The World and Everything in It: April 27, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Justice for defrauded investors—and the legal fight over how to pay them back.

SOTOMAYOR: Maybe I wasn't as smart as you or as corrupt as you and I didn't make that money, but you took it from me. … [S]o I'm entitled to be compensated….

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat, a clear path for a new Fed chair, and a Mamdani foe fights back. David Bahnsen standing by.

Later, the WORLD History Book: 40 years after Chernobyl, a tragedy that sparked a movement for truth.

MIRNYI: It was the start of the movement to … free mass media … the free press.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, April 27th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: WHCA shooting » The man accused in Saturday's shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington … is a Caltech grad with no criminal record.

Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California is 31 years old. He holds a master's in computer science … and tutored high schoolers for college entrance exams.

But … in writings sent to family minutes before the attack, Allen called himself a Friendly Federal Assassin … and lashed out at recent actions of the Trump administration.

President Trump reacted on Sunday.

TRUMP: The guy is a sick guy. When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That's one thing for sure. He hates Christians.

Allen's father is a church elder at a small Reformed congregation in Torrance. Federal records show Allen donated to a Kamala Harris political committee in 2024.

Investigators say he legally bought a handgun in 2023 … and a shotgun last year. He stored both at his parents' home. Allen's sister told the Secret Service her brother had been making radical statements — but said her parents had no idea the weapons were there.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer:

EMMER: You're telling me that, uh, even though they knew that there were some, uh, red flags on this, that, uh, they were unaware of, uh, uh, guns, weapons, whatever, in their own home.

Federal charges are expected this week.

WHCA: Carolina report » WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta was in the room when the incident occurred, and she files this report…

CAROLINA LUMETTA: The police tape has been removed from event entrance here at the Washington Hilton, one of the most well known venues in the city. The coat check room is still full of guests’ coats, including mine, as federal investigators comb the scene. On Saturday night, it was mayhem.

AUDIO: Move, move! [glassware crashing]

I was seated at a table on the main floor, far away from the main entrance where the gunman was apprehended. Roughly 30 minutes after the president arrived, we heard shots and ducked under the table. Like countless other reporters in the room, I whipped out my phone to record the scene while Secret Service agents ran on top of tables to secure lawmakers and cabinet members in attendance. Officers helped carry out House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who has been healing from a foot injury.

AUDIO: Watch out, watch out, trying to get through.

For about an hour, we waited for word on what had happened, if there were injuries, or if the scene was safe. Some hotel security yelled at guests to leave, but an announcer said the program would resume shortly. The president was in a secured room on site and said he wanted to continue.

Then, White House Correspondents’ Association President Weijia Jiang informed the room that the dinner would be canceled and the president was holding a news conference at the White House. Women took off their heels and started to run. And producers and reporters set up around the sidewalks to record segments for the evening shows.

As I left, I saw U.S. Marshals and TSA agents blocking off hallways in the hotel’s basement. We exited the same door where former President Ronald Reagan was shot by would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr., in 1981.

It was both a scary and busy night for the Washington press corps. And we are thankful it ended without any serious injury.

COVINGTON: Carolina what was security like?

LUMETTA: The Washington Hilton is known as one of the largest and most secure venues for major events outside of federal buildings. To get into the hotel, I had to show my dinner ticket about a block before the building. I had to show it again to hotel staff to head down a flight of stairs. Because news outlets and other groups were also hosting private receptions, the Secret Service was only responsible for securing the dinner area. To get there, everyone had to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched. But there was no identification check at any point. The Secret Service stopped the gunman at their first checkpoint, the metal detectors one floor above the main ballroom doors. Now the open question is whether that perimeter should have been extended farther away from the doors.

COVINGTON: Carolina Lumetta in Washington. Carolina, thanks very much.

LUMETTA: Thanks, Kent.

Iran » Chairs at the bargaining table sat empty over the weekend in Pakistan. U.S. and Iranian negotiators did not meet again face to face as planned.

President Trump pulled the plug — keeping envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner home.

TRUMP: By the time they get there, it's hours and hours and hours of flying, and I said, we're not doing this anymore. We have all the cards. If they want to talk, they can come to us or they can call us.

Trump says minutes after the cancellation, Iran sent what he called a much better proposal — but still not enough.

