicated and sincere Jehovah's Witness. I actually believed it. School was hard. It was hard to integrate and socialise with non-witnesses. In fact, that's actively discouraged. You can't. Higher education is not allowed. Of course, you have the whole being a woman thing. I decided to leave school young at the age of 16. I was already baptized as a witness by that point. And I decided to volunteer as a full-time pioneer, which is meaning that you devote 90 hours a month knocking on doors. And I did that for 10 years of my life. Wow. I know. I supported myself financially by working part-time in a array of different jobs. My first was at McDonald's. I was also a waitress for a period of time. So I was a pretty sincere witness. I married

a full-time pioneer as well. And he actually worked five years as a volunteer at the headquarters in Sydney called Bethel. And in order to do that, you have to sign a vow of poverty and you are only given a stipend at that point in time. It was about $100 a month that you had to somewhat make ends meet on. What? Yeah. Wow. I know. There's all these things that people don't know about the Jehovah's Witnesses. It is quite an insular organization and it is very controlling. Of course, I didn't realize that while I'm in it though. Right, right. Yeah. It's just, what you know, especially if you grow up in it. So I'm sure I could talk to you for half an hour or just about your experiences within that church. But let's fast forward a little bit. So when did

when did the faith start to crack? Can you tell me a little bit about how you started to lose your faith? Yeah. I mean, I'm still analyzing how it all unraveled, but the crunch time really came at the end of 2016. When I finally had the courage to read the report, the findings. report from the Australian Royal Commission into institutional responses to sexual child abuse and the Jehovah's Witnesses were case study 29 and as I started to read that report Noah the whole house of cards started to collapse as I read it because I realized oh my goodness this religion is covering up staggering amounts of child abuse that would make the Catholic Church blush. Just to give your listeners a little bit of an insight there, the Royal Commission,

what the Australian government did in analysing how organisations responded to allegations and claims of child abuse, obviously the Catholic Church was a prominent organisation. We have a population of 26 million people. At the time of the report, around 2014, there were 5 million Australian citizens claiming to be Catholic. Of that, from 1950 to 2012, the Catholic Church was holding reports and allegations of 4,44 allegations of child sexual abuse in that time. For comparison, Jehovah's Witnesses had a membership of 68,000 at that point in time. And from the same time period, 1950 to 2012, they were holding reports of 106 allegations. of child abuse.

Oh, my God. I know. And they had not reported one single case to the police or the child protection authorities. Wow. So reading that report, I literally felt the whole house of cards tumble around me and it was traumatic to say the release. Well, yeah, I mean, especially of all the churches to come out of, right? Because Jehovah's Witnesses did that, you know, I'm assuming you were like disfellowshiped

and ostracized, wouldn't you? Oh, no. No, no. So a little bit of a torrid story. My husband at the time had already done the work of waking up. So he'd already been exposed as an apostate at that point. And they did try to disfellowship him, but Sutter just refused to comply with any of the elders' requests to meet for a meeting, which kind of staggered me. I was like, you can say no to the elders. So I had about an 18-month period of where I stopped attending meetings because I was so disgusted with how the congregation had treated Sasha, who I saw was having this, I thought it was a midlife crisis as he was

coming out of the religion. But that actually gave me the space to not be tugged into or plugged into the religion, not going to meetings, not being part of the community, gave me that space I needed to then be able to read the report. So, no, I wasn't disfellowshiped at that time. I didn't get disfellowshiped. Lucinda's going to love this story, by the way. I'll keep it as short as I can. But I did a lot in the years following.

2018, I and Sasha both together. We did an interview with a very well-known ex-Johavers Witness activists at the times. And we thought that being out and open as exes, as apostates would get us just fellowshiped. Nope, didn't happen then. In June 2019, we hosted an event in Sydney. To this date, the largest ex-to-hovers witness event. We had 130 people come to Sydney. We had some activists from international places come along. We even had an LA film crew come along. And I don't know how I pulled this off, but we had Angus Stewart, who was the Senior Council for the Royal Commission, who was then a federal government.

judge come along as well. Oh, wow. He has hero status for us, X.J. Dobb, so he came along. I thought, this is surely got to get me to fellowship now. Nope. Didn't happen until November 2019, after I did a four and a half hour live stream with an XJ dub activist tearing apart the elder's secret handbook that no one is supposed to see except elders and certainly no woman is to see.

