Listener Feedback for September

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: listener feedback. But first something for the young viewer, my friend and colleague Brian Basham is here from WORLD Watch. He's actually on the set of WORLD Watch. Howdy, Brian.

BRIAN BASHAM: Good morning!

EICHER: Getting started. Yeah. We talked about this a few weeks ago and I know quite a few listeners took us up on the offer. But I thought that since this is about to expire, and it’s such a great offer, I wanted to bring you back one last time before this goes away.

Maybe the listener we’re talking to didn’t hear this back in August and with vacations and whatnot, that can happen. So imagine you may be talking to a listener with school-age kids maybe homeschooling, maybe looking for a good current-events supplement. Or maybe a listener who’s a grandparent like me and we want news literacy for our loved ones, without an unbiblical political agenda, and more positively, just a professional news program that provides all the context, doesn’t talk down to kids, but doesn’t assume knowledge about news stories that they’re just not going to have.

Describe the typical day’s WORLD Watch, Brian. What does the viewer get?

BASHAM: Yeah, and as you mentioned, it is a video show. So it's got tons of cool video attached to it. So obviously, it's a world product. So you know, we're gonna take a big bite of the whole big world as we tell our news stories every day. And so like, we might do a story about the U.S. government, something that might be happening in the U.S. government right now. And we don't like to just tell you what is happening. But we like to kind of get your thinking about why it's happening, kind of why they're saying things are happening and kind of given critical thinking to it as well. And so it's not just that you're hearing a new story, but there's a lot more going in behind it. Of course, we try to do it as fun as we can. But like we might do that first and then jump to another part of the world, say Israel, maybe to an archaeological site. And we've done several of these where they are uncovering things that happened in the Bible biblical sites. And it's really cool because it gives us an opportunity to show how the Bible is alive and true. And that's kind of a key component for us. We also have a bunch of like features that we do, we have several reporters and they each have their own special branded segments. And so you might learn something about science one day, we've got Caleb does these great segments with with different people doing different jobs and kind of gives you an exposure, but has a lot of fun while doing it. And it's just cool, Nick, we kind of just jump all over in 10 minutes, and it's it's edited, really fun. And so the kids really look forward to it every single day. It's awesome.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Hey, Brian, you mentioned Caleb, I want to give a shout out to Hannah, and Michelle, Caleb, Taylor, of course, the new faces Nick and Chloe. I just love the team. You and our friend, Rich Bishop have built, you know, this young, talented, biblically solid TV journalist for real.

EICHER: You mentioned, Nick, there's a young Nick, I'm not a new face. But don't get the wrong idea.

BASHAM: It's a good looking face, Nick, but it's not as young as our Nick. Let's put it that way. Not at all. Yeah. And it's a great crew and Myrna you left your own name off that if you guys haven't watched the show yet, and you love Myrna. She shows up on our show all the time. And she is phenomenal. You've been doing this for years. And it just adds another element. That is that is that is great. But yeah, this team is really fun. And you'll see him get together a lot. They show up in each other's packages all the time. And the kids just love them. And so it kind of gives them somebody look up to role models, but they do phenomenal work to their incredible.

EICHER: Yes they do. So all of that. And we want to make it as easy as possible to get started with WORLD Watch. It's not cheap to produce a program like this, let alone do it all year round. But we have figured out how we can do it and offer it for just $6.99 a month. But the great deal that I want you to talk about here, Brian, is that three months free? Talk a bit about that. And how does a listener to the world and everything in it take advantage of three months free of WORLD Watch, because I think you've really got to see it and make it a habit to understand just what a great value it is.

BASHAM: Yeah. And the cool thing is, is that when you think about this as a parent, and you're gonna show this to your kids, is you don't have to force your kids to watch it either. They're going to look forward to it. Some people use this as they play our opening music and it gets them pumping. And that's how they get the kids out of bed and downstairs. So they can start their homeschool. It's it's really cool. But anyway, it is as you mentioned, it's going to be the first three months free and you can just go to WORLD Watch news.com WORLD Watch news.com. When you go right to that first page, it'll show you how to sign up and get that But I think once you see it, you're never going to want to give it up. And it is really good, especially for people who are you know, counting every penny and trying to keep track of their money. And it's sometimes it's scary to kind of just commit to something without seeing it. This is a great way to expose your family to it and get a good really good idea. Plus, once you pop on there, you can watch everything we've ever done. So we've been running now for three years plus, and you can watch everything we've ever produced and so people will jump on there and binge watch old new shows. It's awesome.