Indirect talks continue through Pakistani mediators. The ceasefire is in its third week. But … the standoff at the Strait of Hormuz drags on. Iran is restricting traffic through the waterway that normally carries a fifth of the world's oil … and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports remains in place.

Wildfires » Two massive wildfires in south Georgia are causing historic destruction.

Governor Brian Kemp:

KEMP: We looked at all the records going back historically with the state, we believe that these two fires have created the most lost homes ever in the history of our state.

The Highway 82 fire in Brantley County and the Pineland Road fire near the Florida line have destroyed more than 120 homes … and scorched more than 50-thousand acres.

And containment is still in the single digits.

As many as a thousand or more residents have been forced to evacuate. One of them said he and his family barely made it out safely.

RESIDENT: Found out a tanker blew up and it was coming straight. The wind kicked up and it went to our house, and then the firefighters right end of the road said, it's too big, we can't put it out. And as soon as we pulled off and left, 15 minutes later, our house was gone.

Authorities say debris left over from Hurricane Helene have helped fuel the flames.

With deep drought across the region, forecasters say it'll take 8 to 10 inches of rain to put them out.

 Box office: Michael breaks records » At the weekend box office … the Michael Jackson biopic, simply titled Michael shattered records for music biopics.

CLIP: You want to be the biggest star in the world. … We need to capitalize on Michael’s success.

“Michael” moonwalked to a $97 million opening domestically … and $217 million worldwide. The film focused on his rise to stardom and steered clear of abuse accusations against him.

In second place … The Super Mario Galaxy Movie sold another $21 million dollars worth of tickets domestically. It has now taken in well over $800 million globally.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up: David Bahnsen will be here for Moneybeat. Plus, 40 years later, the lingering effects of Chernobyl.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 27th day of April, 2026. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, two U.S. Supreme Court arguments, both focused on limits of power and how it’s applied.

ROBERTS: We'll hear argument next in Case 25-197, T.M. versus the University of Maryland Medical System Corporation.

This one’s over a deceptively technical question: if you are in the middle of a legal fight in state court, can you suddenly jump ship and sue in federal court instead?

Here are the facts. A woman from Maryland identified for privacy reasons only as “T.M.” … was involuntarily committed following a psychotic episode linked to a medical condition triggered by gluten.

While she was hospitalized, T.M. challenged her commitment in state court. But before that case was even over, she filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was forced under pressure to sign a consent order that kept her in treatment longer. That federal lawsuit alleges due process violations under the Constitution.

EICHER: Lower federal courts threw out her case under something called the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. In plain terms, it says federal trial courts cannot act like appeals courts over decisions of state courts.

But here’s the wrinkle: timing. Does that rule apply even before the state case is finished?

T.M.’s attorney is Elizabeth Prelogar, a former Solicitor General. She points to a law known as Section 1257:

PRELOGAR: That rule follows from text, history, and structure. On text….Section 1257 says nothing at all about district court jurisdiction when there's no final judgment of a state high court. ……Yet lower courts haven't heeded that message.

REICHARD: Her argument: that rule only applies after a state case is fully complete—after a final judgment from the state’s highest court.

But the hospital’s lawyer Lisa Blatt turned that on its head:

Letting people jump to federal court like this “short-circuits” the system and disrespects state judges.

BLATT: ….Congress wanted no federal review of state court judgments until the state's highest court has had the opportunity to correct any errors.

The justices saw trouble with the arguments from both sides. Justice Sonia Sotomayor looked to the mess of two court systems looking at the same case at the same time:

SOTOMAYOR: Tell me what the value is to having a federal district court and a state appellate court simultaneously reviewing a state court judgment. What's the value in that?

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson worried that if T.M. were to win everybody will just bypass the state court system altogether:

JACKSON: …why would anybody stay in the state system and get all the way to the state high court under your rule when they could just bring a collateral attack along the way? It just seems to undermine the whole point in my view.

EICHER: Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed out that other legal doctrines could address worries about duplicate litigation, so maybe Rooker-Feldman isn’t even necessary anymore.

GORSUCH: Litigants are sometimes vexatious. Now I'm not accusing your client of that, but they…repeat suits all the time, sometimes in the same state court, sometimes in a different state court, sometimes in a federal district court, sometimes between two federal district courts, sometimes between two federal district courts in two different states. And all of those we handle under preclusion and we don't accuse the court, the second court, of exercising any kind of appellate review over the first court.