Oh, wow. And certainly no woman is to critique it. And I kind of made it a bit of a, I tried to make it lighthearted. So throughout the four and a half hour live stream, I had an array of head coverings because another little known fact is that if Jehovah's Witness women are in the presence of a baptized man and they do something, they have to conduct something that normally would be a man's role to do, they have to wear a head coverings. And so I decided to make this a fun thing, and I wore a baseball cap, I had a bike helmet,

I had a horse racing fascinator. Oh, it was just after Halloween, so I had a witch's hat, and I had a Christmas theme thing as well. I ripped the bag out of it. Well, apparently that was the thing that tore it all apart. And three days later, without telling us, they announced it from the local Kingdom Hall that Sasha and I were no longer Jehovah's Witnesses, and they were, rang our family across Australia and told them, but they didn't tell us that we were just fellowshiped.

And I'd also like you to note that because of the action I took, Sasha got taken out and just fellowshiped as well. Oh, wow. So, okay, so, no, and when that happens, did you lose, like, I'm assuming you lost access to your family, friends, support group, or how does it go from there? Well, we'd already lost it before then. Oh, we'd lost it well before. So as soon as Sasha had been exposed to an apostate, that's when the shunning started instantly.

The grapevine is very active and as soon as it was known that Sasha was apostate, that was it. So we were already quite accustomed to shunning. It wasn't that it got worse. Well, actually, no, I retract that. It did get a little worse because now if we came across witnesses in our community, I remember quite notably after we were disfellowshiped and we didn't know we'd been disfellowshiped. We bumped into some witnesses at the local shopping center

and they literally hissed at us. Really? They hissed. Like cats? Yes. I mean, apologies to cats to, you know, comparing them to Jehovah's Witnesses and whatnot. But wow.

So, okay, so let's bring recovering from religion into this. So how did you first hear about them? Well, I heard about them from podcasts and just a little anecdote. I first learned about scathing atheist and cognitive dissonance by attending Skepticon in November 2017 in Sydney. And I had no idea about you guys before, but listening to you that day, it very quickly became part of my weekly regime, but it was part of that community, then learning about the thinking atheist and the friendly atheist

and hearing these podcasters refer to recovering from religion started to put that into my brain. But it was after that event I described in June 2019, I was looking for the next thing to do. And I happened to speak to another ex-witness of mine, close friend, Shana Rubio, who also happens to be on the board for recovering from religion. And I'm telling her, I want something else to do now.

I don't know how else to help the community. And she said, I need to introduce you to Darrell Ray and you need to have a chat with him. So I did that. I described what I was wanting to do. And Darrell very generously just said, look, we've been doing this work already. Why don't you come on board as a volunteer? You'll go through our training. We willingly share that with you.

Take what you want from that and then see what you want to do from there. And once I did that and I went through the volunteer process and went through the training, I'm like, why we create the wheel? Why don't we just bring recovering from religion to Australia? And use all of the resources, use all of the tools that they've already developed, all the policies, the procedures, everything. Why don't we just bring it here? So we did that and we started the first support group in April 2020,

never got to meet in person. It went online immediately. But that's how it started. All right. That's awesome. So for people who are not familiar with recovering from religion, this is an organization with a lot of irons in the fire, right? There's a lot of different things that the RFR does. So I've got a list here of a few of them.

And I'd like to tell our audience a little bit about those. Starting with the Hotline Project, which we've talked about quite a bit on this show before. So can you tell people who haven't heard of that before what it is? Yeah. So there is a 24-hour telephone and internet chat available. It is across the globe. We cover 20 time zones. We have over 500 volunteers at the moment. Those volunteers are not all helpline agents, though, because as you said, we've got multiple prongs in the fire and multiple projects on the go. But that helpline and online chat is an invaluable tool for anyone coming out of high control religion,

because, as I described with my story, you don't know who to talk to. You don't know who's safe to talk to. And often the people around you are not safe because of the repercussions of that. So one of our messages is no one should do this journey alone. And so that helpline really provides peer support to anyone across the globe. And we have people across all time zones that call. About 30% of callers on the helpline or on the chat, come from Muslim-controlled countries.

