The Scathing Atheist - 701: DC-eased Edition

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

In this week’s episode, Trump doesn't WANNA get a shot, godless commie aliens wanna sap your precious ova and bodily fluids, and we’ll learn how to protect ourselves from the dangers of getting laid.---To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheistTo 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] check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticratTo check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-moviesTo check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/---Guest Links:Learn more about Bahacon here: https://bahacon.com/---Headlines:Trump signs executive order to give measles a fighting chance: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/trumps-vaccine-order-would-require-millions-of-individual-shots-last-used-decades-agoColorado school district dumps Bible-heavy curriculum borrowed from Texas after 3 days: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/colorado-school-district-dumps-bibleSCOTUS to hear case of Catholic schools that want state money even though they ban gay parents’ kids: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/08/scotus-to-hear-case-of-catholic-schools-that-want-state-money-even-though-they-ban-gay-parents-kids/Paxton, Talarico tap contrary versions of God and Christianity in appeal to Texas voters: https://religionnews.com/2026/08/13/paxton-talarico-tap-contrary-versions-of-god-and-christianity-in-appeal-to-texas-voters/Paxton is a pen stealer: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-joplin-talarico-ken-paxton-pen-thief_n_6a7f5b92e4b0459fa2d2ceb6Televangelist claims aliens invaded her body, took her eggs: https://roysreport.com/televangelist-claims-aliens-invaded-her-body-took-her-eggs/

Warning, this podcast orders its profanity by the fuckton. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Aoraframes and by the first name and invisibility cloaks for the discerning capital lawn Vandal, the Kentzifa model three. Can't Seifa by Vandalay Industries. And now, the scathing atheist. It's Thursday. It's August 20th. And it's national radio day. Yeah, don't touch that dial.

Just turn it off and press it. the power button and listen to this and stuff. There you go. I'm no illusions. I'm Elon Bosnik. I'm Heathenright. From Danny Davido's New Jersey. Oh, yeah. And I'm from Michigan and way across Georgia. This is the Gathing East.

On this week's episode, Trump doesn't want to get a shot. Godless commie aliens want to sap your precious ova and bodily fluids. They do. And we'll learn how to protect ourselves from the dangers of getting laid. But first, the diatriol. I've now been to Washington, D.C., three different times in my life. I went there on a family vacation when I was a kid. I was there for the reason rally in 2016. And I went again this past weekend for a live record of Godawful

movies. And honestly, I kind of wish that I'd never been before this visit because I think the site of what it's become would have been a lot less depressing if I didn't have any personal experience to compare it to. It is no exaggeration to say that that city feels like it's being occupied by a foreign army. The National Guard's still out there. Ostensibly, they're tasked with fighting some sort of crime, right? But actually, they're just standing around in big groups, intimidating the populace, looking bored, like they don't want to fucking be there. And not that you really need additional examples of feels like it's occupied after active groups of soldiers standing around on random street corners, but you've also got Trump's malignant visage dangling from government

buildings like Big Brothers' less photogenic uncle. There are also highly visible signs of Trump's historical levels of mismanagement contributing to the overall feel of decimation. All the stalled construction around the White House is demolished. East Wing gives Pennsylvania Avenue a very last scene of a disaster movie vibe. Right. And then you've got the walled off pool of festering slurm over by the Lincoln Memorial, looking like the cops cordoned off the area where they finally took out the radioactive

sludge monster. And then you got all the dead grass from the dud of a state fair and or the west. vandals that keep out fox and his beautification efforts. And the whole city feels like it's recovering from a war. A war, by the way, that America lost. And I guess it basically is. The playbook of Christian nationalism was always to declare war on democracy, to declare a war that divided the nation in half and rooted out the insufficiently pious,

the insufficiently American. the whole point of all of this shit, well, the parts of any did on purpose anyway, was to make people like me feel unwelcome, to feel like we were intruding on a space that wasn't meant for us, and that's exactly the effect that it had. See, this was my third trip to the nation's capital,

but it was Lucinda's first. She'd never been there before. And leading up to it, there was a part of me that was really excited to show her all the iconic architecture and historical grounds in the city, right? I mean, I'm hardly a zealous patriot, but I'm a bit of a history buff,

and the history of the U.S. in general and Washington, D.C., in particular, is pretty damn cool. So the first thing we did when we got there, okay, the first thing we did was we hit up a weed shop. But the second thing when we did when we got there is we went on down to the Capitol grounds, and we set out on that like hour or so long walk through the National Mall and say what you will about this country. But that's a pretty cool fucking walk, right? You started the Capitol building, which is a marvel by itself. But then it takes you through a bunch of pristine parks, through a Linus, Missou. Institute museums and the National Gallery of Art on the way to the Washington Monument.

And then you go on to the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and it culminates in Abe Lincoln, all Zeus-like in repose. And all along the way, it's peppered with sculptures and fountains and tree-line paths. And every step of it is thick with history. I've done that walk twice before. And on both occasions, I was a bit overwhelmed by it. Not just by the architecture and the artwork, but by the atmosphere around. the reverence of the tourists experiencing it for the first time and shown it to their kids for the first time, the marvel of those throngs of foreign visitors. And also that like that Whitmanesque thread of chronological connection that you feel when you think about all the historical

titans that have walked that same path before you. And I wanted to share that with my wife, but it isn't there anymore. It was nowhere to be found in Trump's D.C. You might get a whiff of its rotting corpse as you walk by the reflecting pool, but that was about it. When I stood in the shadow of the Washington Monument, I tried to summon that like deep-seated fucking pledge of allegiance patriotism. It used to stir in me the other times that I saw it. But the best I could do was to look at it and think about how scary it must have been for Spider-Man to have to climb up. Lucinda and I actually gave up before we made it all the way to the Lincoln Memorial.

