The World and Everything in It: April 17, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday ... an unusually candid account of abortion ... a proper backlash over blasphemy ... and Gen Z's AI anxiety.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet’s standing by.

Also today: A sci-fi film that found its audience over time—we revisit Edge of Tomorrow.

AUDIO: Battle is the great redeemer. The fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged.

And our new monthly feature Quest where we talk with thoughtful leaders about the books that shaped their worldview. Today, we talk with journalist and commentator Cal Thomas.

BROWN: It’s Friday, April 17th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

SOUND: [Gunfire in Beirut]

NEWS ANCHOR, KENT COVINGTON: Israel-Lebanon ceasefire » Celebratory gunfire in Beirut after a ten-day ceasefire was announced between Israel and Lebanon.

The temporary truce comes after weeks of Israeli airstrikes into southern Lebanon, targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group which has continued to fire rockets across the border into northern Israel.

President Trump on Thursday told reporters:

TRUMP: They're all agreeing it's a very nice little package for about a week. And we're not gonna have lots of bombs dropping and we're gonna see if we can make peace between Lebanon and Israel.

But Hezbollah didn't sign that agreement and the question remains whether the Lebanese government will be able to fulfill its end of the bargain by stopping the terror group from launching further attacks against Israel.

Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon:

DANON: We have no beef with Lebanon or with the Lebanese people. We have issues with Hezbollah. And I think today we realized we have the same goal. We want Hezbollah out of Lebanon, period. When I say "we," it is Israel and the Lebanese.

Iran: Peace talks » President Trump also addressed ongoing efforts to end the war in Iran.

He says a new round of U.S. peace talks with Teheran could start as soon as this weekend, with the current ceasefire set to expire early next week.

And he adds that the two sides are “very close” to a deal.

TRUMP: Iran wants to make a deal and we're dealing very nicely with them. Uh, we've gotta have no nuclear weapons if we do, that's a big factor. And, uh, they're willing to do things today that they weren't willing to do two months ago.

The first round of talks in Pakistan last weekend ended without an agreement.

But Trump says if there’s a deal to be signed, he might oversee it personally.

TRUMP: I might go, yeah, president if the deal is signed in Islamabad, but I might go.

Iran: Maritime blockade » All of this comes as the US Navy tightens its squeeze on Tehran. More than 10,000 American sailors, Marines, and airmen — along with a dozen warships and dozens of aircraft — are enforcing a blockade of Iran's ports. More than a dozen Iran-linked vessels have already turned away rather than confront US forces.

The US military has widened its reach beyond the blockade, authorizing its forces to stop and seize Iran-linked ships carrying weapons, oil, and other banned goods anywhere in the world.

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine:

CAINE: Enforcement will occur inside Iran's territorial seas and in international waters.

Iran has threatened to retaliate by ordering its Houthi proxies in Yemen to target shipping at the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait a move that could disrupt traffic through the Suez Canal.

Severe weather » Splintered homes and flooded streets stretch across the Midwest this morning after tornadoes and record rainfall. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: Twisters touched down in Kansas, Missouri, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Wisconsin has taken the brunt — with at least five tornadoes ripping through the southern and central parts of the state.

One resident of Juno County said Thursday:

AUDIO: I was not expecting this kind of damage. It's apocalyptic.

EICHER: And the rain just won't stop. The Wisconsin River could break a decades-old flood record this morning near Portage as communities across the state wade through rising water.

Governor Tony Evers has declared a state of emergency. A Madison resident told TV station WKOW:

AUDIO: I was like a little frightened, like a little bit frightened, and when I look outside, it was worse than I ever seen.

EICHER: Forecasters warn that today severe thunderstorms threaten an arc from northern Oklahoma through central Wisconsin.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Fairfax murder-suicide » Police in Virginia say former Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax killed himself and his wife, Cerina, inside their home in an apparent murder-suicide..

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis:

DAVIS: Justin Fairfax shot and killed, shot several times and killed his wife, ran to a different part of the home, and then killed himself with the same firearm

Officers responded to the family's Annandale home early Thursday after their son called 911.

