Listener feedback

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, July 27th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from member-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. It’s now time for our occasional listener feedback segment. I’m excited! This will be the first time I’ve gotten to do one of these.

EICHER: Yeah, Mary’s missing out on the fun!

Well, she is on vacation, so, different kind of fun.

We’ll have her back on Tuesday, and Megan’s going to fill in a couple of days for me. That’ll free me up to work on some planning with our executive team in Asheville. And thank you for that. I think you’re doing a terrific job.

BASHAM: Thanks!

J.C. DERRICK, MANAGING EDITOR: Hear, hear!

EICHER: That is the voice of JC Derrick. He’s our managing editor and he’s joining us today with a big stack of listener feedback. Morning!

DERRICK: Good morning! We’re getting a lot of feedback these days, so we want to dive into that, but first off, a few corrections and clarifications.

On the July 9th edition of Legal Docket, Mary referred to a church in Brooklyn. It was actually in Queens. The abortion center where church members were counseling was located in Brooklyn.

Also, we need to fix a few things from our payday-lending story last week: We characterized Pew Charitable Trusts as a financial think tank. We should clarify that while Pew is involved in financial research and policy-making, it also works in several other areas, including health and the environment.

In that same story, we relied on Pew’s calculations that Ohio’s average interest rate is 591 percent. Well, that’s a huge number, so we should have explained it more. It’s actually an aggregate figure representing interest, fees, and penalties annualized over a year.

EICHER: A listener named Eric went to worldandeverything.org to post a comment about my tariffs conversation with financial analyst David Bahnsen.

He had one quibble with Bahnsen’s comment that “Countries don’t trade with each other. People and companies trade with each other.”

That’s true, of course. But our listener thought it was worth noting that the vast majority of Chinese companies are state owned — and that, as he rightly points out, insulates them from competition.

BASHAM: And one more clarification. A listener took issue with something we said about the religious freedom ministerial that took place at the State Department this week.

After noting the Trump administration’s poor record on admitting persecuted Christians and Yazidis from Syria, Iraq, and Iran, we said: And this is all on Secretary of State Pompeo’s watch.

Listener Dan Beaty wrote to point out Pompeo’s had just 110 days on the job, which is less than a third of the time his predecessor was there. That’s former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Our listener found Pompeo’s statement on the importance of religious freedom was “a wonderful source of hope for the future.” And he added, “If there’s blame to place (and I believe there is), let’s place it on Secretary Tillerson as well as the president for not directing his secretary of state to address the problem caused by its closed-door policies.”

DERRICK: That’s a fair point! Thank you, Dan.

EICHER: Yes, now on to the calls. Here’s one we got on our listener feedback line at 202-709-9595.

AUDIO: Hi, this is Karen. I’m calling from Cleveland, Ohio. I just wanted to thank you guys for all the work that you do. I have been listening to your program since the very first one so many years ago, and I don’t think I’ve missed one since. You always make it so interesting that,  if I do miss a podcast, I have to go back and listen to it the very next day.

The other thing I wanted to thank you for is your sticker. I really like The World and Everything in It sticker. It actually matches my car perfectly, and I’ve had it on the back of my car. I’ve had a couple of people make comments about it, and I can’t help but think that perhaps a few more people are listening to The World and Everything in It because of that nice, very creative and colorful sticker that you guys have. Thanks so much for all you do.

EICHER: Well, thank you, Karen. I’m glad your sticker is out there for the world to see. I’ll tell you we’ve had more than 23-hundred sticker requests in the first couple of months, and there’ve been some creative uses.

They’ve stuck to coffee cups, water bottles, laptop lids, cars, of course.

But we did print more. So if you don’t have a sticker and you want a sticker, the quick and easy thing to do is head to worldandeverything.org and click on the free-sticker tab. The friendly Ambria Collins at our home office is working very hard to promptly fulfill all those requests.

DERRICK: Yes, big thanks to Ambria!

And thanks to all of our listeners who have sent in prerolls introducing the program. We’ve got probably several months’ worth! But we’d love more, so if you’d like to contribute, just go to worldandeverything-dot-org and type preroll (one word) in the search box. That’ll pull up the instructions Nick and Mary gave on the program earlier this month.

EICHER: And speaking of instructions, I tried really hard to be clear, going through every single step of the process. Well, listener Curt McCorkle took me a little too literally. Listen to this.

AUDIO: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Nick Eicher. I live in St. Louis, Missouri, and I work at WORLD. I hope you enjoy today’s program.”

Then you press the red button again that will stop the recording.

EICHER: Listen, all of these prerolls make me smile, but that one made me laugh. I even have a hockey-themed preroll I can’t wait to use. J.C., maybe we should run it in September. Because as everybody knows, training camp opens in September.

DERRICK: Of course, everybody knows this!

BASHAM: Well, before we wrap things up, I’d like to highlight a couple of recent iTunes reviews.

A listener named Jim says in his review that we are “an island of unbiased reporting.”

Reviewer Diane said she and her husband listen in the evenings, and our program Listening In on Saturday. She says, “We play three games of double-solitaire as we listen. It gives great discussion points and brings us together as a couple.”

DERRICK: Awww, I love that!

BASHAM: And now we have another one that was very honest. I don’t want to put words in reviewer Sandy’s mouth, so I’m just going to read it: “Thank you, Janie B. Cheaney, for putting into commentary for parents who can’t or won’t see the future of choosing their happiness over their kids’ when deciding to end their marriage. I would’ve greatly benefited from hearing and heeding this warning over 29 years ago. I’m still feeling the consequences from that decision. Thanks, WORLD Radio, you have such relevant topics for all of us.”

EICHER: Wow. Renewing minds. That’s our goal here.

We’re grateful for your iTunes reviews. You’ve been generous with your time to make the effort to rate and review, and we’re oh-so-close to hitting the 1,000 mark. About 20 more and we’ll cross that milestone.

So if you haven’t yet rated us, please take a second to do that. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if we hit 1,000 by the end of today!

DERRICK: And if you have a bit longer, write a review. We’re so grateful that 85 of you have written a review on iTunes just this month. All were 5-star ratings. We are humbled by all the support.

BASHAM: If you’d like to reach us, you can call 202-709-9595 to leave a message on our listener feedback line. That’s 202-709-9595. Or you can email us at feedback@worldandeverything.com.

And to find us Facebook and Twitter, just search for WORLD Radio.

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