Something about looking Lincoln in the eyes in this DC. didn't seem right. Plus, it was hot, and we were sticky. And in several places, there were literally more National Guard and Homeland Security officers than there were tourists. We felt unwelcome and suspect and sad. All those national symbols just seemed contaminated when I thought about the corruption and the deception and the cronyism and the bigotry and the international gulag archipelago

that Trump's hiding immigrants in. Taking any modicum of the national. national pride in them that I was raised with felt perverse. I mean, if you take an honest look at U.S. history, most of the mythologies of freedom and greatness, they all fall apart, right? But the symbolic ideals of America that were instilled in us as children are still worthy of our pride. Yes, we failed to live up to them. But aspirations don't need to be realized to be admirable. They just need to be aspired to. But we don't even do that anymore. And no one all this shit.

that Trump has revealed and Trumpism has revealed about who we are as a country and who our neighbors are, I'm honestly not sure if we can get it back. They're talking about your Jesus. May interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Gun Jang and Doan Jang to Ma Goetru Jang, Heath Edright, and Eli Bosnick fellas. Are you ready to spice it up? Welcome to the jangle.

Let's do it. And I am a little saltier than I should be. So this all tracks. There's all makes sense. We've got punning games. Well done. I want to make it clear to the audience that the setup I gave these guys was, you got anything on classic Korean cooking sauces and they delivered.

So while I marvel once again at their comedic prowess, we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, OroFraFrains. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, I want to hit you with one of those thoughts that just, really makes you smile. At some point, somebody is going to be listening to this episode in the archives and Donald Trump will be dead. They'll be listening to this episode and they'll hear me talking about Trump and they'll be going, oh man, you remember when that asshole was alive,

shit sure was worse back then. But lest we bathed too long in the thought that we're technically speaking to the post-Trump world, I need to bring us all crashing back to reality with a reminder that last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order to lower the number of vaccines children receive as part of the standard vaccine schedule. Because as it stands now, measles doesn't even have a fighting chance. Oh, man. In an alternative timeline where we get like a planet of the ape situation where the measles virus becomes sentient and takes over the world, RFK Jr. is their Harriet Tubman.

Right? You know? Yeah. Okay, that guy's rendition of following the drinking gourd. That's kind of hard to follow his voice. It doesn't matter. We're measles. We just go in all directions.

And you got what it is. Now, to be clear, Trump's EO doesn't carry the force of law. The way Trump's using them, they've largely just been reduced to policy statements at this point. You guys were so mad. I didn't have a platform in the election. Now I'm getting around to it and you're mad again. There you know.

What are you on? But just because it doesn't have any official weight doesn't mean it's not going to do any real damage, right? It's going to change what some parents ask for. It's going to change what some schools require. And if they lean hard enough, it might even change what some insurance companies cover. And the end result of all that is an increase in vector. Preventable illnesses, most of them not afflicting the people who made the decision not to vaccinate. Yeah. Just a reminder that vaccine preventable deaths almost always affect children under the age of vaccination.

So you're not a vaccine skeptic so much as you are a murderer, a murderer. That's the term. Yeah. Pro-life murderer. Yeah. In a lot of cases. So chief among the changes, Trump's order calls for us he wants some of the vaccines that are lumped together spread out into separate shots. he likes it when babies cry and he wants him to get stabbed more. It also directs a bunch of federal money to be wasted studying bullshit conspiracy theories about autism that have already been thoroughly debunked.

And it also reduces the total number of diseases that children would be vaccinated against from 18 to 11. Yeah, let's knock that number down. Cool. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because at this point in his career, I guess Trump relates more with childhood diseases than children. You know, I used to give kids diseases

directly on Jeff's Island, but we got in a fight over a beach house, so kind of got to make it indirect. You guys remember when I blew Bill Clinton? Classic, Bubba. Is this on, right? No, no. It was a horse, Heath. It was a horse named Bill.

Don't make him seem weird. No, it wasn't. And look, it's worth pointing out that the ultimate power over vaccinations mostly lies with the states. There's a lawsuit preventing Trump and RFK Jr. from implementing this new schedule in an official way. But in a lot of states, that's not going to. matter, right? Because a lot of governors are hell-bent on following Trump off whatever fucking cliff he's directing them towards. And Ron DeSantis has never met a deadly public health policy

that he didn't like. We will be bringing back mumps and rebella and all that shit. What's more, there isn't much science on giving kids the vaccines using the idiotic system Trump just made up. So there's likely to be complications beyond just bringing back the preventable diseases. Yeah, we don't know what Milkleg adds to 2026. but it's probably not going to be like flight. Right. Magical powers, right. And milk like,

uh, and even for people who do believe in vaccines, this is going to fuck it up. Like more than a third of registered Democrats couldn't be bothered to vote against Donald Trump in 2024. Imagine if they had to show up three different times on three different days to vote. Yes, absolutely.

We as a people are quite lazy. So yeah, It's the official policy of this administration at this point that vaccines cause autism regardless of what the fucking science says. Trump brought that up repeatedly in his press conference about this CEO. And that's hardly the first time he's made an issue of it during his second term. So I guess the only silver lining here is that apparently Tylenol is off the hook. Not for me, Tylenol. I've had to watch cars so many fucking times.

You won't. It's on. I feel like a lot of parents and neurotypical kids could go toe to toe with you on how many times. times they watched cars, though. Okay. How many flip books does your kid have? You win that one. Okay. How many have you crashed this month?