DAVIS: Both of their children, teenagers, were in the house when it, when it happened. Um, so that, that's horrible news for the family. Certainly a traumatic event for those, for those children to, to live through

The couple had been in the middle of what police called a messy divorce.

Justin Fairfax was once a rising Democratic star ... briefly poised to become governor of Virginia before sexual assault allegations derailed his career.

Ticketmaster-Live Nation ruling » A New York jury ruled that Ticketmaster and parent Live Nation ran an illegal monopoly over big concert venues.

A judge will set penalties later, which could top hundreds of millions of dollars and may force Live Nation to sell some of its venues.

But Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh says don't expect ticket prices to plummet. In part because consumers have already shown they're willing to pay high prices.

GHOSH: But the question is where does that money go to? Right now maybe going to the monopolist like Live Nation, and maybe the performers will get a bigger share of it, and maybe the consumers will see some benefit.

More than 30 states sued the company, saying it squeezed out rivals and drove up prices. And the jury found fans in 22 states paid nearly $2 dollars extra per ticket.

Live Nation plans to appeal the ruling.

Straight ahead: John Stonestreet is here for Culture Friday. Plus, a review of a movie about a reluctant hero.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, April 17th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday.

John Stonestreet is here. He’s President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Yesterday, John, we reported on a new Justice Department review alleging the Biden administration unfairly targeted pro-life activists—and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told our Capitol Hill reporter Carolina Lumetta that Congress may need to get involved.

DOJ released its nearly 900-page report, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke about it with NBC’s Laura Jarrett. He said his departmental review showed the Biden DOJ worked hand-in-hand with outside organizations to target pro-lifers—and Blanche was critical of the way those cases were handled.

BLANCHE: And then you flow from that the consequence, which is that prosecutors have a tremendous amount of power, and so when a prosecutor gets a case, they have a lot of decisions that they can make. They’re supposed to make the right decision, the one that’s consistent with justice. And what we saw, unfortunately on several occasions, the prosecutors did not do that.

John, we’ve been critical of the Trump administration for its inattention to pro-life issues. Does this change anything?

STONESTREET:  No, I think the Trump administration in the second term has been less than supportive of pro-lifers, has been less than pro-life. He's made it very clear at the beginning of even the campaign that he had done what he wanted to do on the issue of life, which had to do with Roe v. Wade. And that was significant and big, but he wasn't going to do anything else, particularly as it came to something like chemical abortion.

The administration has been clear opposing lawsuits by conservative states who wanted to roll back some of the Biden-era kind of open-door policies—or access policies—to chemical abortion pills and mifepristone and so on.

But that doesn't change in the least how bad President Biden and his administration was on life, and directly targeting pro-lifers, and what that means, I think, on a state level. That it wasn't enough to just say, “Oh, we want to secure abortion rights.” It was, “We want to silence dissent. We want to punish those who we deem are wicked.”

And we see the same thing happening on a state level by radical politicians who falsely accuse pro-lifers as being evil, as being anti-woman, as interfering with healthcare, and even being criminal in some cases.

So I think it helps at least clarify the landscape of what the life battle looks like in these days, where we certainly don't have the support from one side that we once did on a political level, and we have growing hostility—and even a sharper kind of clarification on what the enemy is willing to do.

BROWN: On the life battle, I'm thinking of a profoundly sad admission from the actress Christina Applegate in her new memoir. As one writer put it, it's not that what she wrote is controversial—it's that it's honest.

She was 19 years old at the time, preparing to have an abortion. Just a little of what she wrote—it's hard to read, and it's hard to talk about it.

She said, “I'm pregnant and I'm killing my child on Thursday. Where can I go to recuperate from murder?”

And then there's this part where she's actually talking to the child in the book:

“Hello, little thing. I feel you every moment of my day. Such a tiny existence, such an immense effect you have. You are a miracle, a tiny-handed miracle. I love you, but you know your fate. It's not your time. I know you didn't make that decision, but it can't be your time. You will live on, though. You will live through another. I hope you will forgive me, but mommy can't be with you right now. But know she loves you more than any other miracle.”