So the justices have to decide whether to keep, narrow, or scrap the rule altogether.

At its core, it’s about how to balance federal constitutional rights against the authority and independence of state courts.

REICHARD: Alright, Case Two:

ROBERTS: We will hear argument first this morning in Case 25-466, Sripetch versus Securities and Exchange Commission.

This one turns on financial enforcement, and a slippery question: What is “disgorgement?”

Meaning, when can the government demand a defendant hand over ill-gotten profits?

The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that a man named Ongkaruck Sripetch ran a stock manipulation scheme, sometimes referred to as “pump and dump.” He says the government can’t take that money unless it first proves actual losses to particular victims.

His lawyer, Daniel Geyser, cited case precedent to say the law only permits “equitable” relief, meaning the money has to return to the people who were actually harmed.

GEYSER: This Court in Liu confirmed that disgorgement could not be a penalty or a deterrent, and it was limited to restoring the status quo and providing fair compensation to injured investors. …..The government says disgorgement can serve as a penalty. It can focus solely on depriving wrongdoers and deterring misconduct, and the government can act without any remedial purpose, with no obligation to restore the status quo or return a single penny to investors. The government is wrong.

EICHER: Justice Sotomayor pointed out the practical burden that puts on the SEC:

SOTOMAYOR: So, basically, what you're saying is the government has to call every victim, prove every dollar of loss? Why bother? Why bother asking for disgorgement if they have to prove loss to that amount?

Geyser answered yes, that’s correct—the government does have that burden.

Justice Jackson questioned even the premise that taking back what’s stolen could be called a “penalty.”

JACKSON: Why is it a punishment if we're not taking anything more
from the defendant than he unlawfully gained? In other words, -- I could -- I could see a fine or a punishment if the defendant is actually paying out of his pocket some money that was rightfully his. That's a punishment. But, if we're just disgorging his ill-gotten gains, I guess I'm not sure I understand why that's a punishment. It's depriving him of money he didn't have, that was never his. Why is that a punishment?

GEYSER: It's a punishment because…the purpose is to deprive and the purpose is to deter.

REICHARD: Justice Samuel Alito focused on the language of the statute itself:

ALITO: The statute… doesn't say equitable disgorgement. It just says disgorgement.

If Sripetch wins, the SEC’s enforcement power narrows a lot.

If the government wins, it’ll keep an effective tool to strip wrongful profits—even when victims are hard to identify. So, a remedial tool to help victims? Or a penalty to punish wrongdoers?

And here again, the Court is weighing limits, this time on federal enforcement authority.

EICHER: Before we go, two opinions handed down last week:

In Enbridge Energy v Nassel, a unanimous court held that the 30-day deadline to remove a case from state to federal court is 30-days—no extensions.

This dispute is over a lawsuit by the state of Michigan against the Canadian pipeline and energy company Enbridge. The company waited 887 days after being served before it sought to remove the case to federal court.

That was nearly two and a half years—or 857 days too late. The case stays in state court. It’s a win for state officials who want to apply their own environmental laws.

REICHARD: In the case of Hencely v. Fluor Corporation, the court decided that military contractors aren’t automatically protected from being sued. If the company was careless on its own—and wasn’t just following strict government orders—it can still be held liable in court.

The 6 to 3 decision stems from a 2016 suicide bombing at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Army Specialist Winston Hencely was seriously injured. He sued Fluor, alleging negligent supervision of a subcontractor employee who carried out the attack.

EICHER: Justice Thomas wrote for the majority. Contractors can be held liable for their own negligence, even in war zones, if the military did not require the company to leave the attacker unsupervised.

Justice Gorsuch hinted at the outcome during oral argument:

GORSUCH: ….maybe the military’d benefit most from having efficient contractors who are less likely to cause harm to military members.

REICHARD: The dissenters— the Chief Justice and Justices Alito and Kavanaugh warned this might interfere with military operations. The case returns to lower court for Henceley’s case to proceed. 