Exactly. Okay, that's fair. You know what? I've crashed a lot of flip books. Wait, why? And cars. And in Slop Quiz News. Public school district of about 2,200 students in Colorado,

just realized the curriculum they took from Texas is full of biblical nonsense and AI slops. up. And yes, this all came from the idiots in Texas that we've talked about before. The Texas school board, well, I wasn't even talking about them, but they approved a new curriculum in 2024, and they hired a company of Christian zealots who infected all the schools with their propaganda in Texas. And much like the measles and recessive Republican sunburn DNA, the infection spread to another state. The program is called Blue Bonnet Learning, and it got adopted earlier this month by a district in southwestern Colorado just ahead of the new school year. Well, it took

three days of school before they had to scrap the entire curriculum for being very obviously stupid and illegal and riddled with AI mistakes. It's crazy that most of the untrue shit wasn't a mistake though, right? The stuff they intended to put there. Yeah, sure was. I thought it was weird when Christ said to the Pharisees, you're right to push back and here's why. So now it's all making sense. It's all together. So here's a little background on Blue Bonnet. Texas spoke with several companies that make academic materials, but those companies refused to really Christed it up all the way like Texas wanted. So the board settled on companies that make materials, just materials not necessarily academic. That includes the Christian Wright-themed Hillsdale College in sadly Michigan, and also

Sarah Huckabee's dad, Mike. He had to be. as a company that does that. So naturally, they ended up with a ridiculous curriculum. It was so bad that lots of public schools, even in Texas, weren't going to use it. But Texas decided to pay each school $60 per student if they adopted it. And of course, the bribing worked because public schools aren't amazingly funded in Texas. Then everyone actually looked at the material and they found over 4,000 mistakes. that includes basic grammar and spelling, incorrect answer keys, like in math, stolen material

that violated copyrights, and of course the whole thing was stuffed with religious propaganda like I was talking about. So they fixed way less than 4,000 mistakes. They left the Bible stuff in there and they went ahead. Yeah, reasoning that their students only needed to be, quote, smart enough for Texas, end quote. Okay, my favorite part is where they use the stock photos that they weren't allowed to use. It might as well say, Getty images on it. Yeah.

Right. Because look, you guys have to explain stuff to idiots. You work with me. Imagine the conversation that someone had to have with fucking Teddy about how he couldn't just use the image of a hummingbird. He got off Google for a science text. It's fair use.

I'm making fun of it. I don't think it's either here or there. That hummingbird. Here's a few examples. of that curriculum, just to give you an idea. A unit from the history curriculum called Fighting for the Cause highlighted four important historical asterisk figures.

Jackie Robinson, Dolores Swerta, Rosa Parks, and not historically, the fictional Queen Esther from the Bible. Okay, but I have always said Jackie Robinson did not do enough naked dancing. And so it's nice. It's nice to be valid. That's neither here nor there, Eli. They also had a unit of poetry.

It featured Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and the Book of Psalms from the Bible. I ate the horse come you left in the bridge. I'm almost as upset about the inclusion of William Carlos Williams is the biblical shit. I'm going to be honest with you. Well, then you deserve this curriculum. Write a fucking poem.

Unculture. Write a whole fucking poem. Swiden and Edding. Okay. Eli's Williams Psalms. poem was excellent. I enjoyed it. Thank you. Much better than the blunt's one.

They also had a social studies unit called Juneteenth and beyond. Yeah. The original working title was get over it already. They switched to June teenth in there, but it's a lot worse than sounds. It featured a discussion of

letter from Birmingham jail. Okay, you know, written by Martin Luther King Jr. after he got arrested for a nonviolent protest. Well, that turned into a huge lesson about, not MLK, about the book of Daniel and King Nebuchadnezzar and three dudes getting thrown into a furnace and then saved by Jesus or something. That was the focus of the lesson about MLK's letter in a unit named for Juneteenth. Jesus. In the curriculum of Texas, just a quick reminder, June 10th is the holiday to mark the day that Union soldiers

finally made it to fucking Galveston, Texas to announce that, slavery was abolished. That day was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Okay, but both stories did involve throwing people into fires. So, fuck. So that's the type of stuff you might find in Blue Bonnet Learning. Well, the superintendent for that district in Colorado was pretty sure Houston, Texas had good results with Blue Bonnet. as tested by, I'm sure, the Texas school board, so that's nothing.

So he heard about that. He decided to adopt the curriculum for his district. No need to read the material, though. He's a big ideas guy. He figured somebody else is going to do it. He's just the superintendent. He's not charged like curriculum checking. He's all the podcast.

It's not like it. It's an entire job. But at least a few other people in the district decided to crack open a page or two of the curriculum. And they found Bible nonsense and, A, I, mistakes everywhere. and lots of stuff that was about just Texas instead of, you know, Colorado. Basically, they copied the homework, including the name at the top of the homework, and they changed nothing. They fixed nothing. Just one example, there was a map showing Houston next to the Florida panhandle that would put Houston in Alabama or Georgia.

It's famously in Texas. Apparently, I guess Blue Bonnet was using an AI program just like. the one used by the State Department to create a map that labeled six countries in Africa and got all of them wrong. That, by the way, from the State Department, that was for a conference about AIDS prevention when they put that map up. Yeah. And this chart was so fucking bad that one of the arrows from one of the countries led to a

different country instead of a name. And still, they didn't notice it was bullshit. Yeah, that was the least wrong thing. You're right. Okay. But guys, the map also. includes all of grandma's hobbies. And this one, that one looks just like

her dog. I mean, she shared this on Facebook. She loved every second of it. Let me tell you. The map understood while we pushed back about the African map. Yeah, right. Thanks for the pushback. You're right. So, based on complaints from... You're not just a map. Based on complaints

from actual teachers and school board members in that Colorado district, the superintendent promised the religious propaganda parts would get removed. He was lying. Nothing happened. When school started last week,

lesson plans still had all the same problems. So they had to scrap the whole thing, and now they're redoing the entire curriculum for the school year during the school year. Yeah. I mean, look, as a college professor, I have to make up my own curriculum as opposed to reading it out of a book, but I can see how that would be harder for the lower grade. Oh, yeah, no, you've got it way harder than middle school teachers.

Dude, go. You teach a serious, serious subjects. It's important. The worst possible day. I was so happy when I wrote that. I, like, walked in a little circle around my room. I need to work in trans kids, librarians, and puppies. Yeah, right.

Okay, well, moral of the story, the Christian right, especially of Texas, it's a lot like bad software. Garbage in, garbage out. Spread like an STD. Fucking great. Someday there's going to be an analogy about Texas that doesn't involve STDs, but today's just not that day. I'm sorry, Texas. It's like a GOB tree dish over there.

