The Dave Bowman Show

In the early hours of October 1, 1910, downtown Los Angeles was rocked by an explosion that tore through the Los Angeles Times building. The blast, fueled by dynamite hidden in a suitcase and ignited by barrels of ink and ruptured gas lines, turned the newsroom into an inferno. Twenty-one people were killed and more than a hundred injured. The city awoke not only to smoke and rubble, but to the op...

Its not the Brass that needs to get fit...

To Celebrate All Things Podcasting!

In May 1774, Virginia’s House of Burgesses showed defiance that echoed straight into the Declaration of Independence. After calling for fasting and prayer in solidarity with Boston, Governor Lord Dunmore dissolved the assembly. The Burgesses simply moved down the street to the Raleigh Tavern’s Apollo Room, proving that liberty could not be locked out of the Capitol. Dave explains how Benjamin Harr...

In September 1918, the First World War was nearing its end, but no one on the Western Front could be certain of that. The German Army still clung to the Hindenburg Line, a massive belt of fortifications stretching across northern France. At St. Quentin Canal, this line was at its strongest, defended by concrete bunkers, deep wire, and the canal itself, which served as a natural moat. For years, Ge...

Well... Does It? Or Doesn't It?

On June 26, 1943, the submarine USS Jack prowled the waters off Japan on her first war patrol. She was young, aggressive, and her crew carried a dangerous confidence. That morning, Jack struck hard, firing a spread of torpedoes into a convoy and sending two ships to the bottom. The crew was elated, convinced they had the war figured out. But in the shadow of victory came disaster. A Japanese bombe...

This week on What The Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod tackle the strange and noisy world of advertising. From podcasts to streaming services, from political campaigns to Super Bowl spectacles, they ask a simple question: is anyone actually paying attention? Dave reveals why he refuses to charge for ads on the show, noting that most listeners skip them anyway. The two debate which ads manage to gr...

When most of us hear the name “Good King Wenceslas,” we think of the Christmas carol that paints him as a benevolent monarch who braved the snow to help a poor man. The truth, however, is far darker and far more fascinating. Wenceslaus I was not a king but a duke of Bohemia, ruling in the early tenth century at a time when the nation stood at a crossroads between Christianity and pagan tradition,...

On September 27, 1941, long before American troops landed on foreign shores, a different kind of weapon was launched in Baltimore. The SS Patrick Henry, the first Liberty ship, slid into the water at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard as bands played and President Franklin Roosevelt’s words echoed over the radio. It was a plain freighter, built not for beauty but for speed, economy, and purpose. Roo...

On September 26, 1580, the people of Plymouth looked out to sea and saw a battered ship limping into the harbor. Her sails were patched, her timbers worn, and her crew thinned by years of hardship. Yet she carried a story that would change the course of England’s future. This was the Golden Hind, commanded by Francis Drake, and she had just completed a voyage that no Englishman had ever dared atte...

In September of 1921, San Pedro Harbor was the bustling new home of the Pacific Fleet. Battleships filled the anchorage, destroyers patrolled the coast, and tied to the tender USS Camden was the small submarine USS R-6. She was a product of the pigboat era, a generation of submarines built during World War I that were experimental, cramped, and dangerous. On the night of September 26, her crew wor...

“The Space Cookie” is remembered for his laughter, his loss to lung cancer, and the lasting sacrifices of submarine service.

On the morning of September 25, 1911, the French battleship Liberté lay quietly at anchor in Toulon harbor. The fleet was already grieving the loss of sailors from a smaller accident aboard the cruiser Gloire, and preparations for their funeral were underway. At first light, there was no reason to expect anything but another routine day. Then smoke began to curl from Liberté’s forward turret, foll...

In September of 1942 the submarine USS Sargo left Fremantle on her fifth war patrol, a mission that would take her deep into enemy waters of the South China Sea. For nearly a month she stalked empty horizons, her crew wrestling with leaking exhaust valves and the constant threat of discovery. Then came September 25, when Sargo fired at a Japanese freighter and nearly paid with her own life when on...

The USS John Marshall was never meant to be famous. She did not fight great battles or fire weapons in anger. Yet her legacy is important. She shows how the Navy adapted in the Cold War, repurposing old ships for new missions, keeping pressure on adversaries, and supporting allies in ways that never made the papers. She carried the name of a man who defined the rule of law, and she embodied the pa...

Kimmel's back... so was I...

When John Marshall became Chief Justice in 1801, the Supreme Court was little more than a formality. It met in cramped quarters beneath the Capitol, ignored by presidents and forgotten by the public. Over the next thirty four years, Marshall would transform that overlooked institution into a powerful branch of government.

In 1943 a strange and daring plot unfolded in Canada, one that sounds like the script of a wartime thriller. Four of Germany’s most celebrated U-boat commanders, including Otto Kretschmer, the infamous “Tonnage King,” were being held at Camp 30 in Bowmanville, Ontario. Behind the fences they hatched an audacious escape plan. They would dig tunnels, slip across Canada, and meet a German submarine w...

There's a lot of memories on that counter

One haunting photo, one nameless man, a symbol of defiance and loss that still shatters us today...

In 1948 Berlin was a city under siege. Not by tanks or artillery, but by hunger. The Soviet Union cut off all roads, rail lines, and canals leading into West Berlin. Over two million people faced starvation, and the world wondered if the Western Allies would abandon them. Instead, the Americans and British launched the Berlin Airlift, a mission that would keep a city alive from the sky. Pilots fle...

Welcome back to What the Frock? with Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod, where free speech meets the frying pan and gets served with a side of fries. In this episode, we saddle up and ride straight into the storm around Jimmy Kimmel’s firing — not because of ratings, but because he said something the network didn’t like. From there we take aim at the FCC, advertisers, and the strange new reality where a bad...

On September 21, 1780, Benedict Arnold crossed the line from hero to traitor. Three years earlier he had been the savior of Saratoga, celebrated as the boldest commander in Washington’s army. But pride, debt, and resentment festered. Congress insulted him, creditors hounded him, and his Loyalist wife Peggy Shippen opened a channel to the British. That night, Arnold met Major John André on the bank...

The Cold War was not fought in great naval battles but in silence beneath the sea. America’s missile boats carried the burden of nuclear deterrence, vanishing for months at a time to ensure that war never came. Among them was the USS John Marshall, SSBN 611, a submarine with a career unlike most of her sisters. She began her service carrying Polaris missiles, one of the Ethan Allen class that made...