The World and Everything in It: April 13, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

The Supreme Court tries to find the deciding factor that qualifies someone for asylum.

BARRETT: How do you know under your theory when the person is close enough … if it’s not crossing the physical border, what is the magic thing or the dispositive thing that we’re looking for?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. David Bahnen is standing by.

And the WORLD History Book: the story behind some of the first photographs of Revolutionary War veterans.

HAGIST: They're captivating because they bring us a sense of an era that we don't have visual ways to connect with.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, April 13th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

ROUGH: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran » President Trump says he still predicts that a peace deal will come together with Iran, even though weekend peace talks ended in Pakistan without a deal.

Vice President JD Vance led a US delegation, as negotiators met face to face in Islamabad for more than 21 hours.

TRUMP: We had a very, uh, intensive negotiation and toward the end it got very friendly and we got just about every point we needed except for the fact that they refused to give up their nuclear ambition. And that's the only point, frankly, to me that was the most important point by far.

Iranian officials blamed the breakdown of talks on what they called American overreach.

But Trump insisted that Iran—his words—has not “left the bargaining table.” He added, “I predict they come back and they give us everything we want.”

A ceasefire expires April 22. Neither side has said what comes next. Pakistan has offered to host more talks in the coming days.

Meantime, the president says that with or without Iran’s cooperation, the Strait of Hormuz will be open for business.

TRUMP:  We have mine sweepers there. Now we have highly sophisticated underwater mine sweepers, which are the latest and the greatest, but we're also bringing in more traditional mine sweepers, and so I understand is the UK and a couple of other countries are sending mine sweepers.

But Trump also said that any ship that has since paid Iran a toll to pass through would forfeit safe passage.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired back, insisting the strait remains under Tehran's "full control."

Artemis » The Artemis II astronauts received a thunderous welcome home over the weekend.

SOUND: [Artemis welcome]

After splashing down off the coast of San Diego on Friday, they arrived in the Houston area a day later, greeted by NASA workers, military officers, and others.

They returned from a nearly 10-day mission that broke the record for deep space travel. They flew farther from Earth than any humans had ever traveled — more than 250,000 miles — and captured views of the lunar far side never before seen by human eyes.

Mission Commander Reid Wiseman said of his crewmates:

WISEMAN:  We are bonded forever and no one down here is ever gonna know what the four of us just went through, and it was the most special thing that will ever happen in my life.

He shared the Orion space capsule with pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada's Jeremy Hansen.

NASA is already eyeing the next milestone — Artemis III next year, and a moon landing in 2028.

Eric Swalwell » Prominent supporters of California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell's bid for governor are pulling their support in a stunning political reversal.

That comes after The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a former staffer claims he sexually assaulted her twice.

The woman reportedly said the incidents happened in 2019, when she worked for Swalwell, and again in 2024 after a charity gala. Swalwell responded over the weekend:

SWALWELL: These allegations of sexual assault are flat false. They are absolutely false. They did not happen. They have never happened, and I will fight them with everything that I have.

Top Democrats are dropping their support, include California Senator Adam Schiff, who called on Swalwell to quit the race. Several California labor unions followed.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office says it's now investigating the 2024 incident.

Hungary election » Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán conceded defeat Sunday after a weekend election, ending 16 years in power.

The prime minister told supporters that while some ballots had yet to be counted, the outcome was clear:

ORBAN: [Speaking Hungarian]

He said “The responsibility and possibility of governing was not given to us.”

Orbán is a political ally of President Trump. Vice President JD Vance even traveled to Hungary last week in a show of support ahead of the election.

Orbán has also been a vocal critic of Western involvement in the war in Ukraine.

SOUND: [Hungary celebration]

Supporters of his challenger, Péter Magyar celebrated in the streets. Magyar’s Tisza party took more than 53 percent of the vote. That’s a margin large enough for a powerful supermajority in parliament.

Super Mario box office » Struggling movie theaters starving for a blockbuster have not one, but two hits right now filling seats. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie topped the weekend box office:

BOWSER: My troopers, your king has returned! Long live the king! The Bowser name shall be feared once more!