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Nick, 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. He’s here now, and good morning, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, let’s begin with the development that broke late last week, the Justice Department dropping its probe into Chairman Jay Powell. That clears the path for Kevin Warsh to replace him when Powell’s term ends next month. We know that a lone Republican, the senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis, had the power to hold up the Warsh nomination. He said he didn’t want to, but clearly it was his only leverage to end this possible prosecution of Powell. So how important is it, David, would you say that we’ve evidently avoided this particular drama? And then, in this same vein, just talk about what Kevin Warsh would be bringing to the Fed, assuming there aren’t any other roadblocks ahead.

BAHNSEN: Well, that is my assumption, that there won’t be any other roadblocks. And then now I think your question is the pertinent one, which is, what will a Chairman Warsh represent?

I do think that he’s going to bring a reform mindset that has a general posture of not believing the Fed’s footprint on the economy should be as large as it has been since the financial crisis. And this will take on a couple of different ways in which they go about doing that.

One is the balance sheet. The Fed owns a little less than $7 trillion of the United States debt. That’s something in the range of 15 to 20 percent of our bond market. That’s vastly higher than it’s ever been, other than right after COVID, when it hit up to $9 trillion. But for years and years, the central bank was not using their balance sheet as a liquidity tool. They’ve turned it into this huge, multifaceted tool of policy, and I think that Warsh will incrementally bring that down.

The second piece is the general idea of the Fed coming in to save everything, the alphabet soup of facilities that they create when we have the financial crisis, and then in a major way during COVID, o backstop commercial paper, municipal bonds, commercial real estate, all sorts of credit vehicles that just gave the Fed much more muscle in the economy than I think is their rightful intent.

Finally, Nick, the third thing I’d focus on is returning power to markets, returning innovation to financial institutions to innovate with credit. Now, they need to be regulated. There has to be constraints and controls. But the Fed has taken on a lot of the work that we want our banking system doing, and then used excessively tight capital constraints to control that.

People say, okay, David, what are you talking about? The Fed sets the limits on what banks are allowed to do with their balance sheet, and they can turn the knobs up and down very easily with the capital requirements that banks have to hold, including against hyper-safe vehicles like Treasury bonds. So they’ve become more of a regulatory burden, and that has started to come off a bit.

Even some of the appointees that the Trump administration has made to replace some of the Biden appointees are a step in the right direction. But with Warsh, it’s philosophical. It’s not just political, it’s not just transactional. He philosophically believes that we need a deregulatory approach in the way the Fed oversees the banking system, still, of course, in a confine of responsibility, but nevertheless less power to central planners and more power to private actors.

I think that these are the general categories, and all of them are significant, that we will see a Chairman Warsh move the Fed in the right direction.

EICHER: Moving on to New York City and the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. He put out a video a couple of weeks ago now, April 15, appropriately, standing in front of a high-end apartment building where a hedge fund CEO has a posh apartment unit. The CEO is Ken Griffin. Mamdani was almost mocking him in the video, seeming to be champing at the bit to slap a new tax on Griffin and people like him.

Well, now Griffin is pushing back, and there was, speaking of the Wall Street Journal, another Journal story hinting at rethinking a major project in the city. Did Mamdani pick the wrong fight with the wrong guy, or what do you think?

BAHNSEN: Oh, he certainly did. By the way, Ken Griffin is much more than the CEO of a hedge fund. I mean, Citadel is one of the largest market makers in the entire financial services industry. They have a major hedge fund that is a multi-strategy capital allocator. That facilitates the trading of the massive amount of stocks and bonds that move on the street.

He’s one of the most intelligent people in the history of Wall Street. He is a center-right guy, a donor to various causes that I believe in, and he is an incredibly charitable person. And I don’t mean here just conservative groups, right-wing groups, sometimes even faith-adjacent groups. What he is, as one of the wealthiest men in America, is extremely humanitarian—education, medical.

This is just the wrong person to try to make a villain. And for him to go buy real estate in New York and employ people and renovate and participate in the marketplace and be a massive taxpayer, even as a nonresident through all the business interests and real estate transactions, it’s not just a pragmatically dumb idea on the merits.

Socialists should be saying thank you to people like Ken Griffin that pay vastly more taxes and vastly more into the system that they hold dear, a big government spending, than anybody else. He’s the wrong villain. And I will say Mamdani seems to have backed off from it a bit because he thought he was doing something really hip and cool on April 15, and he’s gotten really kind of smacked around for it. And I say for good reason. It was the wrong move, not just politically, but on principle.