And we have a whole protocol on how to make sure that those callers are safe and protected and that they're not at risk when they access our services. So that's, I mean, the helpline I could talk forever about. It's really just incredible. And the agents are trained so well. It's not about us pushing our agenda. It's not about us at all. We're just here to provide that support.

for the caller and help them navigate what it is they're going through. So we use active listening. We use reframing and rephrasing questions to help that individual work out where they're at. And then we've got an extensive resources library that we can direct them to so that they can develop tools and resources to help them navigate that journey wherever they end up going. It's not about the end goal, whether they choose.

to keep their faith or not, that's entirely up to them. We're just here to hold a hand the way through, and that helpline is one of the avenues that we do it with. Support groups is my baby. I love the support groups. Being able to go to a group and hear your story reflected in the stories of others is, again, something that makes you feel less alone, but it also very quickly became part of my therapy

because I was so Jehovah's Witness-centric. I felt like only Jehovah's Witnesses can understand the trauma of a Jehovah's Witness. I very quickly found out that's not the case, that as I listened to ex-Mormons, former Muslims, in Australia, Hillsong and the Pentecostal movement, big thing, and we have people that have been coming out of Hillsong attend those support groups, you start to see, oh, this is not Jehovah's Witness domain. The same patterns, the same behaviours, the same control mechanisms are across all of them.

And so hearing other people's stories, it was just very cathartic and healing to do that. So that's support group. Some of the other things that we have, we have a online community via Slack that we have trained moderators in to make sure it's a safe environment. It's very private. We vet everybody that comes through into that community so that it is somewhere that people can explore, get to know one another, and get access to just that peer support, feeling less alone as you go through that journey.

Then we have the secular therapy project. So what I've mentioned so far with the support groups, the online community and the helpline, that's our peer support where we're trained, but we are not therapists. The secular therapy project is a register of vetted secular therapists that are not going to tell you, as you seek professional help, to pray about it. They're not going to bring religious ideology. It's not going to taint their therapy at all. They're going to use evidence-based treatment,

cognitive behavior therapy, acceptance therapy. There's all sorts of so many different treatments. modalities that can be used to help treat religious trauma. The secular therapy project helps link you to a therapist that can help you professionally. But I still see my psychologist. In fact, I'm going to be seeing him later on today. It is an essential part of recovering from religious trauma. There's many more things that RFR does apart from that. The fall excursion. Once a year, we have like a three-day retreat where people can actually physically come and be together. And those excursions, oh, Noah, they are absolutely wonderful from so many points of view. We have different speakers

like Darrell will speak about all sorts of different things. We have active things, active tasks like meditation sessions or walks where we go to nature walks. Some of the secular therapists actually come along and say we'll do, like I, identity rebuilding sessions, helping us sort of work out, what's your core values now? What were they when you were religious? And what are they now? We also, at last year's, well, not this year's, but last years, we did a bonfire where we could bring something along to the bonfire that was representative to our religious personhood

and where we'd been before, say a few words and throw that into the bonfire. It was one of the most cathartic things. Ooh, did you bring George Pell? No, it would be a little bit too late for that. A little bit too late. No, but what I did bring was my baptism Bible. And I read out a scripture that was the reason as a nine-year-old I decided to become a Jehovah's Witness. And I read that out in memory of that nine-year-old and then threw that into the bonfire.

It was incredibly meaningful for me. And everyone else, there was not a dry eye. Everyone, no matter what story they shared, no matter what it was, they threw into the bonfire. It was just lots of hugs, lots of tears, lots of healing. It was, the fall excursion is amazing. And it's a dream of mine to have one here in Australia someday. Ooh, that would be great. Well, that sounds amazing. I, you know, for a book burning, it sounds great. So, and there's actually, there's quite a bit more that RFR does. Unfortunately, we're running out of time here. And there's just a couple of the things that I want to chat about

real quick while I still have you. The first is that I understand, I'm sure. that there are a lot of people that are listening and would really love to help but aren't able to donate financially. So is there anything else that they can do that would help recovering from religion and its mission? Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's lots of things that you can do that don't involve money to help us out. If any of what I've described, if you are interested in volunteering, you don't have to have a skill set. We can train you. You just have to have the desire and the bandwidth in the time. If that interest, to you at all? Or if you've got something, a skill set that you have, that you would like to

donate to us in a way, like you might have a skill set with IT, or you might have some marketing ideas, or you might be really great at social media and have some ideas on how you can promote RFR to more and more people across the world. Just telling other people about us. If you know people in your life who are struggling with religious trauma or are beginning to have questions, tell them about us. That helps. There's lots of things that can be done that don't involve money. Money is great, by the way. Yeah, but still get those vulgarity, progeny, donations in regardless.