And in School of Exactly One Cock News. You like that? I blurt it myself. I learned Photoshop for you people. I think if you could go back in time to 2017 and tell Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan that in joining with majority in the Trinity Lutheran decision, she would someday be weighing in on whether or not the state has to fund Catholic preschools that ban the children of gay people, she'd say you were being hyperbolic and that you should find a better argument more grounded in reality.

She'd also be surprised at how calmly you were saying that to her. Admittedly, that probably wouldn't be your best use of a time machine and access to the justices of the Supreme Court. There's neither here nor there. I'd like to stay on YouTube. What is here is that exact legal situation. So we're going to talk about it. Yeah.

So over the last nine years since Trinity Lutheran, the legal and cultural conversation has shifted from, is this bigotry allowed to is this bigotry required? Yep. And that honestly, I think is Trump's fucking legacy in a nutshell right there. Sure is. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be like a fun party when we knock down the arch

in the ballroom and auction off swings with a sledgehammer, like the fire department doing the fundraiser with my old car and they exploded. Very few amounts I wouldn't pay that I have. We're going to make so much fucking money on that. We will pay down the debt. We're good to go, TikTok. But we're still going to have to fix all the bigotry mandates enshrined in the law. That will still be a task.

Yeah. Yeah, that will still be around. Right. So like all surprisingly terrible homophobic things, this story comes to us from Colorado. And if you were picturing just a couple churches soon to be included in a state program, it's actually worse than that. St. Mary's Catholic Parish in Littleton

and St. Bernadette Catholic Parish in Lakewood actually challenged Colorado's universal preschool program mandate to, quote, accept any applicant without regard to a student or family's religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity, end quote. So to be clear, they don't just want to be bigots that are let in. they want the equality language in the existing law to be cut out so they can participate without even having to say they won't be bigot.

Yeah. Right. No, they're not challenging an instance of inclusion. They're challenging the concept of inclusion. St. Mary Catholic Parish is the worst thing about Littleton, Colorado ever. Of all time, worst thing to ever come out of Littleton, Colorado in all of history. Of course.

Now, you might be thinking that if bigotry is so important to them, why do they not just not be in the program? Well, according to their lawsuit, quote, any providers who do not participate in the UPK program will be severely disadvantaged since they will be forced to charge significantly higher prices than the participating programs, both secular and religious, which aren't religiously barred for participating in the UPK program, end quote. Yep. In other words, umma, the money.

though. We want the money because it's worth money. Yeah, they also have a rule that says you have to feed the kids food even if dirt is cheaper. That's a disadvantage too. Fuck you. Don't tell. Don't tell. Careful. Now, it's worth pointing out that this case has

already lost in court twice, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling from 1990, called Employment Division v. Smith, where the court ruled that laws could be applied, even if they burden a person or an organization's free exercise rights, as long as the law, it's is neutral and applied fairly.

And that is why the Supreme Court is taking this case. Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito have all said that that ruling should be overturned. And I think they're all hoping that this is the case where they get the chance to do it. Yeah. To be clear, employment division versus Smith is good law in the same way that Schrodinger's cat is still alive. Right. And again, weird use of uranium and cyanide and the time machine.

If you have those things, come up with cooler things. to do with those things and the Supreme Court. Yeah. So this is all very scary and bad, and we'll keep you in the loop when this case actually gets heard by the Supreme Court in November, but with a conservative majority on the court, whenever a case like this gets heard, we get nervous.

One thing that I think even Kagan from 2017 and I can agree on is, you really, really should have voted for Hillary Clinton. Yeah, that would be great. Sure should have. Next up in headlines, in hypocritical mass news. Fantastic. I have a funny feeling that religious people might be full of shit.

Now, stay with me. Stay with me, I will explain. Okay. So picture like a conspiracy theorist who believes in a mysterious plot, orchestrated by a secret, invisible cabal that's pulling all the strings. I just described God, by the way, he's the cabal. If the conspiracy theorist is confronted with any piece of evidence, in either direction, they turn that into a confirmation of their thing.

If the evidence seems to help their narrative, they play it up. If the evidence seems to contradict it, it's the perfect crime. Well, that's how being a Christian right Republican works too. If the Bible says a bigot thing, hands are tied, got to do bigot stuff. And if Jesus wants to, you know, help immigrants and poor people, that means James Tala Rico's a vegan with low T's using Bible trick us just like Satan. Right, just like Satan.

That's how works. It amazes me that a guy who looks like Ken fucking Paxton thinks he can go after another dude's manliness. Right? Like, look, I get it. James Telerico looks like a ventriloquist dummy on his Mormon mission.

You know who he looks better than? Everyone who's ever made fun of his physical appearance. Sure. Myself, acquitted. Yeah, so that's the situation in Texas right now. James Tilarico, a seminarian and a Democrat, is running for Senate against Ken Paxton, an adulterer, a guy who got impeached by the Republican House of Texas for a fraud and a Republican himself. And we're going to see just how foolish it the Christian voters really are.

I'm not that confident. But it's pretty foolish. According to the polls, the racist. currently pretty close. It's like a toss up at this point. So given the fact that most of the non-Christians in Texas are supporting Taurico, that means a bunch of the Christians are full of shit. We already know that. They're happily going along with Paxton when he claims he's a divine messenger just like Donald Trump. Is he? According to Paxton, quote, God just delivered me.

Not because I'm a great person. Yeah, no, we know. We know. Yeah. Pen in that. Because God is sovereign and he does what he wants to do, end quote. And yes, when he said that, he was referring to his impeachment, and he was saying that on purpose. He managed to wriggle out of that trouble when the Senate in Texas decided against conviction following

the House impeachment. So we thought that was a win. Yeah, I'm just liable, not criminally liable. That's a hell of a campaign slogan. Yeah. Apparently God wanted a messenger who gets away with crimes because, you know, mysterious. Yeah. And that brings us to a piece of evidence about Paxton's character that even a white evangelical

in Texas might be able to understand. Paxton is a fucking pen stealer. And that's the subject of a recent ad from James Dallarico. This goes back to 2013 when a Texas attorney named Joe Joplin went through a courthouse metal detector and forgot to grab his pen from the bin at the end. It was a silver Montblanc pen worth about $1,000 because the world is insane and fuck me. That's something that exists. But what if you have to write really pretentiously?