One commentator put it this way: what makes this so unsettling is not that it's incomprehensible behavior, but because it is profoundly human.

STONESTREET: Yeah, it is. What a remarkable thing. It's one thing to support abortion by denying the humanity of the preborn. It's another thing to do it while acknowledging it.

As our science and medical knowledge has grown so immensely—even since the days of Roe v. Wade—our ability to look in at things that were previously unseen, what we now know about how life develops in the womb, there's no question about it.

In a sense, this is another chapter of a book that was started by the former president of NARAL in an article maybe 10 years ago, in which she said it doesn't do us any good—those of us who are pro-abortion—to pretend it's not a life. She said, “Of course it's a life.”

I think this was in the pages of—it wasn't Vogue, but it was one of those more high-class women's magazines back in the day that were really popular. But she wrote, “Of course it's a life, but it's a life worth sacrificing.”

What a remarkable admission that was.  This is what happens when you force someone to acknowledge, in practice, what is true—when someone actually has to live this out, when someone has to look another in the eye.

Saying you should go kill that person is an easy thing to say. To actually pull the trigger is another thing completely—particularly now when you're adding another element, where she's not just talking about it as a miracle, she's talking about it as her miracle. She's referring to herself as the little one's mommy.

This is life. This is the reality. This is the truth that we can't not know, as J. Budziszewski put it in his book years ago—the things that you cannot deny. We can suppress it, but it's like beach balls under the water. You push them down, but they pop back up.

And this was a moment of rare honesty. To the point where she even referred to herself as committing murder—it is a remarkable moment of honesty.

BROWN: Well, switching gears here. A lot of people talking about that image depicting President Trump as Christ—backlash coming from everywhere. What's your take?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, there's a lot to think about this. Number one is, it was blasphemous. There's no question.

One initial response is the accusations that people who claim the name of Jesus—will tolerate anything from this president. That proved to be untrue in this case.

There was wide and loud and thorough backlash. There was condemnation from all sides. There was the ability to distinguish between this man that many respect as a leader and a president, and saying something that crossed the line.

I think there are other examples in the history of his presidency—both the first and the second—where people weren't willing to draw that line. But when it came to loyalty to Christ and someone claiming that sort of perspective, there was no gray area here.

People were definitive. People were clear. And people were out loud about it, as they should be.

But it is something we don't talk a lot about anymore, and that is blasphemy. Why is it such a despicable thing in the eyes of God?

When Scripture lists the really bad sins, idolatry and blasphemy are right up there. Why is that the case?

And one of the reasons I was encouraged by the backlash—is because it requires, to understand how despicable the evil is, an understanding of the holiness of God. The otherness of God. That God has no rival.

But that understanding of the holiness and the greatness of God is where Scripture begins. It's where a biblical worldview begins. It's the only place to begin to properly understand both God and ourselves.

So it's not to be taken lightly. And I was really encouraged that so many people did not take it lightly.

BROWN: Blasphemy, for sure, definitely. Isn't it also blasphemy to have on a wall Jesus, and right next to Jesus, JFK, and then Martin Luther King Jr.?

I mean, that to me says same level, same reverence. And this is what I grew up seeing, going into some homes. What's the difference?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, there's a difference, just in the sense that it's different between what somebody says about you and what you say about yourself.

And the fact that Trump reposted this, I think, was what many people found problematic—and rightly so.

But you're right in the sense that to put anyone on the same tier as God, which, by the way, was done. I remember worship hymns that were written to President Obama, sung by little church choirs of black children. I remember images that were created of Obama as Jesus.

Now, he never reposted them. He was smarter than that, which was a good move.

I don't want to play the “other than” game. They're both wrong.

EICHER: John, I want to turn to technology. Yesterday we reported—Lauren Smyth had a story—on a charter school that relies fully on artificial intelligence for instruction, and it’s drawing a lot of interest.

But alongside that, there’s a different signal in a new Gallup survey. Among 14- to 29-year-olds, there’s a surprising level of hostility toward AI. Thirty-one percent say it makes them angry. Forty-two percent say it makes them anxious.

