What The Frock

This week on What The Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod open the show with a conversation that is equal parts biting, bewildered, and brutally honest. The spark comes from NBC’s strange correction in reporting on the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting. Instead of focusing on the horror of the crime, the network bent over backward to issue an apology, not to the victims or their families, but to the shooter, for getting his pronouns wrong. That kind of decision leaves both Dave and Rod shaking their heads, asking how a culture can get so tangled up in the rituals of “wokeness” that it ends up apologizing to a dead killer.

From there, the discussion cuts into a broader critique of gender affirming care, the media’s reflexive narratives, and the way mental illness is coddled rather than treated. Rabbi Dave shares personal encounters with the failures of “affirming” models of care, bluntly pointing out that calling delusion truth does not make it so. The conversation does not shy away from controversy, and if anything, it leans in, refusing to sanitize the raw frustration they both feel at how society avoids hard questions by hiding behind slogans.

But it is not all heaviness. The episode pivots toward the strange world of internet misbehavior and public shaming. A Polish CEO gets caught stealing a signed hat meant for a child at a tennis tournament. Teachers broadcast political rants on TikTok, forgetting that cameras are everywhere. Coldplay fans tank their own favorite band’s sponsors in a fit of outrage. Dave and Rod frame these incidents with a mix of cynicism and humor, asking why people, especially those who should know better, do such monumentally stupid things in a world where nothing stays private for long.

And, as always, they pull history into the mix. From Walking Tall and the mythology of Buford Pusser, to reflections on the way prayer is understood differently across faith traditions, the conversation swerves between pop culture, theology, and social critique without missing a beat. By the end, listeners get the signature What The Frock? blend: a little ranting, a little laughing, and a lot of thought about why our world seems upside down.

If you have ever wondered why news outlets edit interviews to change context, why people torch entire companies over one executive’s lapse in judgment, or why the internet’s appetite for outrage never seems to slow, this episode is for you. And if you just want to hear Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod laugh their way through the absurdities of modern life while asking questions that make you squirm a bit, it is definitely for you.