Heath. Did you even think of that? Okay. Ross Douthith can type. He's fine. I may own multiple Blanc-Benz. Which is funnier. If you can see, I have like six. Come on. It's much funnier if you consider my handwriting

and they aren't the $1,000. But they're overpriced is all shit. Oh, yeah. They're not $6 for a pack of 20 years. So, yeah. This one is gold. It looks. This is a big pet. It looks good. Okay. You have like the well Montblanc pens.

That's, my. Okay, well, I wanted a nice one. And then one time I showed a guy who knew pens and he was like, that's not a Montblanc.

And I was like, it's made by the company. He was like, don't say, you know. And I was like, stupid. Well,

what about my Rolex? It's got A in it. Here's what happened. Next, Paxton went through security at that courthouse after Joe Joplin. And Paxton

stole the fucking pen. Paxson claims he accidentally thought he had just recently put an extremely fancy silver pen worth $1,000 in the bin moments ago. He thought that's what had happened. And he says he gave it back right away when he learned about the mix-up. What actually happened, the sheriff's office had to call him before it got returned. Really? And the guy Joe decided not to press charges. And this is all on video from a security camera.

So the Talarico ad shows the video, explains what happens. And it ends with Joe Joplin endorsing James Talleyco. And then a narrator saying, vote for James Tala Rico. He will not steal your pen. Good job. Yeah. It's weird that you still need arguments after he was removed from office for fraud. But good on James for having a few good ones in the holster.

I mean, look, we know that it's not decency. mercy or logic that motivates the American voters. So maybe it's Penn. I don't fucking care. Whatever works. If you guys into Penns in Texas, a bunch of big Mont Blanc stands, fantastic. Whatever works. We do

literally anything to get Texas. And just in case, speaking of what Eli just said, just in case anyone wants to help out with a very tight race that is crucial to controlling the Senate, check out James Tallerico.com and

while you're there, you can get a pen at the merch store that says, not Ken Paxton's pen on it is only $6. That's great. Okay. That's fantastic. And finally tonight in Unidentified Aerial Phenomovom news. What? Okay.

People haven't asked me. It's right. You have it. Oh. What are you doing? Damn it. People often ask me, Eli, you've been doing this job for more than a decade.

where do you find the motivation? Is it the stories you hear from listeners about how the show has gotten them through hard times? Yes. Is it the sweet, sweet podcast, groupie smooches? Of course it's that too. But all of that pales in comparison to the exquisite pleasure of the discovery of a brand new,

bat-shit, crazy person. And we have been blessed with such a treat this week as we discover a brand-new televangelist and her story of the time that aliens stole her eggs so that they could make more demons. Wow! Take notice, Greg Locke.

It is time to up your fucking game, bro. Exactly, yeah. So first off... Learn the attention economy, Greg. Exactly. So first off, big thanks to Sidney for sending us this story and the pun to scathing news at gmail.com.

Sydney, thanks for sending us this story. We promised to... to never steal your ovum, no matter how adorable the frittata would be. Scathing News at gmail.com. Right. So you can volunteer it if you want. Yeah, I mean, you're obvious.

We're not going to offer your ovum, but we're not going to make you. So our brand new kook is one Katie Susa. She's a former meth user and dealer. She's also a YouTuber and a podcaster. And this is how she opened her most recent show. I was visited when I was in. young girl aliens implanted an interdimensional device in me that harvested my eggs over my

lifetime i think this episode's going to round out why are they doing the things they do this has always been a seed war the seed of the woman jesus christ came to crush the head of the seed of the serpent only a spirit living in a dirt body that's what we are can have dominion over all the works of his hands that's why they steal from us they are so jealous they are so jealous of our dirt bodies. We're fighting a larger enemy. Instead of being angry and upset and bitter, we need to unite.

Okay. So for those of you listening along at home, you are missing out on so much. It's real. It's somehow real. So much to talk about. First of all, you know how on a Mission Impossible movie

when someone takes off that, that sci-fi face mask, but they're still kind of wearing it around their neck? That's how Katie's face looks. And you should say, see it. It's impressive. Hey, just pick whichever one you want to do. It's fine, but it's crazy in between. Half on. Half on. But my favorite part of this clip and the entire 90-minute episode, which I highly recommend you watch, by the way, is her co-host who has to spend the entire

episode responding to her like everything she says is not the craziest sentence anyone has ever uttered. She's like, they took my blood for the echelon of Venus. And he's like, Yeah, we really needed this rain. Yes, we did. Yeah, anyway, it's 289 for the junior pagan cheeseburger. Yeah, right, right. God, I love how the clip ends on a call for unity. You know, she's like, look, left, right, or center.

I think we can all agree that the aliens are harvesting our dirt bodies for the Christseed, and we need to come together. Yes. Yeah. You might be thinking to yourself, Eli, why you pick it on some random lady on the internet, just because she has a YouTube channel. But Katie is not some rando with an Elgado and apparently a co-host,

she kidnapped and won't spend freak. Her show, Healing Your Soul, airs on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Faith Broadcasting Network, which has an audience of about 265 million households. She is on the cover of Charisma Magazine, which claims 207 million monthly print readers. Okay, it also calls.

claims God exists though. So who knows? Sure. That's fair. Okay. I know this isn't the point, but there is no way, no fucking way that aliens would use this woman's DNA to make their demons. It doesn't make

any sense. There's no way. That's what's happening. They'd be doing horses and a monkey. They'd be mixing it out. They'd get all jamba juice with it first. Yeah. Demons are all messed up. Exactly. Quick reminder. Next time someone tells you that these people are like a harmless corner of the internet and the best thing to do is ignore them. Katie Susa is not an obscure nutbag. We are. Yeah. Really. And now that we're sufficiently humbled, I guess we can wrap up the

headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. And when we come back, Mormons will get through a whole video about the armor of God without even mentioning the magic underwear. Unfortunately, a combination of live show timing and guest selection meant that we had to cut Mormon movie month short over on God-Affle movies. So for those people who were craving a little bit more Mormon nuttery this month, we're pleased to offer a bit of Mormon dessert on this installment of God-awful minis. It's a Mormon deseret. It's very excited.