The PG-rated animated flick hauled in another $69 million dollars in ticket sales. It has now earned more than $300 million stateside and more than $600 million globally.

In second place, the PG-13-rated sci-fi film Project Hail Mary took in another $25 million. It has now earned more than $250 million domestically and more than a half-a-billion worldwide.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: The Supreme Court tries to find the deciding factor that qualifies someone for asylum. Plus, something that’s ahead but not immediately straight ahead.

This is The World and Everything in It.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: It’s Monday the 13th of April. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Legal Docket.

Our case today is Mullin versus Al Otro Lado—a case about asylum law asking a narrow question of application: when, exactly, someone “arrives” in the United States.

That might sound technical. But the answer has real consequences.

Immigration courts already face a backlog of more than three million cases. And in many places, asylum hearings are scheduled years into the future.

The government says that reality is part of why it needs flexibility at the border—to control how many people enter the system in the first place.

ROUGH: But the challengers say that cannot justify ignoring the law Congress wrote. Because under federal statute, an alien who is “present in” or who “arrives in” the United States may apply for asylum—and must be inspected.

So here’s the question:

Can the government avoid that obligation by stopping people just short of the line—before they count as having “arrived”?

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case late last month. The dispute grew out of a policy to slow down the number of migrants entering. Back in 2016, ports of entry along the southern border were overwhelmed.

Here’s Vivek Suri ... arguing for the government.

SURI: The policy was put in place in 2016 when ports which might have a capacity—a holding capacity of 50 to a hundred people, were facing lines of aliens far larger than that. And those individuals were demanding entry at that particular time, and ports were overwhelmed.

The policy is called “metering.” It limited how many asylum seekers would be processed at ports of entry each day—turning others back to wait, often on the Mexican side of the border. It did so by placing agents on the border to stop those without valid travel papers from crossing.

SURI: Sometimes they didn’t have enough food to feed the people arriving at, in the United States. Sometimes they didn’t have beds in which they could sleep. They didn’t have places where they could hold them. So it was necessary for the ports to say, sorry, we’re at capacity, try again some other time.

EICHER: The policy was eventually extended to all ports of entry along the southern border.

The immigrant-advocacy organization Al Otro Lado and 13 asylum seekers filed suit. They claimed the metering policy violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. That says any alien who is physically “present in” the United States or who “arrives in” the United States may apply for asylum and must be inspected by an immigration officer.

ROUGH: For our purposes, there are two key phrases to remember—

First, present in. Second, arrives in.

The asylum seekers argued that the second phrase arrives in the United States should be read to include those who are in the process of arrival, even if they’re still on the Mexican side. But the government argued to read it that way goes too far.

SURI: You can’t arrive in the United States while you’re still standing in Mexico. That should be the end of this case.

EICHER: The justices weren’t so sure.

Cases usually wind up in court because there are good arguments on both sides. The asylum seekers argue the government’s reading would make part of the statute superfluous—basically redundant. Justice Elena Kagan pressed.

KAGAN: I totally get that if you just look at the language “who arrives in the United States” it sort of suggests, well, you have to be in the United States. So totally get that. It does seem to me that this statute—you don’t have to be a superfluity hawk to think that this statute has a massive superfluity problem. Because the way you’re understanding that second phrase—

The phrase “arrives in.”

KAGAN: —the statute ends up saying, essentially, any alien who is in the United States or who is in the United States. … It can’t mean that. So in the United States must mean something else. I mean these phrases are right next to each other.

ROUGH: The government said the phrases can overlap but still serve different functions. For example, distinguishing between those already there and those newly arriving.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor took things back to the spring of 1939. That’s when over 900 Jewish refugees boarded a ship to escape Nazi Germany. First, the MS St. Louis tried to dock in Cuba.

SOTOMAYOR: The refugees weren’t permitted to unload themselves. It then came to the coast of Florida, and the U.S. wouldn’t let it dock at all and turned it back. And it did the same in Canada. Canada wouldn’t let it dock.

