What The Frock Is Going On Here?

This week on What the Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod take us on a delightfully offbeat journey through generational nostalgia, A.I. paranoia, and the accidental genius of a musical monstrosity.

The episode opens with a nod to the absurdity of modern headlines—namely, a coming-out announcement from a long-forgotten child star and the inevitable reactionary noise that followed. But the real heart of this week’s conversation revolves around a bizarre but brilliant relic from 1972: Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol,” a song composed entirely of nonsense words meant to sound like American English to Italian ears. Rabbi Dave recounts how this track—though never a smash hit in the U.S.—has achieved cult status, even making an appearance on Fargo. It serves as a strange but fitting prelude to this week’s deeper conversation about artificial intelligence, creativity, and cultural panic.

As it turns out, Rabbi Dave has been using AI tools to help write the show’s original music intros, and something unexpected happened: one of the A.I.-generated “instrumental” bumpers came back with lyrics. Nonsense lyrics. Gloriously catchy, oddly poetic nonsense lyrics that bore a striking resemblance to Celentano’s classic gibberish. What was supposed to be filler became a top-10 earworm—in Dave’s head, at least—and may have just one-upped his own songwriting. In short, the robots aren’t coming to kill us in our sleep… they’re coming to write our theme songs.

This leads into a spirited conversation on Beckian apocalyptic takes on A.I., the energy crisis no one’s solving, and why people keep skipping the podcast’s musical intros (rude). There’s also a sidebar on JD Vance getting booted from BlueSky (and promptly re-added), a dissection of political echo chambers, and the curious case of Kendra Lust supporting WNBA player Caitlin Clark on Twitter (don’t Google that at work).

Oh, and Rabbi Dave tried Tai Chi.

It’s a wild, smart, and very human episode. Tune in, and for the love of frock—don’t skip the intro music this time.

🎧 Listen to “What the A.I. Frock?” now wherever fine frockery is streamed.