Welcome to What the Frock, where the holiday cheer comes with footnotes and the goodwill is thoroughly cross examined. In this episode, Dave and Rod wander straight into Victorian England, a place absolutely convinced it had solved humanity, morality, and the correct volume at which joy should be expressed. Spoiler alert, it had not.

What starts as a simple question, why Americans say “Merry Christmas” while Brits insist on “Happy Christmas,” turns into a full scale rummage through moral panic, class anxiety, bad history, and the peculiar Victorian talent for turning joy into a character flaw. Along the way, Dickens gets his due, Malthus gets side eyed, and the idea that suffering builds character gets dragged into the light where it does not age well.

If you like your Christmas thoughtful, argumentative, slightly irreverent, and allergic to smug certainty, you are in the right place. Say it however you like. Just understand why some people were afraid of the word “merry.”

This week on What the Frock, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod wander cheerfully into dangerous territory, the kind where theology, technology, and human incompetence all trip over the same loose cable. It starts with a simple question that should probably never be asked out loud before coffee. What if the Messiah returned as artificial intelligence. From there, things proceed exactly as you would expect, with skepticism, laughter, and a strong resistance to worshiping anything that requires a software update.

Along the way, the conversation turns practical and uncomfortable. While people dream about perfect digital saviors and benevolent machine kings, real institutions struggle to follow their own rules. When governments cannot manage paperwork, and roads become more dangerous through bureaucratic indifference, the idea that code will save us starts to look like another golden calf with better lighting.

This episode is funny, pointed, and unapologetically human. It asks hard questions, mocks easy answers, and reminds us that wisdom does not come preinstalled.

Welcome to a very unusual episode of What The Frock. Today you are not just listening to a podcast. You are stepping into a full musical adventure that was never supposed to exist, yet somehow insisted on being born. What The Frock: The Musical takes the familiar world of Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod and lifts it onto a stage filled with cosmic mistakes, heavenly clerks, ancient Goliard lore, and the stubborn determination of two men who absolutely refuse to quit.

This musical follows the journey from their chaotic beginnings to the moment they discover that destiny has plans for them. It is a story shaped by sarcasm, friendship, odd miracles, and the entirely unreasonable belief that a podcast can save a movement that has been banned more than once. You will hear new songs, new characters, and a narrator who might understand destiny or might simply be guessing with confidence.

Settle in and enjoy this strange, heartfelt, ridiculous tale. What The Frock: The Musical begins now.

Every now and then an episode comes along that captures the strange mood of the moment. It is the kind of morning when Friar Rod is drinking coffee that tastes like an IPA and Rabbi Dave is trying to decide if he is excited, depressed, or simply resigned to the state of the universe. That is where this episode begins. Rod has returned from Hawaii with a cold that behaves like an uninvited houseguest. Dave has survived a Thanksgiving that ended at a casino. Both hosts step into the show with the tired honesty of two men who know that life rarely behaves itself and rarely asks permission before making things weird.

The world beyond their microphones is not much better. News of the Washington DC National Guard shooting hangs heavily over the conversation. The two of them refuse to swallow the simple explanations that the rest of the country seems eager to use. They ask harder questions about motive, ideology, and the way rage becomes a habit that people forget to question. Their discussion drifts into history, myth, and the uncomfortable truth that people repeat the same patterns because it feels easier than learning from them.

Then the episode takes a turn toward the absurd. A tourist in England is arrested for a photo taken at an American gun range. The story raises concerns about speech, fear, and the quiet spread of rules that no one remembers agreeing to. After that the conversation moves to Wicked, both as a musical and as a cultural phenomenon. Rod and Dave explore the uneasy trend of turning villains into heroes and heroes into hollow symbols.

It is funny, sharp, curious, and occasionally uncomfortable. In other words, it is exactly what listeners expect from What The Frock.

The new episode of What The Frock opens with the familiar sound of two men who have seen enough of life to laugh at it without hesitation. Rabbi Dave is finally free of his shoulder sling. Friar Rod is back from Hawaii with a cold, a lighter wallet, and a renewed respect for the price of eating anything within sight of a beach. Together they settle into their chairs and start peeling back the strange layers of the week.

The conversation moves from submarines and warm Pacific water to Bill Belichick’s new role as the country’s most unlikely reality figure. It turns out that a legendary coach, a very young girlfriend, and a loud podcaster can create more chaos than a blown coverage in the fourth quarter. From there the guys dig into the debate over unlawful orders, the burden placed on service members, and the political noise swirling around it all.

It is sharp, funny, skeptical, and honest. In other words, it is What The Frock.

Welcome back to What The Frock, where Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod return from a short hiatus with more laughs, philosophy, and unexpected wisdom than ever. In this episode, the duo tackles the latest round of AI hysteria sparked by Matt Walsh’s claim that 25 million jobs are about to vanish. Rabbi Dave questions the panic, pointing out that technology has been reshaping jobs since the steam engine, while Friar Rod reminds us that adaptation is part of human progress.

Their conversation stretches from the invention of Whiteout to the rise of AI-generated music, and whether creativity can ever really be “lost.” Between the jokes, the history lessons, and Dave’s recovery stories from shoulder surgery, the two manage to make deep ideas feel like pub talk.

This week’s message is simple: change is nothing new, fear is overrated, and laughter is still the best kind of human intelligence.

Welcome back to What The Frock, where faith meets foolishness and caffeine meets chaos. This week, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod are running on fumes, sarcasm, and coffee strong enough to qualify as a controlled substance. Rod has just returned from a cybersecurity conference in Vegas, and Dave is preparing for shoulder surgery while trying to do everything left-handed. That includes making coffee, typing, and keeping his house from catching fire.

Between time zone conspiracies, Columbus Day controversies, and the eternal mystery of CNN logic, the conversation spins wildly, as always, between the absurd and the oddly profound. Along the way, the boys mark five years of What The Frock, reflect on their ordination, thank their loyal supporters, and muse about faith, sports, and friendship.

It is vintage Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod: distracted, hilarious, honest, and completely unfiltered. Tune in and frock on.

Welcome to What The Frock? where reason and ridicule meet over coffee and common sense. This week, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod tackle three wildly different but strangely connected stories. It begins with the uproar over Netflix and its so-called “transgender agenda,” fueled by Elon Musk and a fifteen billion dollar hit to the company’s value. From there, they turn to Washington’s latest production, the government shutdown that nobody seems to have noticed.

Finally, things take a turn for the wild when Dave tells the story of a man in Missouri who was mauled by a bear after sending his family pictures of it. The lesson? The chances of being eaten by a bear are low, but never zero. Join the conversation, laugh at the absurd, and maybe keep your distance from both Netflix and the nearest campground.

Listen now at whatthefrock.org

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 grab an audience and why live reads still work when flashy commercials fail. Political ads come under fire too, especially when campaigns rely on recycled stock photos that fool no one.

The conversation expands into bigger questions about media spin, government power, and whether we can still trust the voices shouting for our attention. There is laughter, skepticism, and a touch of nostalgia as they wrap up with sequels, comedy classics, and Dave’s upcoming shoulder surgery.

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 punchline can cost you a career. Along the trail, we swap stories of Johnny Carson and Don Rickles, gripe about McDonald’s kiosks and stolen Dr. Pepper money, and even tip our hats to those glorious creamsicle Buccaneers uniforms. It’s cowboy satire with a Mark Russell twist, sharp as a spur and twice as funny. Pour yourself some campfire coffee, settle in, and join us for another unfiltered ride through America’s cultural rodeo.