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.