Yeah, and as you tell people about it, I'm sorry, the hotline project or the helpline is 1-888, I doubt it, right? I doubt it, yes, but we have lines across the world. So all you need to do is go to recovering from religion.org, and that will list the numbers across the world. Oh, awesome, yeah. All right, so, and then I have one last question for you, because I'll Obviously, there's a lot that recovering from religion does, but there's so much more that

needs to be done. And I'm sure our listeners are going to be really excited to help with what's next. So what do you think, what could recovering from religion do if our listeners can take your annual budget to the next level? Well, what we're working on is building towards stability. So we're building toward the future. We need to future proof recovering from religion. And unfortunately, it's money that's going to help us to do that.

If we're going to grow and that's what we want, we are growing into Australia, Dr. Ray has just come back from a tour in the UK and in Ireland and there's so much potential there and in Europe to expand. But if we want to grow, we have to be able to do that. We have to fund that growth with confidence and not desperation. Organisations that live hand to mouth, they don't last very long. We want to safeguard the money that is donated to us. and that has been entrusted to us and spend it really wisely. So the programs that I've just

mentioned, yes, they all require money to fund. And we're being very wise about where we put the dollar. We make sure that we have, we've got funds that we can rely on when things are dry, when things are difficult for people to donate. But then when we do get funds, where can we make the most of it? So they're the type of things that we're working on. In Australia, we've got huge plans. we are a registered charity and a registered not-for-profit, but we are missing one little thing, and that is with the Australian Taxation Office. We are very close to getting our tax deductible status, which means that we'll be able to give receipts for tax deduction purposes. We're not yet there in Australia, but we're very close. It's the last thing that

we need to do. So that's Australia. But the US, we've got huge plans on that front as well. There's a lot of things we can do to lobby and make a difference to this group that is rapidly growing. One thing that I just want to sort of close on, Noah, is that in Australia, we have our census next year. Our last census showed that the non-religious were the most rapidly growing group with 39% of people identifying as no religion. We have every reason to think that that is going to increase again next year. And where RFR Australia wants to go is that with that, we can then go to the government

and lobby to get more programs, more action, more protections for people that do not identify as religious and be able to get access to services for those that are suffering with religious trauma. I could talk forever on this, but yes, there's a lot we want to do. That's awesome. Well, Sherry, thank you so much for your time today and for all the effort that you and your colleagues at RFR have put into our community. It's genuinely appreciated across the board. Oh, and thank you for all you guys do.

Honestly, it is a really beautiful collaboration that we have and we are just so grateful for it. Thank you so much. Yeah, we're super excited about it because as of this episode coming out, donations for this year's Vulgarity for Charity are open. You can go to recovering from religion.org. click on the donate button on the upper right side of the page once you've made your donation there's a web form on the very same website just look across the top to where you see vulgarity for charity it'll tell you all about it we're going to be doing a hundred roast this year that's going be the 50 top donors and 50 chosen at random and the earlier you get your donations in the more

likely you are to make it into that random draw since we're going to be doing some of them before the fundraiser ends it ends on thanksgiving day that's american thanksgiving canadians so if you'd like to learn even more about rfr and this year's fundraiser be sure to listen to cognitive dissonance on Monday, where Tom and Cesar are going to be chatting with Recovering from Religion's President and founder Darrell Ray. Sherry, thanks again. Thank you so much. Our favorite secular conference came to an end last weekend in Manchester, England,

and we're really sad to see it go, but we're simultaneously thrilled for Alice, Andy, Marsh, Nichol, and all the other organizers who finally get to sleep through multiple nights in October. Of course, it's become something of a tradition on the show to count down our top ten memories from events like this, but the point was always to convince you, dear listener, to attend to the next one.

But since there won't be a next one, this time we're just doing it for the fucking love of the game. Fuck yeah, we are. Number 10. So if you missed QED this year because you were too slow to get your tickets before they sold out or

because something wildly less important, like your family or your job kept you from attending, you're probably now kicking yourself thinking that you missed your last opportunity ever to see just how great a skeptical convention can be. Well, we've got very good news. That should probably be near the top of this list, but we didn't want to bury the lead.

