Listener Feedback: February 2025

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, February 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. 

Time now for Listener Feedback. We begin with some corrections and clarifications this morning.

First, we found out this month that back on January 22nd we misidentified the state in which one of our news sources practices law. The immigration attorney we quoted practices in Minnesota not Pennsylvania.

Next, during our February 7th program we profiled musician and producer Charlie Peacock. We misidentified his birthplace. He was in fact born in Yuba City, California. We reposted the segment online with this correction.

BROWN: This month we’ve covered a few stories based in Alaska. Listener David Durst is a long-time resident of the last frontier. He called in to straighten us out on some pronunciations he clearly knows better than we did. But he also had this to say:

DAVID DURST: Thank you for covering the Bering Air airplane crash en route from Unalakleet to Nome on February 6th. As a lifelong Alaskan, it's nice to have events that are significant to our great state, nationally. Aviation is a huge part of transportation here as a majority of communities are not accessible by road. Even our state capitol Juno is only accessible by air or sea due to terrain.

I would also like to add that the town of Nome still does not have road access. There's about 200 miles of road out of Nome, but they are all dead ends. All Alright, thanks for all your coverage of Alaska and keep up the great work. Thanks, bye.

Thanks for listening, David.

EICHER: Grateful your message didn’t have to be carried by dog-sled to get to us!

Now on to some listeners who took exception to a few of our stories this month. First, a comment by environmental engineering professor Nathan Howell, who says he teaches at West Texas A&M University. He had this to say about our coverage of the Department on Government Efficiency after finding out a few of his friends had been laid off by DOGE.

NATHAN HOWELL: I was calling in a recording to respond to some of what Cal Thomas recently offered about critiques on DOGE and those complaining about it. I don't disagree with most of what Cal said, he makes good points about needing to find fraud, waste and abuse and how likely it would be to find it if sought for. But I don't really understand why a blanket layoff of probationary employees is considered elimination of fraud, waste, and abuse. There was no attempt made to discern if the employees were doing their jobs. So I thought that detail needed to be added to this larger conversation.

After our February 6th story about changes to the asylum process at the southern border, listener Tim Smith sent this comment:

TIM SMITH: First of all, I just want to say I really appreciate you guys as for people, followers of Christ as well. Specifically, it's just a great service to the body of Christ at large, and I sincerely thank you all for it. I do have some mild criticism for that piece. I did not think that it was really well balanced or even -handed. There seemed to be a slant towards compassion for the people who were stuck in a difficult situation because the laws of our country are now suddenly being enforced. There are many people who just are trying to come to the United States for a better life. And while I empathize with that, it's not legal to try to claim asylum except for the narrow parameters that are set that have been set for a long time and the CBP1 app and all of that stuff was a workaround that was not in keeping with either the letter or the spirit of the law.

BROWN: One more comment offering some push back. This time in response to our February 13th commentary on pennies. Here’s Sarah Collen.

SARAH COLLEN: Last week, Cal Thomas ran a story about President Trump ordering the U.S. mint to stop making pennies. He said this was a good start, but wondered “why stop there?” It makes a bit of sense, considering how much it costs to make coins. However, I am a not-very-tech-savvy mother with young children.

When I pay my kids every week, I give them their money in piles: 10% to tithe, 10% for their piggy bank, and I recommend they save a dollar in an envelope every week. Without coins, I don't see any way I could work their pay as I currently do.

It's hard because I certainly see the point about waste, but it feels like a U.S. without coins is a U.S. that's harder for families with children.

EICHER: And now a few appreciative comments.

Matt Brown from Tucson, Arizona enjoyed our recent coverage of life in Syria on our Doubletake podcast.

MATT BROWN: You know y'all are taking it totally to the next level. I kind of feel like I'm listening to an AP segment back from the invasion of Iraq or something, you know, it was just amazing and really, deeply, deeply moving on multiple levels … and these segments that you're doing that tell tell story and have so many subplots are so engaging so educational so informative. You are really honing our appetites for better and better and this is certainly an example of high quality, better and better. Thank you so much.

BROWN: And finally, one more voicemail before we go. Last month we said farewell to one of our longtime technical producers, Johnny Franklin:

LORRAINE: This is Loraine from Menifee, California, congratulations to Johnny Franklin on his semi-retirement. Johnny's creative placement of music like Rachmaninoff's Russian Easter Overture and tunes by Bob Dylan relating to news stories really highlight his behind the scenes skill. Thanks for all you do. Bye.

EICHER: Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in this month. It’s good to hear from you, even when you disagree. Thanks for the time you take to let us know.

BROWN: If you have a comment to share you can email editor@wng.org. You can include an audio file attachment to your email and we’ll consider it for air. You can even phone it in at 202-709-9595, and as we implied earlier, you can also dog-sled it to us.

And that’s this month’s Listener Feedback!

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.