Oh, there you go. I'm going back in two weeks for one more. Okay. All right. Sounds good. So tell us, Heath, what would we be breaking down today? We watched the whole armor of God. It's the story of how Mormon teenagers are a lot like, if you think about it,

medieval soldiers being attacked by evil ninjas. That's why you need the armor of God when you're at a dangerous high school in Utah. It almost goes without saying. And Eli, how bad was this many? Well, if you love the moralizing of Mormon Movie Month, But you wish it didn't waste so much time on the characters doing anything interesting. You will love this many. Anything at all most of the time.

Yeah. So is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best, it being the worst at? Yeah, I'm going to go with Best Worst montage. And I know there's a lot of competition over the years for Best Worst Montage. This was up there. They did a montage that started with like the action of, Mormon Bible study.

Like people like high five and shit because they got a question right at Bible study. And then it peaked with people handshaking somebody at the airport as they left on an airplane. Yep. That was a that was a montage with like swelling music. Oh yeah. No, that was the emotional pinnacle of the video. Yeah. So I'm going to go with best worst temptress.

We'll get to her. But like basically it's a Mormon video. So she has to be dressed like, you know, neck to wrist to feet and she doesn't do a whole hell of a lot of tempting. I guess it doesn't take much with Mormon boys. She was like the 80s girl. She did work for me. Well,

that's that. That's true. Yeah. I'm going to go with best, worst armor. Okay. We'll get to it when we get to it. All right.

So we're going to open up the Mormon Star Wars crawl. Mm-hmm. And the opening line of it is temptation. are great. Okay, for me, before that even happened, I had a thumbnail shot that popped up on YouTube, and it's a guy who's wearing a cosplay war helmet and it doesn't fit.

His costume helmet doesn't fit. And he knows the face flappy part is about to flap down on him again and frustrate him again. And you could tell he's like, freak it out, trying to get through it. He's about to hit him. Yeah. This is, you know, high minister or whatever the fuck.

And it's so impressive to me that the Mormon church has made it this long without one charismatic speaker or president since Joseph Smith. Right. Just statistically, you think you'd get one strong reader as head of your church. But they're all like, good is good and bad is bad. It's like almost impossible. Like I almost physically can't listen to this cadence. My brain just starts checking out. I had to watch this three goddamn times to figure out what he was.

talking about. And I still am not, I'm not sure. I think it was that his parents were swell. Yep. Maybe. I don't know. There was also the narrator. So you're talking about like the guy given the sermon at the beginning and the little intro, right? Yeah, he's second. He comes up second. Yeah. There's actually a narrator for a second. And the narrator was somehow like bad AI, even though this is from 1992. And it was talking like a crazy robot. Like every, every emphasis was was the opposite of human being talking for its entire intro. So, like, we had these, like, super cheap voice simulators back in the 80s, and I thought that's what this was because his cadence was so fucking bad.

But then at the end, he actually got it right. And I'm like, wow, is that just a person that bad at talking? Yeah. Everything was like Eli saying the name of the product in the ad and being like... Okay. That fair? Fair? What's?

I was heard it first. Help her. Yeah. But then after the weird robo narrator comes up, we get L. Tom Perry telling him about how his mom used to dress him in the armor of God. And that doodily dues us into our story. So we cut to, I said some armored Nephites in the woods, but I guess they're just armored dudes. So this is my best worst, right? Because if you want a metaphor for your religion, right, a Roman centurion, which is what this armor. vaguely represents is a weird pull because Romans killed Christ, right? That would be like if the Jewish metaphor for our great protector was a guy in an SS

uniform, right? You'd be like, ah, not that, right? Surely not that. And we were just like, no, the hat's really great. Trust us. So, yeah, so we see a guy all armored up and then a bandit is in the woods, drawing an arrow against him. Yeah.

But don't worry, he's rocking the arm. Ezio Auditori is about to shoot him with arrows. He's the evil ninja I was talking about. Yeah. I went for more of a Robin Hood aesthetic, just so it was really confusing what fucking time period these guys were supposed to be in. Right.

I wrote him down as Robin Hood until we found out he was the bad guy. Yeah. So we see that and we're like, oh, is this going to be interesting? And then they cut to a bunch of kids at a school and they're like, no, no, don't worry. Right? Because, like, he fires the arrow, but the guy blocks it with his shield. and we're like, okay, that's cool. Ezeo just dives into a pile of hay

that's right in front of him for no reason. Runs away. The guy blocks it with a shield and then he pulls the sword and back up against the tree, but he's positioned like he's going to shoot with this sword, right?

Yeah. Oh, damn it. No. I got to have full hearts for that. So, yeah, so then we cut to a bunch of kids at a school and Paul is being invited to the party, but he's not the party type.

Paul's pretty buttoned down. The party, of course, is how they're like, you go into the party. The generic party, yeah. And to be clear, that's the metaphor, Eli, I was talking about. The party is just like an evil archer assassin for a warranted teenager. A wood sniper, the wood sniper of parties. Right. So he's like, I'm not the party type.

And we sort of dissolve into the armored knee fight guy. So we're like, oh, okay, so going to the party is blocking the arrow of temptation. Right. Arrow of parties. This was Paul, right? Yes. The main character guy. And I got to say, he does, he's a good dare student.