One researcher says it may be because many young people see the handwriting on the wall, or what they think is handwriting on the wall—that AI is coming for their jobs

At the same time, there were online celebrations following the attack on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home. One teenager told The Free Press, “Altman is violent, so we’re just fighting violence with violence.”

John, is this just economic anxiety—or does it point to something deeper in how this generation has been formed?

STONESTREET: I mean, I think it's interesting. Forty-two percent said it made them feel anxious. I'm not sure that tells us a whole lot, given we're talking about Gen Zers, who have the highest levels of anxiety that we have ever seen, and everything makes them anxious.

And we have that—it just plays out over and over and over.

Part of what makes them anxious is the kind of way that they relate with others—digitally, through media and technology, particularly through screens. AI is another evolution of that.

So I guess at some level there's something missing here, where there's been something kind of fully adopted as a way of being human. Not thinking, but Googling. Not relating, but texting or emoting.

In some cases, not even dating a real human, but using artificial substitutes. And now you have something that's better at all those things than what they have been using.

And it's the problem.

I think there's certainly a lack of awareness here. For example, “AI is taking my job”—I don't know if that's the right take on this at all.

Because we have a really complicated relationship between Gen Zers and work to begin with.

And if you don't want AI taking your employment after you graduate, then don't let it take the job that you have of writing your own paper before you graduate.

You just have to put all this together.

And all of this goes back to what you said—formation gone wrong.

We are a world that has been formed by our digital habits more than almost any other habits that we have.

It's how we have developed habits of conversation, habits of effort and diligence, habits that have undermined our resilience and our ability to actually do hard work and respect authority.

So to suddenly blame the latest iteration of this is probably a little short-sighted.

At the same time, they're not wrong in terms of the threat that it plays to work.

And I think at the end of the day, anytime technology is a tool to help us be more fully human, it is legitimate.

Anytime it replaces essential and exclusively human behavior and activity—and even identity—that's when it becomes a problem.

But that happened a long time ago, even before AI.

EICHER: One last question before we let you go. The White House Religious Liberty Commission had its final hearing this week. It’s expected to issue its final report and policy recommendations next month. What do you hope is included in there?

STONESTREET: That's a great question.

I do think we need to, at some level, address this complicated aspect of religious freedom that is being violated in the name of governments interfering with parental rights.

That's not just a religious freedom issue, but it is a big religious freedom issue, because the parents that are most likely not to want school officials to transition their kids, for example, without their knowledge or permission, are religious ones.

And right now, I think that is a growing battle. So that needs to be stated clearly.

I think it needs to be extended beyond religious freedom, as we said, but it can't be less than that.

I do actually really appreciate, by the way, the scope of the conversation about religious liberty that this president and this commission has reached.

I think there needs to be serious protections figured out, particularly in blue states.

There needs to be some way to do something about a state like Colorado, who just relentlessly goes after religious conviction over and over and over—keeps going to the Supreme Court, gets smacked down and embarrassed, and comes back and does the same thing all over again.

We're kind of three and oh now, and they're oh and three, and yet the drama continues.

So that's part of it.

And I also think the parental rights piece, to me, is where so much of this lies right now.

That's a really important aspect of it.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, April 17th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: another reluctant hero.

The best science fiction films tell stories of human invention and ingenuity at odds with the biggest challenges and threats we can dream up.

EICHER: WORLD reviewer Steve Limkeman says the new sci-fi blockbuster Project Hail Mary brought to mind a different movie.

STEVE LIMKEMAN: Tom Cruise stars as Major Bill Cage in the 2014 movie Edge of Tomorrow. Like the protagonist in Project Hail Mary, Cage is forced to embark on a dangerous mission against his will. Cage is being deployed by his superior officer to help beat back an invasion by an alien race known as Mimics that threatens to engulf the planet:

CAGE: While it is an honor, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to decline. Can't stand the sight of blood. Not so much as a paper cut. [CHUCKLES]

GENERAL BRIGHAM: It's not an offer, major. It's an order.