EICHER: That's when you know you've got something when you binge watch news, World Watch news.com We'll put that link up on today's transcript in case the listener is unable to write it down at the time WORLD Watch news.com Brian Basham right there on the set of World Watch. He's the fearless leader. He's the daily anchor of WORLD Watch and good morning to you. Thanks for dropping by.

BASHAM: Hey, have a good one guys.

NICK: All right, let’s get to that listener feedback for the month of September. And we will begin, as per normal, with a couple corrections. The first one this morning comes from last week’s Culture Friday conversation with John Stonestreet. We were discussing JRR Tolkien’s legacy. John compared Tolkien and CS Lewis:

JOHN STONESTREET: Narnia was much more allegory, it was much more direct one to one. Middle Earth is not that way, Middle Earth holds a remarkable amount of insight into what it means to be human, and what it means to live in the world. And I think that’s why it has staying power.

Caroline Aungst of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, attends a classical Christian school where they study Tolkien and Lewis.

CAROLINE: But in school, we learned Narnia was actually a supposal and not an allegory. Supposals are defined as a narrative that is not symbolic but starts by the author supposing something.

Caroline, thanks so much for listening, and for calling in. You’re correct.

But I should note we weren’t identifying Narnia as an allegory, just that it is much more allegorical than the worlds Tolkien created. So thanks for giving us the opportunity to clarify that point!

BROWN: Regular listener Brent England took exception to one of our recent humorous news stories—about the farmer who was caught driving his car with livestock in the front seat. We framed the story as being about a “cow in a car.”

EICHER: Yes, and in framing the story we quoted the police department, so tell it to the officer on scene.

BROWN:But Brent ran with this, explaining that a cow is a female who has calved . As the bovine in question was male, we should have called it a “bull in a car”—since it was a male capable of siring a calf. All I’m going to add here is, ah, thanks for steering us to the truth…

EICHER: Next, we heard from quite a few listeners about a mispronunciation during Monday’s History Book on Joseph Smith. Listener Fred Anson put it this way:

Any Mormon who might possibly be listening is either laughing hysterically or cringing at the mispronouncing of the angel’s name as “Moronee” instead of “Moroni.” This is a common rookie mistake for those Never-Mormons who are unfamiliar with Mormonism.

We’ve corrected the pronunciation and we reposted the segment with the right pronunciation. Thank you.

BROWN: Speaking of Monday’s History Book, it generated a lot of feedback. Some like Fred took exception to the story, thinking it was overly critical. Laurie Murray thought the story was embarrassing compared to the usual professionalism of the program. And Laura Robins believed the whole segment was a major departure from the spirit of our podcast. But the Moyers family from Centennial, Colorado wrote in praising the segment as “succinct” and exposing pertinent error. And Chuck Hendricks from Dallas appreciated the reminder of the gracious gift of God’s word being sufficient.

EICHER: And while God’s word is always sufficient, sometimes our memory of where to find certain verses isn’t. Listener Thomas Shaw pointed out that on Tuesday, we ended the program with a passage of scripture we incorrectly referenced as Psalm 27:1-2. Those verses are actually in Proverbs.

And one more correction. Yesterday, Commentator Cal Thomas explained that Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, planned to uphold a ban on all new gas and diesel car sales by 2030. But on Wednesday, after Cal had written and recorded his commentary for us, Sunak announced a delay of that ban for 5 more years. The ban on new gas and diesel cars will now go into effect in 2035. As for the rest of Cal's commentary, it remains just as relevant, laying out many significant problems in switching from gas to electric vehicles.

Now to a couple voicemails. Austin Smith listens to the program in Egypt. He sent us this comment from Cairo:

SMITH: Just listened to Myrna’s review of the three singing families on the podcast. I love the way WORLD covers music and arts, so keep up the good work. Appreciate it.

BROWN: Adam Carrigan listens in Columbus, Indiana. He called in a couple times this month. He loved Leah Savas’s story about the life-like baby models on display at the Creation Museum. But he was especially appreciative of a classic commentary from Joel Belz.

CARRIGAN: It is amazing to me how relevant it is for today. I'm very grateful for Christian journalists who are going to take the timeless truths of God's word and apply them in a timely way but still write them in a timeless fashion. I'm also very grateful that you are training the next generation of journalists who are going to continue on with that tradition. Thanks and keep up the good work.

EICHER: Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in this month. We’re grateful that you listen, and that you take the time to provide thoughtful feedback.

BROWN: And thanks to you if you left a comment and rating on Apple iTunes.

If you have comments to share with us for listener feedback you can send them to editor@wng.org. And if you’re writing, why not take a moment and record your comments on your phone and send those along as well. We’ve included instructions on how to do that on our website: wng.org/podcasts.

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.