This week on What The Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod take on a world that seems determined to trip over its own absurdities. The conversation begins with NBC issuing a bizarre correction to a story on the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting, where the network felt the real offense was not the act of violence itself but the pronoun used for the killer. That sparks a larger debate about affirming care, mental illness, and the ways our culture apologizes for delusion while ignoring reality.

From there the show veers into the strange realm of internet stupidity. A Polish CEO steals a signed tennis cap from a child, teachers film political rants on TikTok, and Coldplay fans destroy their own sponsors. Through it all, Dave and Rod bring their mix of sharp humor, blunt honesty, and historical perspective. If you want satire with substance, this episode delivers.

When people think of Rome’s worst emperor, Caligula is usually the first name they blurt out. He has become a sort of shorthand for tyranny, madness, and depravity. If you want an example of how absolute power corrupts absolutely, the popular image of Caligula will do the job. He is the emperor who supposedly made his horse a consul, slept with his sisters, declared himself a god, ordered his troops to pick seashells as spoils of war, and murdered for fun. But as with most historical caricatures, the truth is much murkier. Behind the madness lies a man named Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus, a product of Rome’s most powerful family, a survivor of palace intrigue, and a ruler whose short reign was distorted by hostile sources and centuries of mythmaking.

The Washington–Moscow Hotline is one of those Cold War stories that everyone thinks they know, but almost nobody really understands. Ask most people and they will tell you about a red phone, sitting on the president’s desk, ready to ring in the dead of night. The president picks it up, and the voice on the other end is a Soviet premier warning that the missiles are flying. That image is iconic. It is also false. There was never a red phone to Moscow. The Hotline existed, but it was a very different system than the one of popular imagination. It was a tool of caution and discipline, not theatrics. And for sixty years, it has quietly done its job, often in the background of history.

This episode starts with a couple of stories that probably only I care about, like the lawsuit over Seattle’s homeless shelter hotels and yet another IT failure that managed to make life harder for the people caught in its web. But then the show turns inward.

I take you through the long story of my right shoulder, which goes all the way back to Navy sports in the 1980s, took a bad turn with a fall in 2018, and now has doctors listing off arthritis, cartilage tears, and tendon problems like they are reciting baseball stats. The plain English translation? It hurts, it is weak, and it makes life a whole lot more complicated.

Surgery might be on the horizon, and that means five weeks of forced immobility. So today’s show is about pain, persistence, and trying not to lose sight of what matters most.

On August 29, 1915, the United States Navy did what no one thought possible. It raised a sunken submarine from 300 feet of water and brought her crew home. The recovery of the USS F-4 was born out of tragedy, but it became a landmark in naval engineering and a testament to the determination of sailors and divers who refused to yield to the sea. The echoes of that day still resonate in every modern submarine rescue system, in every dive that pushes the limits of depth, and in the enduring commitment of the Navy to its own.

Last year President Biden said 70,000 Americans die each year from fentanyl overdoses. It’s a staggering number, and his thought we should do something about it.

The summer of 1778 found the Revolution at a crossroads. The war had already seen stunning American victories like Saratoga, where British General Burgoyne surrendered his entire army, but it had also seen disasters, retreats, and long winters of misery. Into that mix came a new player, an old enemy of Britain and an unexpected friend to the struggling United States: France. The French had finally recognized the American cause and agreed to fight alongside the rebels. This was not just about ideals of liberty. It was about revenge. France had been waiting for a chance to stick it to Britain ever since losing most of its empire in the Seven Years’ War. By 1778, the moment had arrived.

Washington State just handed a Florida shipyard a contract worth 714 million dollars to build three new hybrid-electric ferries. For the first time in decades, these boats won’t be built here at home, and the ripple effects are already hitting taxpayers, local shipyards, and the reliability of our ferry system.

The story is bigger than dollars and steel. It’s about climate mandates, political choices, and whether Washington’s Climate Commitment Act is driving policy off course. Supporters call this progress. Critics say it’s a hidden tax that inflates costs, outsources jobs, and delivers little global impact for a very high local price.

Tonight, we’re asking the tough questions: is this really in our best interest, or is it a case study in failed public policy?

The war was supposed to be over. August 1946 was meant to be a summer of recovery, not another season of graves. But peace is rarely clean, and the world that emerged after World War II was fragile, fractured, and full of sharp edges. In one of those forgotten yet telling moments, five American airmen were killed when their unarmed transport plane was shot down over Yugoslavia. Their deaths signaled that even as the guns of Hitler’s war fell silent, new conflicts were already beginning.

And it's time to stop the pretending that it is