EICHER: The ship had to return to Europe and more than 250 of its passengers would die in the Holocaust.

Sotomayor used that example to press the government on its obligations—arguing that people who reach the border and ask for protection should at least be heard. Here’s part of that exchange:

SOTOMAYOR: They’re not permitting the people who come to the line, to the door, and knock on it who want to claim refugee status. You’re saying we’re not going to inspect you. How does that not violate the Refugee Treaty Act or the Spirit of the St. Louis UN convention?

SURI: To start with the statute. The statute doesn’t say arrive at the door.

SOTOMAYOR: No but—They’re arriving. They’re knocking.

SURI: I do not deny the moral weight of claims made by refugees. But that is not the question before the court. … The question before the court is what obligations did Congress impose in the asylum and inspection statutes? And those refer only to aliens who arrive in the United States.

ROUGH: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson raised another concern:

JACKSON: So imagine a polite asylum seeker who wants to do everything by the book. He approaches the border but does not cross precisely because the law says you are not supposed to enter the United States without authority. Why on earth would Congress have intended or meant for his asylum request to be discarded, not taken seriously, not entertained, but someone who manages to enter the United States unlawfully, when the law says you’re not supposed to do it, and requests asylum gets their application entertained?

Suri pointed out there’s a separate statute that addresses protections for aliens outside the U.S. Also, the responsibility of the world’s refugee problem is a shared one among nations:

SURI: Congress could reasonably determine that if a refugee is in Mexico, then the Mexican government is primarily responsible for processing his claim. Once the refugee is in the United States, either legally or illegally, then the United States has greater responsibility for that person.

Right at about this point...

JACKSON: Think about the statute at issue. It says, “arriving in” … it says “arriving in.”

oral arguments got tense!

JACKSON: [Jackson, Suri, Chief cross-talk]

Chief Justice John Roberts had to step in.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: Please! Counsel, the statutory language, is it “arriving in” or is it “arrives in”?

SURI: Arrives in.

ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you.

EICHER: The metering, or turnback policy, is not currently in place in the same form. That raised a threshold question: Is the case moot?

The government says no, it isn’t—and officials still need the option to use similar tools going forward.

Lawyer Kelsi Corkran argued for the asylum seekers. She says the government’s approach breaks with decades of practice at ports of entry—where people arriving to seek asylum were at least processed.

CORKRAN: ... which have recognized for nearly 30 years that the Act’s inspection and processing duties apply to noncitizens, quote, coming or attempting to come into the United States at a port of entry.

ROUGH: In other words, Corkran argued the statute applies even to people in the process of arrival. But Justice Amy Coney Barrett wanted to know where exactly the line would be drawn.

BARRETT: How do you know under your theory when the person is close enough that we could say they have arrives in or arrived in the destination? I mean what if there’s a queue and they’re far back? … If it’s not crossing the physical border, what is the magic thing or the dispositive thing that we’re looking for that we can say, Ah, now that person we can say arrives in the United States.

CORKRAN: So a person arrives in the United States at a port of entry when they are at the threshold of the port’s entrance about to step over. So they are arriving there. I think that’s consistent with ordinary meaning.

EICHER: The ports have turnstiles, so Corkran later said, think of it like a stadium entrance.

But what about those who approach the border outside a port of entry? Meaning, an illegal location, the border line between ports of entry?

CORKRAN: I think you have to be at a place where you could, in fact, cross. … Have you made it to the threshold and are about to step over.

ROUGH: Justice Neil Gorsuch tested the line.

GORSUCH: So anybody at the water’s edge of the Rio Grande on the Mexican side has arrived in?

CORKRAN: No, the border is halfway through the water.

GORSUCH: Okay. So they’ve got one step short of halfway through. They’ve arrived but somebody who is on the water’s edge has not arrived?

CORCKRAN: I think that’s right. You’re looking at being at the threshold.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh failed to see how these distinctions helped the problem at all.

KAVANAUGH: This seems very artificial, trying to figure out at the threshold, on the line, in the middle of the river. Because wherever the line is, the government is presumably going to stop you on the other side of that line.