He attended drug abuse resistance education and he took it seriously and he learned the broken record technique. So he's not going to the party. He's like, I don't like the taste of party. I don't like the taste of party. He's not in. Yeah. Earned that T-shirt that I still have. Oh, I have it too.

Can I take a second just to appreciate how fucking 40 these high school. schoolers are. Yeah. They are walking hand in hand with their 13-year-old children into their high school. They are rugged looking. Well, so, and then as Paul is turning down the party, we go back to, like, the woods where the centurions are. Now there's a group of them, but all of them except for the Paul guy are taking their

armor off to go for a swim. Like, the Paul stands guard. You think it's cool if we take off our armor now? Yeah. Or metaphor armor. To be clear, right, this is a metaphor about letting down your guard against wages and burt de br-brk. You should take your armor off to bathe. Yeah, otherwise you would drown a lot.

Right. They could have had a bad reason why they're taking their armor off that isn't the necessary one of bathing. Right, yeah, exactly. And then they have one guy standing guard, which seems about right. Yeah. Also, like, this guy's already had an arrow fired at him by a bandit. he tell these guys that there are bandits firing arrows or no guys should we all get naked and go swimming i'm saying we do that unless anybody has any reason that we shouldn't do that anybody at

all no paul no okay so i'm not the answering type we got back to the school and then so now everybody's asking gregg a different kid if he's going to go to the sin party and he's not so sure because he's one of the guys that took off of his armor right and he's like well i don't think i'm going to go but just then a sexy seductress walks by and says, Greg, are you coming to the party? And he's like, well, now I am sure. You didn't say there would be girls there. Yeah, he decides to go.

And he gets that insanely long, crazy stare of disapproval from Paul. Yeah. Where Paul, without saying, he's like, fuck, whisper, fight me right now. Arvah, God, go to him. Paul praying for you so hard right now. Yeah, right. You're supposed to say you didn't like the taste of part.

party. Give me back. You're turning your t-shirt and gun. So then we go, we go to the party and we see Greg walk in and he's just immediately overwhelmed by the prevalence of risk behaviors and sin. Okay. I almost went with best best teenage party. Yes. Because we've got the usual trademarks of the teenage party. The plastic cups, the bottles, and one young man appears to be showing around a pornographic magazine. Yep. Like all the sinners do at their parties. Can you imagine, and I can,

can you imagine being at one of the cool kids parties in high school and being like, hey guys, no beers for me, but I did bring jugs. Does anyone want to look at... Pennhouse. Nice. Do you want trade? Anyone want to look at jugs? Just me and Heath

very happy in the way. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, exactly. Swapping. So, but Greg's looks it around and he's not so sure, but then that pretty girl from before gives him the eye, right? And we cut back to the metaphor woods, you know, and the arrow is drawn.

Yeah. She offers him a beer and I wrote in my notes, why not just inject heroin between his toes, you slut? Right, right. He almost doesn't take it, but she looks super sad and disappointed, and then he takes it and she's very happy. Yeah, again, it's your movie. He pauses for half a second because he, like,

balks at the idea of a beer. and she starts like blowing a laymanite and he's like, no, no, la la la. I was just checking to see if it was an IPA. I have a jugs.

I'll drink it. Heath and Ely are trading magazines in the back. I just didn't want to lose all the good draft picks. Wait right here. So yeah, but so he, so he drinks the beer and she sinfully holds his hand and then starts carrying him back towards the bedroom,

right? And then we cut back to the woods and a bandit fires an air. and gets one guy in the shoulder. And I'm like, fuck, we lost Greg. He got laid in the shoulder. I don't know. Yeah.

But Paul, who's still in the full armor of God in the metaphor woods, can fend off the bandits with ease, right? I feel like if you just stand there while your friend gets shot with an arrow, you didn't do a good job watching, right? You did bad guard. Yeah. Like the good guy, the good Mormon or the, you know, in the metaphor, Paul, like dive rolls in to save his buddies, but not the guy we just saw get shot in the back with a hero as a metaphor for holding hands with a lady at high school. Holding hands with a, yeah.

But then, okay, so then we have like two and a half minutes of the sword play that these actors have dreamed about their whole goddamn lives. Right. Reason for the fucking season, baby. Yeah, right, right. But during this fight, of course, we're seeing that the guys who don't have their armor on are getting stabbed and whatnot because they took off their armor. Yeah, this felt like one of those things where you've got the echo of your scoldy dad who's a Mormon in your head. And my dad always said, when you drink a beer, your friends get stabbed. When you drink a beer, your friends get stabbed.

And then you're like, that kid made this movie. Yeah. So, and now, so we're back at the party. And Greg is sitting around wondering about his sinfulness. Now, I got the impression that he went back there and he, like, fuck this girl. And now he's, like, sad about the loss of his virginity. Yeah.

That's what I read it as at first, too, for sure. It's like, 30 second heges over. And he's like, should I have done that? Yeah. I think that's where we're going. Because then we see he looks up and the pretty girl is dragging another guy back. So I guess she's just fucking collecting them all today or whatever. Good for you, girl.

Get it. Yeah. She leaves with somebody else, but she, like, gives him a wink and a wave. I was like, respect. Yeah. Yeah. See? Monopoly is slavery.

Thank you. And then a different boring Mormon guy comes in to verbally sedate us. This is Gordon B. Hinkley. Yeah. He looks like someone did. Remember how you would, like, press silly putty to a newspaper and then you would stretch the face out? Yeah. He looks like that, but horribly made to life, right?

Just like, look what you've done. Well, and honestly, like, this guy, the cadence of these preachers is so fucking boring. This guy's talking about a demonic war in the heavens, and it's too boring to pay attention to. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like he's doing the history of a demonic war that's already happened as opposed to a present one. But we see smooches at the party guy. He's passing on communion.