So we are pleased to announce that QAD's skeptical organizers and the Merseyside Skeptics will be hosting the European Skeptics bi-annual conference, October 16th through the 18th in Liberville. of next year. Tickets to the event sold out so fast that the attendees of QED sold out and then

crashed the website for briefsales, but there are more tickets on the way. So keep your ear to the ground and don't hesitate to book when tickets are available. That's good one. Number nine. Learning that I love vultures. So as I already mentioned, I was doing a lot during the conference, so I didn't get to catch many of the talks. But as ever, the talks that I did catch were awesome. The one that I think stood out to me the most, though, was Emma McClockland's talk about vultures. She works at the Muncaster Hawk and Owl Center as their head of birds, which seems like a damn important job at a hawk and owl center. Yeah, you know, she just rubs it in with the head of mice at every Christmas party. And she's like, oh, how are that food doing it? Yeah, right. So anyway,

so she gave a talk about vultures in the way that they're demonized in fiction and how damn near every species of them is critically endangered and how important their role in the ecosystem is. It was an awesome talk. It was a lot of fun. It's always fun to listen to people talk about the shit that they're really passionate about, especially when they challenge the biases that you didn't even know you had along the way. So, great talk.

Number eight. The free speech and the culture war panel. Now, I am, of course, biased towards any panel that includes Lydia and Thomas Smith over the serious inquiry only podcast, but they had an especially tricky job to do and they did a spectacular job of it because Britain is going through a very different free speech debate than we are right now. And the way they managed to have an international and

subtle conversation of both those situations was really impressive. And I mentioned this because I feel like you hear a lot about how the left can't have conversations or the left is closed to any disagreement. But that panel was a great example that that opinion, like everything else from the right. Well, it's bullshit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Unfortunately, I had to miss that one because all the best shit this year was across from either my panel, my talk, or the incredulous record. Speaking of which.

Number seven. As awkward as it is to list my panel is one of my favorite memories. The people that Dr. Alice paired me with made it a no-brainer. So I was on a panel about stealth Christian nationalism. And basically it was about the way American Theocracy is funding a Theocratic Movement in Europe And despite the fact that I was paired with Andrew Copson, head of the Humanist UK and former head of Humanist International, and Sean Norris, senior investigative reporter for Open Democracy and author of a book that's like exactly on the subject we were talking about, Dr. Alice assured me that I was not just the comic relief. I was also the token American. Number six. Dr. Abby's Talk. Sacred Poisons. So if you're unaware of the work of Dr. Syriac, Abby. Abby. Phillips, aka the liver doc, he is doing incredibly difficult and dangerous work of fighting

pseudoscience within the medical system of India. Now, this is a dude who is saving his patients from bullshit cures, publicizing his results in hopes of seeing change, all at great personal risk. This is a guy who has been sued, criminally investigated, has had his family docks and his lab and associates physically attacked, and he still continues to do his work. I highly encourage you to check out his stuff and support him if you can. I was blown away by his bravery.

Skeptic of the year, indeed. Number five. Kissing Incredulous Goodbye. So, Incredulous is genuinely the best podcast in the skeptical space. You gotta wait for it. It debuted in February of 2010 and there have been 54 episodes.

But as bad as one episode every three and a half month sounds, I should remind you that the first nine episodes came out on a monthly schedule. So it's actually worse than that. Yeah, it's like your first kiss when you're Christian. It's worth waiting for. Exactly.

But for all the time that he puts into it, Andy consistently produces genuinely one of the most entertaining and well-crafted shows on the internet. And it's always a delight to participate in. There are not many podcasts. I've guessed it on seven fucking times, but I would guess on Incredulous seven times a year if Andy would make that many.

But along with QED, Incredulous retired last weekend. And for its final episode, Andy invited Eli Heath and me on All to Guest Together, which I think was a first, or maybe it was just the first with just the three of us, but it was a real honor to see that show off. And to be honest, I damn near teared up when we closed that episode. Absolutely. Number four. A tarot reading with no illusions.

So if you're lucky enough to have attended the protests at the Ark Park or the last couple of years at the Free Flow Convention down in Orlando, Florida, you've gotten to hear one of our very own No Illusions fantastic talks on Christian movies, Christian video games, or the bullshit of the tarot. But I'd always have thought a little bit less of QED if Noah had never graced their main stage without me dressed as a lettuce next to him.

Well, luckily for me and everyone else there, Noah presented his fantastic talk, a tarot reading with No Illusions, which talked about how we fool ourselves and others with bullshit, had some absolutely banger jokes and even revealed a secret of magic. Sorry about that.

It's okay. I forgive you. So if you didn't see it, ask your convention organizers, pretty, pretty please, and maybe you'll get to see it one day. Number three. Cup of Pug.

Look, I know that the point here is to talk about the conference and conference related stuff, but holy fucking shit. Watching Heath, Anna, and Eli experience basically being in a ball pit, except for instead of the balls, it's pugs, is pretty much the best thing that ever happened. And we were there with like 17 people, so I just, I got to watch a bunch of my friends get buried in pugs.