He said the real question is can the government block people … no matter where, exactly, the line is drawn.

EICHER: Before we wrap up, I want to circle back to something I said about a week and a half ago, when we first talked about the Supreme Court’s decision in Chiles versus Salazar. That’s the case about whether the state of Colorado can restrict what counselors say to minors seeking help with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion.

I said the Court called Colorado’s law a clear violation of the First Amendment.

That overstates what the Court actually did—and I clearly misread it.

What the Court said is that the law regulates speech—specifically speech based on viewpoint—and that means it has to face the toughest legal test courts apply.

But under that test, laws like this are usually on very shaky ground.

ROUGH: And that’s the key distinction.

The Court said the law is presumptively unconstitutional. But it said the lower courts used the wrong test. So it sent the case back so the lower court could reassess the law under the proper First Amendment test, a rigorous evaluation known as strict scrutiny.

That doesn’t guarantee the outcome—but it does put the burden squarely on the state to justify the law. And the writing is on the wall.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning. Good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, the new inflation report for the month of March came in. The headline number was hot. No big surprise, given roughly three quarters of the increase driven by energy. That’s my quick look under the hood of this report. But when you step back, David, and look at the broader picture, the core, the trend, everything we’ve been seeing over the past year, what do you think this report is actually telling us?

BAHNSEN: Well, that’s what the point of core inflation, Core CPI versus headline is. Headline includes food and energy, and that’s a perpetual dynamic, that food and energy have more lumpiness and more idiosyncratic things that affect them. And that’s why it’s not always as idiosyncratic as the March oil spike caused by the Iran war and Strait of Hormuz closing. But we look at core to try to get a feel for what things are like outside of energy.

And I think even in core, you’re still looking at 2.6% versus a year ago, just higher than it was at the end of 2024. It increased point two in March. So I’ve always said this, Nick, that you have to look at it with the political inflation and the monetary inflation. What I’m about to say about the monetary side is irrelevant to the political side.

On the political side, all people care about is if they’re paying more, and if gas prices are higher, they’re going to call it inflation. They’re going to say 3.3%. It’s going to have an impact because prices are higher. But we do have to look economically at what is actually related to the overall price level.

And in this case, there is such an easy cause and effect to find that indicates to me it is not from an increase in money supply or excessive monetary policy or government activity, that there are certain goods that have seen price increases that have had tariffs applied, and then there is this energy factor. And so that’s happening, and can be thought of in the realm of public policy, but I don’t think it’s relevant to the realm of monetary policy.

EICHER: David, I want to switch to Dividend Café, something you wrote there. We had a lot of volatility tied to Iran over the past month, easily, big moves in oil, sharp swings in markets. But your point is, a lot of it is simply reaction, not necessarily lasting signal. So when people see these day-to-day moves, stocks down hard one day, bouncing back the next, and sometimes it just happens intraday, what should be taken seriously and what should be just tuned out?

BAHNSEN: Well, look, I want to say it specifically to our listeners right now, the overall issues with Iran may very well get a little worse before they get better. They may get better before they get worse. There is not any way to really assess where things exactly are.

I find it very uncomfortable that there are people rooting against it to a point where that affects their reporting. And I find it bothersome that people do the opposite, that they are so determined to declare a victory that they ignore things that are quite relevant that should give us pause.

And I don’t find it contradictory to objectively say that there’s been some really big victories obtained, some really good progress. But there’s a whole lot of things that if they don’t get better, then it’s going to be really hard for people to call it the victory we’re after with a straight face.

But I think from a market standpoint, what I wrote in Dividend Cafe is almost indisputable, no matter who people like politically and what they’re rooting for in this particular military exercise. The President wants this thing to be over.

And we may get an outcome on a scale of one to 10—10 being best—that ends up being an eight. I doubt you get a 10. Most things in life don’t go that way. And it may be less than an eight, I don’t know.

But what I do know is, regardless of the number, he wants it over. And I think markets are beginning to feel that it is better to price something on the other side of it than assuming it stays on for good.