And I know this is a weird thing to fixate on. But if you've got. like a little device for your communion, your focus is weird, right? I need your body and blood of your dead, zomified savior not to have like a nice little

knick-knack that holds all the cups. It's in like a, like a Dunkin' donuts box. Exactly. Yeah. I need it to be like a handful of flesh and a fucking wet bowl, a wet leather bowl of Christ's or it's like on the end of a sword

and you have to like grab it. Yeah, exactly. I don't want it in the same container you keep like beads. The roly kid, yeah. But yeah, so then we get sort of this montage of Greg. Now that he's sinned, he's like he like, he can't take the communion. And we see him like talking to some stuffy Mormon about his adolescent sex life, which seems weird. That is weird.

That is weird. He's also daydreaming about the soldier murdering too. So that's like according to the principle of doodily doos, he's daydreaming about a metaphor in which he gets murdered. He's just like slowly getting through that. And then he gets snapped out of it because they're passing around. I don't know what this is. I guess it's a Mormon thing.

Like holy water jello shots or like blood of Christ. There's the communion in the old. Dixie basket. So. God, I love Mormonism. I would switch in a second. Now is the time on a fucking whole armor of God when we sing.

right? Suddenly there's a fucking musical bit going on. They're just singing a song about putting on the armor of God. With 80 seconds left in this 13 minute short film. And it's just to show us like the good kids who skipped the party, they're like winning at the church in and like having like an action montage of like, I got the question right Bible study. Ha, five, ha, ha, that's it. We have a montage of good church.

It came to pass. It did come to pass. It is in the, oh my God. But then we end up resolving on the montage kind of ends at the airport where Paul is leaving for his mission. But Greg is not leaving for his mission because he had sex with a lady. Yeah. The music is amped up at this point. And Paul's getting firm handshakes.

Yes. It's pandemonium with the handshakes and the nods here at the airport. Well, there's an interesting moment where like the one girl goes to hug him and he's like, no, no, no. I'm going on my mission. I can only shake your hands, right? So he shakes the hand and all and we see that all of the good girls that we should be desiring or whatever really are impressed with Paul and not so much Greg the sinner. But Paul has some good final words for Greg.

He does. Comes over at Greg's moping in his corner of the airport, which is a weird choice to have come but then to mope in the snit after you went to the airport. Yeah, yeah. But he goes over and he's like, hey man. I don't want to see you at my homecoming, but I want to be there at yours. Now, to be clear, the meaning of that is like, I want to, I want you to go on your mission and I will be there to greet you when you get back.

And you're going to hell if you don't do what I'm telling you to do. Of course, yeah, obviously. But you don't need, don't come to my homecoming party in order to make that point. You could just say, I'd sure love to be at your homecoming. Yeah, no, we get it. You're, Paul, you're going on a mission. Fine. I wanted it to cut to just like,

Paul getting shot with an arrow at North Sentinel Island right here. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And the armor of, he's got the armor guy. I had the armor. Oh, fuck, it's right in between the snap. God damn.

They shot me in the face. They're so good at this. Why is there no armor on the face? Why do we put space? Come here so I can cough on you as a tie. We get this like, we get this triumphal like the scene of him going down the jetway. And I have to ask because we've seen this several times. Now, why to outbound missionaries in Mormon movies always have a jetway to themselves?

Right? Because they never, like, triumphally walk in there. Then they have to, like, squeeze in and group six or whatever and wait for 15 fucking minutes. Yeah. They've got jet blue mint, which Eli doesn't have anymore. Oh, you took it from me. You took it from me. All right.

Well, now that's going to be a big ass fight. So we have to wrap this up. Well, I like that Paul turns into an armor guy at the end. As he's walking down the jetway, he like morphs into. armor guy for a second. Yeah. That was exciting. Still rocking the armor. He gets stopped. So you have to gate check the sword. You can't

check the can't. Come on. It fits. I'll fit it. It fits. It does. It fits. I swear. Okay. I'll put it sideways. It fits? Close. Close. Close. You can't put it aside because then nobody else can fit there. Can I push on your chair? Lucinda? What if I

drive it through Lucinda's chair between her legs? Sorry. Well, now that we Arm the Mormons listening in secret with the most fun way to avoid going on a mission. Our work here is done, but we're back to do more good with the next. God-awful minis. That was Heath, the flight attendant, running him over with the cart really fast. I was just, honestly, I was lost.

I was missing JetBlue. God, I was missing. Before we return to our layers tonight, I want to remind you that this is your last chance to see me at Baja Khan. in Sarnia, Ontario. It's this weekend. The speaker list includes Seth Andrews, Eugene Scott, Dan Barker, Andrews Eidel, and a bunch more, and who couldn't use a bit of Canada right now?

My God, it's August. Link in the show notes for more information. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If can't wait that long, being, look up for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister-sos hot friend,

Godiful movies, debuting at 7-Mistern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister-sitian-citation-nebueing at noon-eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, his show wouldn't show if I neglected to thank Ethan Wainte for being all that. Eli Bosnick for being an all star and Lucinda Lusians for being my all. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best people. Catherine, Susanna, Sue, Kevin, Mark, Ronnie, Alapat, Chris, expensive cardboard, William, Johnny Samip, Bosnick fan girl, and me. Catherine, Susanna, Sue, Kevin and Mark, who are so bright, their GPS always turns to night mode.

Ronnie Alapac, Chris, and cardboard, who are so hot I had to crank up my air conditioner to read their names. and William Johnny's Samip fangirl and me who are sexy enough to make peanut butter break up with jelly. Together these 14 forthcoming fornicators forfeited a fork full of fortune this week to give us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist to where you'll learn really 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 scathingaith.com. And if you'd like to help, but you're selling blood to afford gas at this point, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review,

telling a friend about the show and following us on social media and speaking of social media, Tim Robertson and Lily Bosnick handled that for us. Our cartoonist is Angelo Madrid from Madrid tunes and our audio engineer is Martin Clark, who also wrote all the music that you heard in this episode, which was used with permission. I'm just power and through.

If you have questions, comments, or death threat, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scalyadius.com. I eat gojijungjung churacha every morning. Today, did it. Every morning. Really spicy. How have you taken a solid shit in your whole life?

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