Grading Honestly Is Apparently a Fireable Offense

Thank God I'm Atheist

TGIA Media

Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2026

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A University of Oklahoma instructor gave a student a failing grade — and lost their job over it.
The reason? Religion entered the chat. We unpack how a routine college assignment turned into a culture-war flashpoint, why academic standards suddenly became optional, and how religious grievance keeps getting rewarded when it collides with higher education.

Also this week: Trump administration officials decide government social media accounts are a fine place to preach Christianity, Sarah Huckabee Sanders issues a Christmas proclamation that sounds more like a sermon, and a Colorado megachurch leans hard into child-trafficking panic to push anti-trans ballot initiatives. Plus new Pew numbers on religion in America, a rare LDS feel-good story, listener mail, and yet another reminder that moral panic never really goes away — it just finds new targets.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, buddy, buddy.
0:19.1	Hi, friends.
0:20.2	Well from beautiful and ever so slightly snowy, Salt Lake City, Utah.
0:27.3	It's thank God I'm atheists. Where we a couple of atheists try to make sense of life here in these United States.
0:35.0	I'm Frank Feldman. And I'm Dan Beecher. And coming up on the show today, Dan, we have our suggestions for what to get all panicky
0:46.1	about in 2026.
0:47.8	This is a time of panic in this country and probably the whole world. I don't know. I can't pay attention to
0:56.9	what's happening everywhere. But panic. Oh, freak out. Especially, especially if you can feel it
1:04.9	in your little moral, uh, tender parts. Oh my gosh. It is. Yeah, it is a good time of moral panic. But the really, just the best judgeiest parts. Oh my gosh. It is yeah, it is a good time of moral panic. But the really
1:11.9	Just the best judgiest parts of your of your moral yeah moral, moral, uh, squishy parts.
1:18.9	And please don't use your intellect for this because that's not what we're doing in 2026. Yeah,
1:24.2	we're not using our brains. We're using our feels and we're going off of vibes only.
1:32.7	And that's what's happening going into this, the, what did we call it?
1:40.0	The squiskle centennial, the 250th. I don't know what that is. Squiskel Centennial.
1:47.3	The 250th?
1:48.6	I don't know what that is.
1:49.8	Cesquicentennial.
1:51.2	It's no bicentennial.
1:53.2	Oh my gosh.
1:55.4	Anyway.
1:57.3	Squiddential centennial.
1:57.8	Yeah.
	...

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