My question would be: oil prices at some point—Strait of Hormuz experiencing some form of reopening—are we going to see oil prices come back down to 65–70? I’m very skeptical. But at what point do they dip back at least below 95 into the 80s?

Because markets recovered a little bit last week, Nick, and oil prices came from 113 to 100. But markets really should not be rallying much on $95 to $100 oil. What they’re rallying on is that some of the tail risk has come off, that we might see $150. So this remains volatile. It remains unpredictable.

And I’m going to be pretty committed in the weeks ahead to separating in my analysis what it is I hope happens geopolitically versus what is happening economically and for markets, because those are two different stories. You could end up getting an outcome that markets like that is not necessarily a total victory for our geopolitical objectives.

EICHER: I’m curious about that, David. Wouldn’t it seem that a best-case geopolitical outcome—an Iran that’s no longer a nuclear threat, an Iran no longer a major destabilizing force, exporter of terror—wouldn’t that also be clearly a positive economic outcome?

BAHNSEN: Oh, it is. That would be. I totally agree with you, that outcome would not only be great for markets, it would be great geopolitically. But it’s the idea that we may end up having a less than satisfactory geopolitical outcome, but that still does result in oil flows resuming.

Let’s put it this way: markets are probably less concerned with Iran’s uranium right now than they are the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that the overall military objectives—one of the problems with this whole discussion is that very few people are discussing it in good faith.

There are so many discussing it wanting to give a premature victory to the president, or wanting to dunk on him and troll him and say he didn’t succeed. Here, I’m suggesting that we don’t know exactly what the outcome is going to be, but it’s probably not going to be binary. It’s going to have some sort of gradation to the way we report card it.

But with markets, it’s the main issue, of course, for those who read Dividend Cafe. I’m getting to a point of saying, let’s assume everything in Iran is over. And exactly how you say—a really great end outcome. Well, what does that mean?

We still go back to where we were before, which is an expensive market in a questionable economy with an AI vulnerability. So even that may not necessarily mean, okay, Iran is done, we’re now full steam ahead, the S&P’s about to go up 20%. I don’t believe that at all.

EICHER: David, I want to end by talking about a regulatory shift that caught my attention this week, and the only place I saw it reported was in an editorial in The Wall Street Journal.

Federal banking regulators are now saying that supervising banks for so-called reputational risk is too subjective and open to abuse, and they’re moving to prohibit examiners from pressuring banks to drop customers based on political or social or even lawful but disfavored activity.

Banks have said for years that they have felt that pressure. What do you make of that change, David, and how significant is it?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, well, I follow it very closely, Nick. I’ve been involved with it for a long time, and there’s sort of two different things.

I agree that the language that exists now about reputational risk is too subjective. I do believe that there ought to be the right for financial firms to choose who they want to work with in terms of reputational risk.

I recall, when I was managing director at Morgan Stanley, we made a decision to fire a very large client who had been involved in what would amount to some very high-profile pornographic video content. And I wanted the firm to get rid of the client, not merely because I found what he did personally offensive, but also because I thought it was damaging and beneath us as an institution to work with someone so unreputable.

And then the problem with that is, is there a slippery slope to saying they don’t want to work with gun owners or this or that? Look, banks and financial wealth management firms are different.

We might need to have a conversation on this distinguishing between banks and wealth management firms—depository institutions that are providing something more commoditized versus a more relational and advisory business. I want to be able to say that I’m not going to work with certain organizations, and that means that a left-wing person can say, “I don’t want to work with a pro-life cause.” But I don’t think that’s the same in banking as it is in relational wealth management.

They need to have clear lines. There will always be some need for interpretation around the lines. But what was happening before was clearly just firms being afraid of the woke police coming after them, and I think that’s what they’re putting an end to.

And even before trying to fine-tune the rules, my consultant, Jerry Boyer, and I have been working on this for years, and I can assure you that the companies have been coming the right direction for a number of years now. They did not like the negative press, and they want to work with most organizations, and they don’t want someone else telling them who’s okay to work with and not work with.

The amount of companies that were using the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is an overtly discriminatory anti-Christian organization, as a means of screening certain things—the number of companies that were using them that no longer are is unbelievable. And that’s a great thing, if you ask me.