Yeah. In retrospect, I shouldn't have screamed, I'm ready to die, take me now. God, as many times as I did. I know, it was honest. Because, yeah, felt honest. I was excited, yeah. Number two. Meaning all of you.

I'd be lying if I didn't say this year was a little bittersweet. There are so many of you that I've only gotten to see once a year. And that once a year has been because of QED. And look, I know I'll see many of those same faces in Liverpool next year, but there's a part of me that packs my suitcase for QED every year knowing that you're going to be there, knowing how excellent the vibe will be and how long the elevators are going to take. No matter what happens in the future, those moments we shared will be incredibly special to me. And hey, in case I never told you, I was just as excited to meet you, and I'm your biggest fan.

Aw. Number one. Okay, so if you've listened for a while and you know how these segments tend to go, you're going to be thinking maybe Eli stole my line, right? Because we always do meeting all of you as the number one. And I met some awesome people this year. A bunch of people came to QED for the first time, this time, and I got to hear a lot of stories and co-star and a lot of selfies.

And it was great, as always. But this year, there actually was something even better. You remember how I said I almost cried after the incredulous episode? Well, there was one part of the weekend that actually did make me cry and it made me fucking ball. So it's Saturday night. They do this big gala dinner, which is followed by a show hosted by our very own Eli Bosnick that includes several. I was fantastic. You were awesome.

As were the other comedians that were there, as was Michael Marshall, who gives out the Ackham Awards, which is like the skeptic of the year and the Rusty Razor Award for the biggest woo merchant piece of shit of the year. But this year, there was a third award. So after Marsh gets done, giving away the awards, he goes to walk off stage, but Eli stops him and he kind of pins him on stage. and Marsh is rightly terrified. As well, he should be. Yeah, but instead of revealing that he was wearing a tearaway suit and a G-string, as Marsh no doubt feared, Eli brought on the woman who originally gave out the awards

to give out a special one-time award to the organizers of QED for a decade and a half of crushing the competition and putting on the best goddamn conference in the business and going out on top. Fuck, yeah, they did. So, yeah, so it was really kind of heartbreaking to see it go, but I'm glad that we got to play our part in it before it was gone. Here's to all the memories, not just the top ten.

Before we retreat to the archives, I want to thank all the listeners that came to see us in the final QED. I especially want to thank all the listeners who stopped me long enough to tell me what the show means to them. I've said this before, but when you sit in an empty room as often as I do, it can feel like you're just talking to an empty room. It's nice to be reminded otherwise. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be to look out for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend Godawful movies, debuting at 7am Eastern on Tuesday,

and an even newer episode of our half-sister show Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I can't wrap this episode up if I don't thank Heath Enright for being here in spirit. Eli Bosni for being here in body and lucent illusions for being here in mind.

I want to thank Sherry one more time for sharing so much of her. story with us. I also want to thank Matthew for providing this week's Farnsworth, quote, and I'll talk to my people at the Vatican, see if we can get you a mister or something for next time. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best people. Paul Michael well-regulated home education for the win. Nick Ichibento, Katie Pope is dope, Audrey, Jenmu, LVLX, Jacob, Bo, Sye, and Robert. Paul Michael well-regulated and Nick, whose yearbook superlatives just said most. Itchy bento, Katie, dope, and Audrey are so strong,

the strong force got downgraded to the less weak force. and Jenmoo, Jacob, Beau, Sye, and Robert, who are so hot, they have to be factored into the local heat index. Together, these 13 thoroughly thoughtful free thinkers thwarted Theocracy's thorny thicket this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, especially right now, but if you do, you can make a per-episode at patreon.com 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 scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help at your furloughed or some kind of bullshit like that, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review. telling afraid about the show and following us on social media and speaking of social media,

Tim Robertson handles that for us and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats or find all the content info on the content page at scaling aadies.com. me for headlines tonight is the ebb to my flow, Eli Bosnick. Fellas. Fellas, no.

I wasn't going to call you on it. I figured it was, you know, the pattern needed to be maintained and it was best to just leave it being. Yeah, one more time. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4-255 or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org. The preceding podcast, This was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved. Everyone's got a pro. Need tires? I've got a pro. Car making it weird sound? I've got a pro. So who's that pro? The pros at TreadExperts. From Toyo's Observe Winterline to Celsius and open country, Toyota tires can handle it all.

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