EICHER: I want to talk about another guy who is intelligent and just capable. It seems to me we’re seeing the coming end to the tenure of Tim Cook at Apple. That’s going to be a considerable transition. I mean, this is the guy who followed Steve Jobs, which just seems like an impossible task, but he did it, and he did it so well, broke a bunch of records.

You know, what was the valuation of Apple at one point, like $4 trillion, first company ever to do that. You want to make any comment on the Tim Cook era at Apple?

BAHNSEN: Well, look, I mean, it was an incredibly successful era, as you’ve pointed out, and he has his fair share of detractors.

You know what Tim Cook was, though, was a very apolitical actor as far as how he befriended the administration that was in charge because they were in charge. And people that would expect him to go pick a fight with President Biden do not understand his fiduciary duty to his company, and the same is true with President Trump.

But his ability to monetize things outside of the iPhone and build an ecosystem around apps and recurring revenue with the applications and subscription services of Apple is an unprecedented American business success story.

The pricing power they ended up having, all of this is after Steve Jobs’ passing. And if when the iPhone first came out you had said to Steve Jobs, one day you’re going to be selling this for $1,600 and not have sales go down, nobody would have believed it. And it’s just the most profitable and successful consumer product in human history.

Tim Cook didn’t create it, but he levered it more than anybody would have thought possible, and we’ll see what lies in store for Apple next.

EICHER: I also want to ask you, again, it’s a very busy week, something that you’ve been warning about for a long time, the use of groups like the SPLC—the Southern Poverty Law Center—inside corporate decision making. We are now learning about companies and the extent to which they were using screens and things like charitable giving and vendor decisions.

Some of them are backing away, and some of them are probably going to be running away now with these disclosures. But does not the indictment of the SPLC represent a real opportunity now for companies to rethink how they’ve been making some of their decisions in the past?

BAHNSEN: You know, Nick, it certainly does, and there are companies that we’re talking to, my consultants with Bowyer Research, that were on the bubble about changing some of their use of SPLC in these processes. And I think this will tip them.

But I want to say, there had already been a really successful move away from them. We’d seen a lot of companies that are in the portfolio that I manage, that we have engaged with, that were willing to back away from using Southern Poverty Law Center as their filter for who was an appropriate charitable target and who wasn’t, in the name of pursuing something more politically neutral.

And recognizing that Southern Poverty Law Center was anything but, in the way that they were very frequently, including our friends at ADF and Turning Point, referring to reasonably mainstream groups. They certainly can have political opinions that many, many people won’t agree with, but that’s not hate speech. And believing in certain traditional views of life and marriage is not hate speech, even if folks disagree with it there.

And by the way, the way that they targeted me personally, my consultants, Jerry Bowyer, my late father, and many people affiliated with WORLD, I mean, the SPLC is just a completely non-credible organization for this.

And so the indictment this week, I don’t know what’s going to come of it legally, but I do think you’re right that pragmatically it’ll tip companies away from something they never should have been doing to begin with, which is having a player on one of the teams serve as the referee.

EICHER: David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bahnsen Group. He writes at dividendcafe.com and at WORLD Opinions. David, thank you so much. We’ll catch you next week. Hope you have a good one.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

40 years ago, a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. It triggered the worst nuclear disaster in history, and led to dramatic changes for the Soviet Union.

Today, Ukrainians are still living with the fallout.

WORLD’s William Fleeson reports.

WILLIAM FLEESON: In the black pre-dawn hours of April 26th, 1986, a series of mistakes led to the world’s worst nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl power plant. A steam explosion and resulting fire sent lethal doses of radioactive material into the surrounding area. Back then, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

NEWSREEL: The Soviets are saying little… the accident has occurred at the Soviet atomic plant in the Ukraine.

First responders rushed in to control the damage, which cost some of them their lives. Officials later evacuated about 350,000 people nearby. Wind spread radioactive material across Ukraine, the nearby countries of Belarus and Russia, and broad stretches of Europe to the north and west.

Dozens of people died in the immediate disaster area—now called the ‘exclusion zone’—a 20-mile radius from the plant. Thousands more would perish from the longer-term effects of nuclear radiation, which can cause lethal conditions like heart disease and cancer.

39-year-old Kateryna Aslamova was born in southern Ukraine just three months after the disaster.

ASLAMOVA: The only thing that I knew was that Chornobyl happened.

