What The Frock?

Why are Americans so quick to believe the worst about people they dislike? When did disagreement become an ideological purity test? And when does justice cross the line into public spectacle? On this episode of What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod explore the increasingly dangerous intersection of political tribalism, misinformation, religious morality, and the human need to find someone to...

What happens when the people building artificial intelligence start asking religious leaders whether their creation might actually be conscious? Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod dive into Anthropic’s conversations with rabbis, priests, theologians, and the Vatican over the possibility that an advanced AI such as Claude could possess consciousness, experience suffering, or deserve moral consideration. But...

Who holds the people with authority accountable? That question runs through this week’s What the Frock? , as Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wander into the increasingly blurry territory where authority, influence, money, ideology, and responsibility collide. It begins in the pulpit. When a priest declares that God is transgender and suggests that the resurrected Jesus may have “transitioned,” is that le...

After Ole Miss defeats LSU, quarterback Trinidad Chamblisscredits prayer, preparation, and God’s will for the victory. Rabbi Dave has heard enough. If God chose the winner, what does that say about the losing team? Why does God receive public credit after victories but rarely appear in the losing locker room? That postgame interview launches Rabbi Dave and Friar Rodinto a larger argument about the...

Artificial intelligence may eventually destroy humanity,although at the moment it still struggles with fingers, factual citations, and the occasional straightforward instruction. That has not discouraged a growing class of researchers, former researchers, professional alarm-ringers, and extremely online prophets from warning that the machines could become smarter than their creators sometime next...

A map is supposed to help you find your way. Unfortunately, the latest attempt to “Correct the Map” may tell us more about modern politics than it does about geography. In this episode of What the Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod examine the campaign against the Mercator projection, the familiar world map that makes Greenland look enormous, stretches Antarctica toward infinity, and leaves Africa...

There are bad arguments, and then there are bad arguments whose consequences stretch far beyond the case in whichthey were made. The defense of Lindsay Clancy, accused of murdering her three young children, raises precisely that kind of problem. If postpartum hormonesand psychiatric distress can diminish criminal responsibility, where does compassion end and accountability begin? More importantly,...

The internet was supposed to give us access to the accumulated knowledge of humanity. Instead, it may be making it harder to agree on what is true. This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wrestle with a question that has become increasingly difficult to ignore: What happens when the device in your pocket doesn't merely provide information, but begins shaping the way you underst...

Why does everything on the internet eventually become aboutus? This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod dive into Bean Soup Theory, the wonderfully simple idea that explains an astonishing amount of what happens on social media. Someone posts a recipe for bean soup, and instead of deciding whether they want bean soup, people start demanding substitutions, alterations, and entirely n...

Sometimes the biggest story isn't what happened. It's whatpeople do when they're challenged to defend what they claim to believe. This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and FriarRod dive into a series of stories that, at first glance, seem completely unrelated. A celebrated Cambridge professor resigns after questions emerge about his remarkable résumé. Candace Owens and the culture...

This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod discover that the best-laid plans never survive first contact with the morning news. What begins with tourists ignoring warnings and climbing an active volcano quickly spirals into one of the strangest conversations the show has ever produced. Before long, they're discussing baboons digging through garbage, social media's obsession with creat...

Have you ever wondered if your greatest contribution to humanity might be... accidentally training artificial intelligence? That bizarre question launches one of the funniest and most unexpectedly thoughtful episodes of What The Frock? After a sudden spike in podcast traffic revealed that a surprising amount of the audience may actually be AI scraping bots, Rabbi Dave finds himself questioning eve...

Welcome to another episode of What the Frock? , where the conversations are made up and the rabbit trails definitely matter. This week, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod somehow manage to connect Homer, the King James Bible, Christopher Nolan, international soccer, airline seating, and the greatest tragedy of the modern age: the disappearance of McDonald's fried apple pies. The adventure begins with a...

Welcome to another episode of What the Frock? , where Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod once again prove that no topic is too serious, too ridiculous, or too completely unrelated to become part of the same conversation. This week begins with a trip to the movies, but not the one everyone is talking about. Instead of debating Hollywood's latest attempt to "improve" Homer's The Odyssey , th...

What if the machines do not destroy us because they are too smart, but because they follow bad instructions perfectly? This week on What the Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod start with sports, World Cup drama, penalty kicks, instant replay, and the strange modern belief that every human mistake can be fixed by one more camera angle. From VAR to NFL replay, the question becomes bigger than sports....

Sometimes the internet reminds us that it is both humanity's greatest achievement and its greatest mistake. This week, an innocent comment by a television reporter admitting she had no idea where Bosnia-Herzegovina was somehow exploded into an international controversy. There were apologies, outrage, arguments over geography, and even complaints that she apologized to Bosnia but forgot Herzegovina...

There are some weeks when the news cycle feels like a carefully organized sequence of important events. Then there are weeks like this one, where you find yourself discussing earthquake prophets, cricket, influencer narcissism, Elon Musk, and an apparent uprising of Wyoming deer all in the same conversation. Naturally, that became an episode of What The Frock? We started with one of the internet's...

Is Western civilization collapsing before our very eyes? This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod examine the mounting evidence. FIFA has managed to anger soccer fans around the world just as the 2026 World Cup gets underway. Seattle is hosting a controversial Pride-themed match. The United States Men's National Team suddenly looks competent. And somehow, mandatory hydration bre...

This week on What The Frock? , Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod tackle one of the most fascinating questions of the modern age: if medical science continues advancing at its current pace, how long should we expect to live , and would we even want to? What begins as a conversation about longevity quickly turnsinto a thoughtful exploration of purpose, legacy, aging, faith, technology, and the changing world...

What happens when pizza, James Bond, Mikhail Gorbachev,artificial intelligence, Daylight Saving Time, Colorado hippies, and the color purple all collide in the same conversation? Welcome to another delightfully unhinged episode of What The Frock? This week, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod explore the fascinating concept known as the “Pizza Effect,” the strange cultural phenomenon where an idea, tradition...

This week on What The Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wander bravely into the increasingly foggy borderlands between reality and whatever the internet has decided reality ought to be this week. Artificial intelligence is rewriting politics faster than anyone expected. Viral AI videos now spread through social media before fact-checkers have even located their reading glasses. Campaigns are learni...

This week on “ What The Frock? ”, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wander into the Underworld of Homer and somehow emerge in modern America, surrounded by TikTok livestreamers, AI-generated summaries, driverless Waymo cars circling suburban cul-de-sacs, and a civilization increasingly obsessed with shadows instead of substance. The conversation begins with the internet outrage surrounding the casting rumo...

This week on What the Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod climbaboard a metaphorical trireme and sail straight into the stormy waters of myth, movies, technology, and modern madness. Somewhere between Homer’s Odyssey, Star Trek, Star Wars, UFO files, malfunctioning computers, and the increasinglyterrifying future of artificial intelligence, the pair attempt to answer a question humanity has apparentl...

In this episode of What the Frock , Rabbi Dave andFriar Rod take a hard look at a moment that should be simple to understand but is anything but. A presidential assassination attempt, multiple angles of video, and still more questions than answers. What happened is one thing. Whatwe are shown, and what we are not shown, is something else entirely. From there, the conversation opens up into somethi...

Breaking news, sharp questions, and a few moments that remind you this is still What the Frock? . In this episode, Dave and Rod react in real time to a shocking incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where a shooting at the Washington Hilton sent guests scrambling and left more questions than answers. As details unfold, they cut through the confusion, examining what is known, what is...