Episodes of Catholic sound experiment the Holy Agony.
(From the 2022 release of all episodes in one file [now at YouTube].)
00:00:00 Intro00:01:35 ① You’re Gonna Die00:55:20 ② Father, Worker, Terror of Demons01:45:40 ③ If It’s a Symbol, to Hell With It!02:33:55 ④ The Woman Clothed with the Sun03:28:00 ⑤ Defend Us in Battle04:49:43 ⑥ Remember That You Are Dust“The Holy Agony was Jess and John.”
Aaand new for 2026: Updates from a Twitter re-release of all episodes, which I assure you was a pain in the ass.
All Mandatory Jolliness episodes will be duly included in the RSS feed.
John Dios and Jessica meditate on mortality and the First Sorrowful Mystery in the time of the extremely real pandemic.
Featuring Br. B, a friendly handyman, Gabriel, Eleanor, and music by John, Wafers 3D, and Bri of Many Rooms.
2026 notes:
The first episode was really its own thing. Honestly, we captured lighting in a bottle. It was released in early 2021 while I was attending Holy Week services semi-illicitly in a motel in Sandy Hook during the tail end of covid lockdowns. Jessica was a full participant. Firing on all cylinders.
The weirdest byproduct of this episode was that it caused a weird public meltdown/feud from the guy who made Ghost Jail. I never really understood this since Ghost Jail was always much more popular, but in hindsight the Holy Agony has aged better and carried more weight, IMHO. I didn’t feel like we were competing at the time and feel even less so now that the first episode of Ghost Jail is just a bunch of random Twitter people from 2021 talking.
John and Jess do the work of honoring their fathers.
Featuring @_artistsrifles · @plainte_calme · Br. B · @token_blue.
Music by Wafers 3D.
With a guest appearance by the Dios kids.
2026 notes:
This episode came out less than three weeks after the first. We had an insane idea of scheduling episodes around the Catholic liturgical calendar to force us to stay on track. In hindsight it’s completely unsurprising that we burnt out.
This episode isn’t especially notable or anyone’s favorite as far as know, but it’s pretty solid as I revisit it now. This was where the format was more or less established after the first episode, which was much more freeform.
Jessica and John experience miraculous visions while trying to understand the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ. Featuring music by @plainte_calme, Carmelittles, and Wafers 3D.
2026 notes:
This was our strangest episode and one of my favorites. It began as a much more ambitious concept Jess had envisioned. After about two months of failing to get it done I convinced Jessica to let me assemble this episode out of her ideas and the samples/backing music I already had.
The production timeline and the headache of corralling guests had paralyzed us so we totally broke with the format. The only submissions used are musical and the only speaking parts are bookends from Jessica and me talking about our personal encounters with Eucharistic miracles.
We never revisted this format directly, mostly because it had so little speaking that we weren’t sure it could be called a podcast anymore, but I am always pleasantly surprised when I revisit it. The outtakes went into a special we called Episode 3½ that I hated.
“And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars”
– The Apocalypse of St. John, Chapter 12
Featuring Br. B · @TaraAnnThieke · @plainte_calme · @briesslewis · @_selfoptimizer; music by Wafers 3D.
2026 notes:
Halfway through the series’ run we really hit our stride; this was a return to form after the Nº 3½ summer special. It was sort of a companion piece to Nº 2, the St. Joseph–and-fatherhood episode.
I haven’t revisited this much since it came out but it’s got some great pieces, Turkish disco and Fulton Sheen,
@TaraAnnThieke’s conversion story, and protestant indie star@singingbirthwith an original song despite this being our mostly overwhelmingly Catholic episode.The ending reading by Br. B ends on a sort of ominous note with the car alarm, a segue into the intro of the next episode. This was the first and last time we were organized enough that I was able to reference an upcoming episode in the preceding one.
Jessica and John turn the sword on themselves and declare war on that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, enlisting St. Michael and a heavenly host:
@jitotweets [12:24]@_artistsrifles [33:45]@cmmorris95 [1:04:06]@StilNotHavin_It [1:06:02]@nealjclark1 [1:09:00]Original music:
@plainte_calm)2026 notes:
We had one more episode in us, but this was the high point, IMHO. It was extremely ambitious, and we largely executed it exactly as planned. Lots of moving parts: many guests, original music, multiple themes interwoven. The longest episode by a lot.
Aside from the obvious “Saint of the Day” theme, there was an overt homage to Death Wish 2 both in the art and sound of this one. Jimmy Page’s soundtrack was both sampled and imitated.
In that vein, we used lots of ambient city sounds and treated urban life and NYC in particular as kind of a horror monster contrasted against the archangel protagonist. I composed a fair amount of background music and we had several real musicians contribute songs. Great vibe overall.
It ends with the strongest sequence I think we ever pulled off –
@StilNotHavin_It’s abortion monologue into@nealjclark1talking about how small towns die. All the guests were really strong. Everything just clicked here.
