603 - Goodbye and Good Riddance to Ryan Walters

Friendly Atheist Podcast

Religion & Spirituality, News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Patreon supporters who give $5 a month will get an ad-free version of the show!

Join our private Facebook group and Discord server!

Jessica and I spoke about several stories from the past week involving religion and politics.

— Ryan Walters is resigning, ending his disastrous reign over Oklahoma's public schools. (1:20)

— A Minnesota youth hockey league wanted to clear the ice after games. Christians flipped out. (24:50)

— Liberty Counsel manufactured panic over "Witchy Wednesday" at a Florida high school. (36:00)

— Texas Board of Education brings on Christian liar David Barton to rewrite Social Studies standards. (53:40)

— A junior high basketball coach bragged at church about pushing the Bible on a kid. (1:07:35)

— Trump's Justice Dept. drops probe into Hindu sect that paid workers $1.20/hr to build temple. (1:14:23)

— West Virginia gave $5 million to a Catholic school in Ohio. A judge just blessed the deal. (1:25:58)

This content is CAN credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm on their hotline at (617) 249-4255, or on their website at creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Hemant and Jessica.
0:02.2	And you're listening to the Friendly Atheist Podcast.
0:04.8	Please go to patreon.com slash friendly atheist podcast to support the show and get your ad-free and bonus episodes.
0:11.4	And if you are a $5 Patreon subscriber, you are currently watching us on video.
0:17.9	It's me.
0:18.6	So go do that right now.
0:22.9	And happy birthday to Jess. This is something I learned five seconds ago because we've been celebrating for a month.
0:27.9	First of all, he hasn't celebrated for a moment. So don't let him lie to you like this.
0:31.5	But listen, this morning, I did throw up because of my mints. I fell off a horse and Hammett came 10 minutes early, so I had to run down in a towel.
0:39.5	So it's been a fucking great day so far.
0:44.6	But yeah.
0:45.4	I got you a birthday present.
0:47.3	Oh, yeah, did you?
0:48.8	Is it a lot of terrible stories?
0:50.1	It is one great story for you, and it's the only one every single listener of this podcast
0:55.3	has messaged me about since last week, because when we recorded this one week ago,
1:00.8	we finished recording as soon as I leave.
1:05.8	Like the moment.
1:07.0	The news breaks that Ryan Walters, the superintendent of public instruction in Oklahoma and the guy in
1:14.4	charge of the public schools, is resigning. Or so the rumor went a week ago. And we can now confirm,
1:22.8	like, this is October 1st as we're recording this. Yesterday, he submitted his official resignation letter.
1:28.5	Just yesterday he did.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Friendly Atheist Podcast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Friendly Atheist Podcast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.