EICHER: All right. David Bahnsen—founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions. David, hope you have a great week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much Nick.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next: The World History Book.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, one remarkable collection connects the nation’s founding generation with those who lived through its greatest internal conflict.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: The Civil War signaled one of the first threats to break up the United States since the American Revolution.

So, Connecticut native Elias Brewster Hillard set out to write a book that might preserve unity and shared origins.

He traveled to interview the last living men of the Revolutionary War.

DON HAGIST: He was sparked with the idea that we need the voices of these men because they created this great nation.

Don Hagist is the managing editor of the Journal of the American Revolution.

HAGIST: He's trying to write a book about how important the American Revolution was and the unification was, that that war characterized, because he wants to bring people back together.

In his book, The Last Men of the Revolution, Hillard recorded detailed interviews of six veterans and placed photographic portraits beside each account. The format made it a rarity when it was published in 1864.

Although Hillard hoped the book would achieve some significance, the first editions fell into obscurity.

HAGIST: It didn't get a whole lot of recognition at the time.

Hagist says the pictures were key to eventually finding public recognition.

HAGIST: There aren't very many photographs of people from that time period. So I think they're captivating because they bring us a sense of an era that we don't have visual ways to connect with.

The book gained renewed attention in the 1950s after Life Magazine reprinted the photos. Some early readers took the veterans’ accounts as fact.

Hagist became familiar with the book and published a follow-up in 2016, called: The Revolution’s Last Men.

It was a book of corrections and reexamination of history.

HAGIST: What we were expecting was to just have the 1864 book with maybe some additional footnotes and things in it freshen it up.

But in his research, Hagist discovered that Hillard’s interviews were fraught with timeline errors.

HAGIST: Some of the men's ages are not right in the book from 1864—off by a few years. Most of them served later in the war than the original book suggests.

Hagist had to untangle the truth from archives and military pension records.

In one example, Hillard claimed that veteran Alexander Milliner was at the battles of Saratoga, Brandywine, and the siege of Fort Stanwix.

HAGIST: Well, all of these things were taking place at approximately the same time in very different parts of the country. There's no possible way that one person could have been in all three of those things, and yet, that's what it says in the book.

Hillard’s background might have influenced the inaccuracies. Hillard was a lifelong pastor, not a biographer.

HAGIST: He doesn't have any particular training in interviewing people and being discerning about listening to what they're saying. He's not a historian of the revolution. This is the only book related to history in any way that he wrote.

The declining memories of the men—all of them around 100 years old—may also account for some of the contradictions.

HAGIST: It may be that the men themselves also misremembered some things.

But the book got other things right: like the portraits themselves. Photographer Nelson Augustus Moore snapped the originals—and made four separate exposures during each session. Hillard later followed up with his own interviews.

HAGIST: At the time the book was printed in 1864, there was not a technique for putting a photographic print directly onto paper.

For the first editions, each picture was pasted by hand onto the pages using a type of tissue paper called silver albumen. And since there were four originals to choose from:

HAGIST: Every single 1864 copy contains some different mix and match of the four exposures of the men. Because for each man, they print out four pictures, they cut them out, and they put one in one book and one in another…

Hagist says these photographs are what make the biography stand the test of time.

HAGIST: The photographs themselves really almost have a life of their own. It's the photographs that capture everybody.

Even with the mistakes, The Last Men of the Revolution still accomplished what other biographies didn’t.

HAGIST: And as much as I can sit and say, ‘Oh, Elias Brewster Hillard, he wasn't a writer. He wasn't a journalist. This book has all kinds of mistakes in it.’ He did it, he published the book. And that's why we have this set of photographs in particular that is so well remembered.

The book didn’t achieve much popularity during Hillard’s lifetime. After decades of ministry, he died in 1895.

But 160 years later, the book serves as a reminder of where we came from and introduces Americans to the men who united the country.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: combatting the black market for abortion pills. We’ll have a report. And, a symphony just for kids, reconnecting music and learning. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

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