Aslamova calls herself a “Chernobyl kid” – being one of the Ukrainians who have come of age since the catastrophe. Because the Soviet Union hid the details of the meltdown, her generation couldn’t know its full effects. The incident has caused them a lifetime of worry.

ASLAMOVA: Because my mom was pregnant with me when Chornobyl happened, it meant that all the kids of this age, I was kind of like, scared, that one day, some consequences of Chornobyl would show up in my life, some health problems…

Ten years ago, Aslamova applied for a job as a guide at the exclusion zone on a whim—and has since made the zone her life’s work.

ASLAMOVA: When I saw Chornobyl, it was completely different from expectations. I loved how green and peaceful it was…

Aslamova says she now feels empowered by what her career with Chernobyl has taught her. And what she can teach others.

ASLAMOVA: For the first time in my entire life, I actually felt like there is nothing to be afraid of I do have this heroic history in my country.

Older Ukrainians are also keen to tell the story.

SERHII MIRNYI: When Chornobyl happened, I was mobilized, and sent to the Chornobyl zone, where I served as a commander of radiation surveillance platoon…

That’s Serhii Mirnyi. He was a 27-year-old Ukrainian reservist in the Soviet army in ‘86. Mirnyi worked at the plant nonstop for over a month after the meltdown.

He and his colleagues came to be known as ‘liquidators’: the workforce brought in to secure the zone.

MIRNYI: This experience was quite instrumental in mitigating the post-accident radiation contamination.

The liquidators knew what was at stake in their work. Continued radiation leaks would poison everything for miles around, from the air to the water supply. The disaster happened 60 miles north of Kyiv – Ukraine’s capital city. At that time, it had a population of almost 2.5 million.

Meanwhile, Soviet officials downplayed the true scope of the disaster. When details of the information control became public, many Soviet citizens felt betrayed. Chernobyl’s effect on society proved just as explosive.

MIRNYI: After Chornobyl, society was agitated. There was a demand for information, started to dissolve total censorship in the Soviet Union, and it was start of the mass movement to the free press, free mass media…

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991—not least because of the broken trust in Chernobyl’s wake. Ukraine gained independence the same year, and its borders opened for the first time in generations. At that time, Mirnyi realized that Ukrainians and others had misunderstandings about the event—from its health effects to its historical consequences. After the zone was determined safe enough for short visits, Mirnyi developed an idea for local tourism. He co-founded Chornobyl Tours to help set the record straight.

MIRNYI: Of the disaster, actually, its interpretation by individuals and the society, how it was interpreted by mass media and culture…

Tourism is how Mirnyi bridges the gap between his experience and the desire of others to know more. Visitors can get their own sense of the historical calamity.

MIRNYI: The most important monument to the Chornobyl disaster, is the Chornobyl zone itself…

The nuclear meltdown later inspired documentaries and media adaptations, including a hit TV show from 2019 called, “Chernobyl.” Mirnyi says he and many Ukrainians have strong feelings about it.

MIRNYI: In general, my attitude is rather negative.

He welcomed the broad awareness that the series created – especially of the corrupt nature of the Soviet government based in Moscow. But Mirnyi took issue with what he saw as Hollywood-style caricatures and clichés. He singled out the depiction of the ‘dumb Russian,’ given to all Soviet citizens. These characters are nearly always destined to lose. This trope, he said, is often applied to the characters in films and shows about the Soviet Union.

MIRNYI: They failed to see the heroism and selfless actions of the liquidators. They failed to show the high spirit and, I would say, the ardor of massive liquidation. You know, it’s an epic story.

Mirnyi wants to move the disaster’s narrative from loser to winner. And Kateryna Aslamova says the lessons of Chernobyl shed light on her country’s fighting spirit.

ALSAMOVA: Being a nation that helps each other… it’s a very powerful idea, that needs to be taught to everyone.”

That idea—of Ukrainian unity and tenacity—offers lessons to those alive today, whether Ukrainian or foreign. Especially after four years of war – and a 40-year nuclear legacy.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m William Fleeson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the Southern Poverty Law Center faces a federal indictment for defrauding donors; we’ll have a report. And, WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza catches up with Christian rock band The 77s. 

That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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 [Jesus] had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.’” —John 13:12–14

Go now in grace and peace.

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