Though he’s comfortable recruiting millions to join the war effort, Cage is desperate to steer clear of the front lines. However, his efforts to persuade his general to take a different course end in a pitiful failed attempt to flee from his duty:

CAGE: I would prefer not to be filming acts of heroism and valor on that beach tomorrow.

GENERAL BRIGHAM: You won't be.

CAGE: I'm glad we could, uh, work this out. Now if you'll excuse me, general. I… Thank you.

GENERAL BRIGHAM: Arrest this man.

As consequence for his cowardice, Cage is busted down to the rank of private and forced to fight the next day under the command of no-nonsense Master Sergeant Farrell, who foreshadows Cage’s impending transformation:

FARRELL: Come nightfall, these men will all reach the same conclusion: that you're a coward and a liar, putting your life above theirs. Good news is there's hope for you, private. Hope in the form of glorious combat. Battle is the great redeemer. The fiery crucible in which the only true heroes are forged.

Cage was not wrong about his prospects of survival. The battle is just as chaotic and devastating as he fears, and the legendary warrior Rita Vrataski — played commandingly by Emily Blunt — is killed moments after landing in what is meant to be a successful repeat of the 1944 D-Day invasion. But there’s a fascinating twist, one that Cage is able to travel back in time to recount:

CAGE: Tomorrow's invasion is a slaughter. I'm dead within minutes of landing along with every other soldier you are sending. And that's because the enemy knows we're coming. How do I know this? Before I died… I killed a Mimic, only this one was different. It passed something on to me. In my blood. Now I live the same day over and over again. Just like they do.

Stellar film editing provides an excellent vehicle for this narrative. Cage repeatedly relives the same day, but each day feels fresh, funny, important and increasingly emotionally significant. Cage parlays his hard-won wisdom into growth in compassion for Rita and commitment to win the war. At first, the battle scenes are played for laughs as Cage is subjected to one unexpected, often humiliating, death after another. Slowly but surely, he leaves behind his self-serving motives and becomes dedicated to completing his new mission, even at the cost of his own life.

RITA: I can’t believe you found coffee.

CAGE: Sugar, Right?

RITA: Yeah.

Cage, of course, saves the day. But there’s more than meets the eye. When I watch films like Edge of Tomorrow and Project Hail Mary, I am reminded of our faith in a God who gives life to the dead, one who calls into being that which did not yet exist. Biblical heroes like Moses and Gideon were similarly terrified at the prospect of what they were expected to accomplish. They, too, tried to bargain for a way out from the responsibility being placed upon their shoulders.

But we don’t rely on a cosmic accident or a stroke of fortune for our deliverance. Rather, God has promised that He himself will be with us, that He will give us the words that we need to speak, that His grace is sufficient for us, and that His strength is made perfect in our weakness. When we are facing a future that feels too frightening for us, we need not run in terror. We are not alone.

I’m Steve Limkeman.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 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.

It's time now for our monthly feature we're calling Quest, conversations with thoughtful leaders about the books that shaped their thinking. It's built off of the same concept we publish each month in WORLD Magazine. 

Here’s Lindsay Mast with this month’s Quest.

LINDSAY MAST: Today we welcome Cal Thomas, a familiar voice to our program as he contributes weekly commentary to World Radio. Over the last five decades, he worked for NBC News, Fox News, and USA Today. He began his syndicated news column in 1984 and he is the author of 10 books himself. Cal, welcome.

CAL THOMAS: Thank you, Lindsay.

MAST: Cal, listeners hear you regularly offering perspective on politics and culture, but not always the influences behind that voice. I'm curious, when did you first realize that books could shape the way you think?

THOMAS: Well, other than the school books I was required to read in high school and later college, I think the one that first began to shape my political thinking was Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. And it was about lower taxes, less spending, smaller government, personal responsibility, all of those values that continue today, supposedly within the Republican Party, but not really practiced. But that was a very influential book. I didn't really know I was a conservative until I read it.

MAST: Tell me a little bit more about that. The influence is very obvious, but what do you think looking back, what did it change in you?

