Listener feedback

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, September 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from member-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for listener feedback!

EICHER: Yes, it is. We’re now getting so much of it, we’re going to try to do this twice a month, instead of once. We want to give you listeners your say!

REICHARD: Yes we do. But first we’ll start with a couple of corrections, time to face the music, so to speak.

EICHER: You’re playing my song, because this is my music to face. On a recent Washington Wednesday I said that the Republican running for U.S. Senate from Virginia was Chris Stewart. His name is Corey Stewart.

And then I got an email from a friend who listens, a Navy man. You know what I’m going to say, right?

REICHARD: Yeah, we got a lot of email and phone calls about it.

EICHER: Right, it was our story on the life of John McCain. We’d referred to McCain’s father and grandfather, Navy men also, as having been four-star generals. They were four-star admirals. That’s on us as editors. Once we take a story, it’s our story. It’s our mistake.

REICHARD: So, let’s consider the music faced! Speaking of which. Remember that kicker you did about the woman who blasted opera music from her home stereo? The situation was so bad, the authorities got involved. And you made the comment that the woman found herself having to face the music. Well, California listener Art Bergquist called our listener feedback line and took things to a whole new level.

BERGQUIST: I just wanted to say you struck quite a chord with me the other day with your face the music comment. I’ve taken note of how sharp you are. For me, at least, the joke did not fall flat. In the future, I will try to scale back. I now rest my case.

EICHER: Bravo! Bravo!

REICHARD: Such clever listeners! That’s great.

On to the next one: we received lots of listener comments about a special story we had two Fridays ago and here’s a reaction that was representative of them all.

BEATY: This is Dan Beaty from Huntsville, Alabama. I just really enjoyed the piece that Kent Covington did on Paul Harvey today. Tremendous piece. Brought tears to my eyes. Also, really enjoyed the follow-up play with Nick and Mary, too… Thank you.

EICHER: Kent was terrific on that. Great story. And on Paul Harvey’s actual birthday, we carried a speech he gave and in setting it up, I got a detail wrong. Here’s a listener with the rest of the story.

BARR: My name is Scott Barr. I live in the Detroit, Michigan, area, and I work at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in product planning. And it’s because of this background that I had to call in regarding your Paul Harvey feature on his God Made a Farmer bit,  which is one of my all-time favorites and probably my all-time favorite commercial that our company has ever done. But I had to just correct you because you said that it was a commercial for our Dodge brand. It was actually a commercial for our Ram brand, which split off from the Dodge brand almost 10 years ago… It’s a Ram truck… Thanks for all you do…  

EICHER: Lots of you really resonate with our “listeners like us” program introductions we’ve been running. And I’m so happy about that, because truly it is a tribute to you.

REICHARD: Exactly, we don’t have a program if we don’t have listeners who support it. And you do, generously so, and we’re honored by that.

EICHER: And so I’m chastened by this comment from listener Kristy Roberts. She was disappointed that we called so much attention to the preroll from a week ago by former baseball player J.D. Drew.

She wrote: The same episode that Nick and John discuss how being a bagger at Trader Joe’s is just as valuable a job as being an actor on TV, you highlight a “listener like us” [who’s] a ball player? Am I the only one who noticed the irony in that decision? Did you not just subtly job-shame everyone else that has opened the program by being so excited that a celebrity listens to the program, too?

Job shaming was the last thing on my mind. One of the points of the prerolls is to glorify God in the diversity of vocations: homeschool moms, physicians, city councilmen, chaplains, pastors, farmers, ranchers, teachers, pilots, financial advisers, hockey cameramen! And I think my favorite was Domestic Operations Officer. Brilliant!

I want to read something my friend Mindy Belz puts at the end of her GlobeTrot email newsletter: She says the American experiment “began with the profound idea that all men everywhere are created equal before God, and their works in this life—politics, science, art, humanities and industry—become therefore important. This energizes our global engagement every day despite tribulation, famine, danger, and sword. As one early colonist put it, ‘The very wheelbarrow is to be with respect looked upon.’”

That’s why Kristy’s email is so important, and, Kristy, thank you for the reminder. We certainly had no intention of job-shaming anyone. I’m glad you called me on it.

REICHARD: Listener Richie Setser also wrote in about the commemoration of J.D. Drew’s career. Setser is an elder at Drew’s church in Valdosta, Georgia, and said: He is a great guy and solid Christian man with a loving wife and five beautiful children. They serve faithfully in our church and community and he gives generously to many Christian ministries. In a world of athletes and starlets clamoring for fame and notoriety, it is gratifying that you have taken the time to remember and recognize one truly worthy of recognition.

EICHER: Yep. That’s why we did it.

REICHARD: Alright, back to the listener feedback line.

NEWMAN: Hi, this is Billy Newman out in northwest Kansas. I just wanted to say thank you for playing Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech. I realized as I listened I’d never heard the whole thing or read it. So I suppose it’s no excuse that I wasn’t born yet, but thank you for playing that. It’s an important part of our history. Thanks, bye.

EICHER: Next up, a comment on our conversation with WORLD Magazine reporter Charissa Crotts. She talked about the story she did with her colleagues. It was about the censorship of the student newspaper at Liberty University.

CESSA: Hello, my name is Luis Cessa. I listen to The World and Everything in It podcast in Delray Beach, Florida, of Palm Beach County .It is liberty and justice for all, not just the president of Liberty University and his family. Part of the problem is, I believe, that, while we should respect authority as Paul writes in Romans 13:1, sometimes authority doesn’t like bad news. And that’s too bad.

REICHARD: Thanks to all of you who have liked and followed us on social media. In particular our Facebook engagement has risen recently. We’re grateful for all those clicks, comments, and shares. Most of us have Twitter accounts, too, if you’re interested in more personal interaction.

EICHER: You can find out how to connect with us on worldandeverything.org. If you pull up our staff bios, you’ll find our social media contact info. And much more besides.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.