Listener Feedback

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, January 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Time now for Listener Feedback.

EICHER: It’s been a while, Myrna!

BROWN: It has, what with the holidays and all.

EICHER: That’s right. And that means, we have two months worth of feedback to share. And… two months of corrections.

BROWN: Ouch!

EICHER: Right. Well, we’ll start back in December, when we referred to flags flying at half mast. But as an astute listener wrote in to point out, that’s only correct if the flag is on a ship. On land, they fly at half staff.

BROWN: We also said the United States declared war on Japan 70 years ago. Of course, we know it was really 80 years ago. And in our year-end obituaries we referred to actor Christopher Plummer singing in The Sound of Music. But in fact they were actually recorded by Bill Lee.

EICHER: One final correction: Last week we referred to the former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe. He was once governor of that state, but not at the time we were talking about. The former governor we meant to name was Ralph Northam.

BROWN: Ok, now for two clarifications.

EICHER: Yes, and we got quite a few emails about this first one. In a recent Washington Wednesday segment about the legal cases stemming from the Jan. 6th riots, we said that five people died during the incident. That’s not exactly right. One protester was shot to death by police. Three others had medical emergencies. And one Capitol Police officer died after suffering a series of strokes in the hours following his confrontation with protesters. So the number five is right. What’s not right is to say “during the incident.”

BROWN: Our second clarification involves a discussion about Christians and divorce that we had with John Stonestreet on Culture Friday. One of our listeners shared she was disappointed with the broad brushstroke of including Lysa TerKerst in the discussion. In retrospect, I agree not enough attention was given to TerKerst’s ministry in promoting marriage or her attempts to save her own.

EICHER: On now to feedback! And we’ll start with the interview that generated the most comments this month.

GEBEL: I’m Paul Gebel from Edmond, Oklahoma. I want to commend Mary Reichard and the WORLD team for Mary’s January 19th interview with Krystal Knight, Democratic political strategist. Rather than having a person who would be generally favorable to the WORLD view that most of WORLD’s listeners have, you were willing to bring someone on from the other end of the political spectrum. I think it was a good move, and forced me as a listener to really focus in on what Krystal was saying about President Biden’s first year in office and let her words speak for themselves. Thank you!

Thanks, Paul. We heard from many listeners who agreed with you.

To be fair, we also heard from a few who criticized our decision. Listeners like Micah Frank, who emailed to say we should not have allowed a Biden supporter to spin what he called “lies and half truths” without following up with any clarification or corrections. The only thing I’ll add here is that our intention was simply to let you hear that different perspective and we did agree to let the guest speak her mind.

BROWN: Jumping back to December now, and the story, or series of stories, that listeners most enjoyed.

YOUNG: This is Ashley Young from Coppel, Texas. And I wanted to say thank you to Kim Henderson for your amazing reporting on Truth Be Told. I am always a fan of any kind of crime podcast or documentaries, but I find myself so often leaving discouraged or disenchanted with the world we live in. Truth Be Told had the exact opposite effect. I felt like I left inspired and empowered by what Christ is doing, even in the darkest places. It gave me things to pray for in the lives of those victims who have not yet found Christ, even in the pain. And it also gave me hope for those that had. So thank you for how much work you put into that podcast and how long you worked on it, and just the amazing job you did presenting a very difficult case and yet doing it in a way that points to Christ all the way through.

We also heard from many listeners in December saying how much you enjoyed our special holiday programming, starting with this edition of History Book.

IRELAND: Hello, I’m Chris Ireland from Washington. And I grew up in North Dakota with my parents and would go to Christmas at my grandma’s house, who was Norwegian and remember as a little girl her making lutefisk. And I just so appreciated your special this week on the history of lutefisk and where it came from and the background of it. It just brings back a lot of memories of having lutefisk at the Christmas table with my family. Especially with my dad who loves lutefisk and slathered it with butter and my cousins and I just being grossed out. [chuckles]

Speaking of being grossed out, how about this week’s commentary on a parasite that turns crickets into zombies?!

FRITCH: Hello, I’m Lorraine Fritch from Southern California. Whitney Williams, I always enjoy your adventures, especially the latest one about the horsehair worm in the creek. Cautionary tale it is, but I’m still chucking over the creepy details of poor Jiminie’s demise.

EICHER: As I was listening, I was just thinking, oh, wow, how’s Myrna holding up?!

BROWN: Alright, well, we have time for one more call today.

JEFFRIES: Hi WORLD family! This is Marie Jeffries from Phoenix, Arizona. As a mega fan of WORLD News Group, I’d like to offer a praise and a request. I love the fact that Mary Reichard ends each episode with a daily passage from the Bible. These verses are often familiar but sometimes not. And I frequently find myself rewinding the episode to hear key words of the verse again to search it for myself. So my request is, would it be possible to include at least the book, if not the whole reference, so that I could easily forward these verses to friends and family who could benefit from the encouragement? Keep up the great work, WORLD!

EICHER: Thanks, Marie. You’re not the only one who’s asked about those verses at the end of the program. So here’s what we’ll do, our promise. We will at least place a link on our transcript page to the verse cited. Sometimes it just breaks the flow, there are timing issues, but that’s unlimited online, and we can make it a practice to place the Bible reference and link it to an online Bible for you so it’s easy to share.

Before we go today, we have a request. We need more prerolls! The well is dry. So dry that our managing editor is about to declare a preroll emergency!

BROWN: That sounds serious.

EICHER: It is! So, if you haven’t recorded a preroll yet, please help us stave off the emergency by sending one in. You can find all the details at wng.org/preroll. Our nearly panic-stricken managing editor thanks you!

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.