THOMAS: Well, I think it reminded me that there are certain principles that always work, economic principles, foreign policy principles, personal principles and relational principles. There are ideas that have always worked. And this is why history is such an important subject and why I came to love it later as I got older.

MAST: Well, what's your second book and how did it shape you?

THOMAS: It's kind of a cliche for a believer, but the living paraphrase of the Bible was read in my presence once by the man who led me to Christ, Richard Halverson, who was pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, and later become chaplain of the Senate.

I had never really read the Bible before. My grandfather offered me a silver dollar if I'd memorized the 23rd Psalm. It was foreign to me, almost. King James Version, Shakespearean, thees and thous, and whithers and whithersoever, and all those other words. But when I heard the living paraphrase, it spoke to me. It spoke to my heart. I got a copy. I began reading it from cover to cover.

And it changed my life and my outlook and my worldview considerably.

MAST: Let's go ahead and move on to your third book. What does this one add?

THOMAS: Francis Schaeffer was a philosopher-theologian who wrote a number of books, many of which shaped the way I process information. The biggest one, I think, for me anyway, was True Spirituality. And this line right here, I think, is really significant:

“The scripture is positive inward reality and then positive and outward results. The inward thing is to be positive and not just negative and then sweeping out of the inward positive reality there is to be a positive manifestation externally.”

Now what he meant by that was there is a negative aspect of faith which is really good because it's an understanding that we are the way we are because of sin and our fallen world and we behave the way we do because of that.

And a proper diagnosis of that leads to the positive aspect, which is Christ in you, your only hope of glory and what Jesus taught and commanded really to love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and care for widows and orphans and visit those in prison. So the negative part is an actual diagnosis of our real problem, which is sin. And that cannot be corrected by external forces like government. But the cure is Christ in you, your only hope of glory. And that carries with it a positive and helps you see people, your fellow individuals, not as evil, but as people in need of redemption.

MAST: When you look at these books together, what do they have in common?

THOMAS: Well, they shape my thinking in different ways. You know, Paul writes about having the mind of Christ and be not conformed to the thinking patterns of this world. But most importantly, it is a realization that there is something called objective truth.

Today in our culture, it's mostly subjective, which means it's not truth at all. But the founders of our country and indeed the scriptures themselves speak to an objective truth that always works, whether it's economic, relational, historical, geographical, whatever. It's objective. And if we abandon that, then we abandon the moral law and the boundaries that our founders and Scripture put in place to promote the general welfare in the words of our… one of our founding documents, and that's what we don't have now. We're promoting individual welfare and not the common good.

MAST: I'm curious, looking back, what kind of thinker were these books shaping as they were shaping you?

THOMAS: Again, I think it is that truth exists and it exists outside of ourselves. We are not the first generation to walk the earth. We don't have to figure things out. People who have gone before us have figured these things out. And if we will study that and if we will understand that, whatever it is–economic, political, spiritual–then we can learn from it and not make the same mistakes that many in the past had made. We can look at those who've gone before, many smarter than ourselves, and learn from them. The internet is okay, but reading a good book is much better.

MAST: Well, Cal Thomas, thank you so much for joining us for Quest.

THOMAS: My pleasure. Thank you, Lindsay.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Now it’s time to name the crew who contributed to this week’s programs:

Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Mary Reichard, Lauren Canterberry, Kim Henderson, Denny Burk, Hunter Baker, Cal Thomas, Elizabeth Shenk, Lauren Smyth, Carolina Lumetta, Daniel Suhr, Steve Limkeman, John Stonestreet, and Josh Goniea.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Devine, and Christina Grube.

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros: Tech producers Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Emma Eicher is assistant producer, Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Lindsay Mast is producer. I’m Executive Producer Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown

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

The Bible says, “When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, ‘Are you for us, or for our adversaries?’ And he said, ‘No; but I am the commander of the army of the LORD. Now I have come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the LORD’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” —Joshua 5:13-15

Get to a Bible-believing church this weekend. And when you get there, love deeply, forgive quickly and celebrate Jesus! Lord willing, we’ll meet you back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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