In this very special crossover episode, John and Jessica pray for the poor souls in purgatory and make a visit to the Perfume Nationalist, where they meditate on the four last things (Death, Judgement, Heaven, Hell) with Jack and Ortant. Music is a full original setting of the Latin requiem mass by John Dios.
Featuring poetry by Hayden (@ghostofolson), a Psalm reading by Elanor (@follyb4god), and remembrances by @ofvalleypeople · @joshuaofgr · Fr. John Maria Devaney.
Eulogy for Ry written by @tintagelpot, read by @lapsedheretic.
2026 notes:
The final episode. It was pretty good but also extremely challenging. I am always shocked to remember that almost 2,000 people listened to this during its original run.
The final episode was not bad but it suffered from Jess and I not realizing it was the last episode and guests who had latched onto the show for clout but weren’t really interested in the broader project.
This episode was built around an old Tradwave project based on the requiem mass. The guests were mostly just random fans of the show talking about people they’d lost under less-than-ideal circumstances during covid lockdowns. It’s heavy.
Unfortunately at this point we were both blessed and cursed by our success and had people who wanted to collaborate without any real interest in the project besides clout. The episode was intended to be a crossover with the Perfume Nationalist. In hindsight I don’t think Jack had any interest in what we were doing and probably found the earnest religiosity a little embarrassing. He released the piece recorded for this episode as part of his own show and didn’t reference the crossover concept.
A radio priest similarly submitted a long monologue which didn’t really fit the episode because he couldn’t be bothered to listen to the show. The grind of the Twitter-clout scene was probably the main motivating factor in ending the show.
That said: There are some neat pieces here. Some low-profile folks shared very moving accounts of how they’d lost people during covid. It forms a sort of closed circle with Episode 1. It’s not quite as seamless as Nº 5 but it’s pretty good.
Join John Dios and friends for the official Holy Agony Midsummer’s Eve party. Among the guests who stop by to throw false idols into the bonfire are Dan X. Thrall and Cult Wine Grinch. Featuring original music by Mike Griswold. (2021.06.23)
2026 notes on this, the vexing Episode 3½:
This was and remains my least favorite episode! The tone is darker than the rest of the project (almost nihilistic), and it is very much a time capsule of the the BLM summer of 2020 its fallout. I’m not sure it works, but it’s interesting in the same way the first episode was for that reason.
The reason behind funny numbering is that the material here intended to be included in Episode 3. Jess had a very expansive vision of an episode – contrasting the real Eucharist with false gods – and was particularly [focused on] debt and interest for reasons I never fully understood.
By the time we agreed to narrow the focus of the episode to what became Nº 3, I already accepted a few submissions that I didn’t want to go to waste. I pulled together a few other half-pieces to make a half-episode that would buy us some time until the next proper episode.
Jess did not like this plan or the tone of the episode and relented to me reluctantly under protest. In hindsight, she was right! It’s a piece of history but otherwise inessential, IMHO.
Maybe you’ll like it better than me [emoji].
John Dios explains the meaning of the Christmas to his kids during a walk through the woods of Southern New England, then brings them to the mall where he slips into a hallucinatory reverie and is visited by the many ghosts of Christmas Twitter. After attaining MANDATORY JOLLINESS, the Dios Family returns home to a small-town Christmas-tree lighting and musical finale. (2021.12.18)
Family & friends join me in the swamps of New England for song, cheer and DEEP DARK CRINGE. Warm up with us by the fire on the darkest day of the year. Featuring:
@AnarContrarian@luso_brendan@habit_of_being@HOLYFOOLS_2666@ActiveShootrRob@roseanneluver18@NealJClark1@RizomaAtand MANY MORE. (2022.12.20–21)
As told to the Tales from the Mall podcast:
Really the six proper episodes were all kind of like we had planned them all out. There was an arc that had started at the beginning talking about covid and people being afraid of death, and then we ended with an episode about death and people we knew who we were dead and people we knew on Twitter talked about family members who had died. So it was kind of a closed[‑loop] project....
We had a device with the Holy Agony where it corresponded with the Catholic liturgical calendar. The idea was it would keep us on target. We’d keep moving, because you have to meet a date. You’re gonna to do something like the Feast of St. Michael or whatever – you can’t release it two weeks after the Feast of St. Michael. You have to get your ass in gear and do it. So it worked.
And then we kind of... we didn’t really have, after we did the first six episodes, we didn’t have a battle plan that we agreed on. And so we both just – you know, I wanted to do smaller episodic stuff and I started doing it, just doing solo episodes a little bit here and there. And [she] had this big grand plan, which was probably more than she could manage with her schedule and all the stuff she had going on. So it turned into a situation where we didn’t have any coherent vision. I was just doing stuff on my own here and there and not promoting it much, and she was stuck on trying to make something and not getting anywhere....
Updated: 2026.03.03