The World and Everything in It - August 10, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The Taliban take another city as American troops leave Afghanistan.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Also new technologies may help rural Americans get the internet they need.

Plus, highlights from some of our most memorable stories over the last decade.

And we continue to reflect on 10 years of podcasting.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, August 10th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate Dems unveil $3.5T budget » Senate Democrats unveiled a budget resolution Monday that maps out their $3.5 trillion dollar spending package. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described it this way.

SCHUMER: The most significant legislation for American families since the era of the New Deal and the Great Society. It is big, bold change.

While senators may be just hours away from passing a roughly $1 trillion dollar infrastructure bill with bipartisan backing the $3.5 trillion dollar package will be all Democrats. They plan to push through the Senate using budget reconciliation, which Republicans can’t filibuster.

The measure lays the groundwork for legislation that would pour mountains of money into top Demcoratic priorities. That would include social programs, healthcare, education, family services and environmental measures.

Republicans, like Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, call it trillions in reckless spending on a liberal wish list.

MCCONNELL: When inflation is already sticking American families with higher costs; new permanent welfare with no work requirements when small businesses are already struggling to find workers.

Democrats plan to at least partially pay for it by raising taxes on wealthy Americans and on businesses.

U.S. employers posted record job openings in June » U.S. employers posted a record 10.1 million job openings in June.

That according to a Labor Department report on Monday. Job openings rose from 9.5 million in May as employers continue to say they can’t find enough workers to fill open positions.

Analysts say lingering health fears and childcare challenges amid the pandemic are part of the problem. But many believe so-called enhanced unemployment benefits—extra checks from the federal government—also play a big role.

Those benefits will end nationwide next month. Some states are ending them early.

The U.S. economy has rebounded with unexpected strength as businesses have reopened. Still, the fast-spreading delta variant has cast a shadow over the outlook.

COVID-19 delta surge straining hospitals » And that delta variant is wreaking havoc in hospital systems in some areas. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: At LBJ Hospital in Houston, more than 50 percent of the ICU patients have tested positive for COVID-19.

The hospital has put up tents in the parking lot for COVID-19 overflow patients. But there’s another problem—the hospital doesn’t have enough healthcare workers to staff those tents.

In Florida, almost half of all ICU beds are filled with coronavirus patients. The state is still struggling with a record number of hospitalizations—about 14,000 as of Sunday.

Nationwide, more than 8,000 coronavirus patients are checking into hospitals each day. That’s a fourfold increase since late June.

But the delta surge has driven an increase in vaccinations. Half of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated.

And nationally, for the first time in more than a month, new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have all dipped slightly over the past few days.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

UN scientists warn of worsening global warming » Scientists with the United Nations released a climate report Monday declaring a “code red for humanity.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued the report. It warns that recent changes in the climate are rapid, intensifying and unprecedented in thousands of years.

Kim Cobb with Georgia Tech's Global Change Program co-authored the report.

COBB: Here in North America, the report makes clear that we are facing a combination of worsening impacts on land and in the ocean and on our coast, including a significant increase in the frequency and intensity of climate extremes.

More than 200 scientists collaborated on the 3,000-page report. They said warming is already accelerating sea level rise and worsening extremes such as heat waves, droughts, floods and storms. And they said all of these trends will get worse.

But environmentalist and Hoover Institution fellow Bjorn Lomborg notes the UN routinely warns of imminent environmental catastrophe, pointing to reports from 2019 all the way back to 1972. Lomborg says man-made climate change is a real but manageable problem.

Top Cuomo aide resigns as accuser speaks out » A top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has resigned as pressure builds on the governor himself to step down.

Melissa DeRosa was a fixture next to Gov. Cuomo for months during his coronavirus news conferences. She resigned days after a state investigation found that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women.

At least one of his accusers said his alleged infractions went beyond harassment. Former executive assistant to the governor, Brittany Commisso told CBS news that Cuomo gave her unwanted hugs that seemed more than friendly.

COMMISSO: Then they started to be hugs with kisses on the cheek. And then there was at one point a hug, and then when he went to kiss me on the cheek, he’d quickly turn his head and he kissed me on the lips.

A majority of New York lawmakers, including fellow Democrats, now favor impeaching the governor if he does not resign.

For his part, Cuomo denies the allegations against him and has given no indication that he plans to step down.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: celestial solutions for slow internet.

Plus, WORLD Radio staffers reflect on their work.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 10th of August, 2021.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

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

First up, broadband technology.

The infrastructure bill working its way through Congress includes $65 billion dollars to bring broadband internet access to rural areas. Much of that money is likely to go toward installing a physical network: electric lines and underground cables.

BUTLER: But that’s expensive and not always practical. So what’s the alternative? WORLD’S Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Jason Leininger thought living near a city meant having fast internet. His home is six miles outside Springfield, Missouri.

LEININGER: Being that close to a city of 160,000, you'd think that you'd have pretty good internet. But when we arrived here, it was like going back to dial up.

Leininger has tried three different solutions: phone line or DSL internet, satellite internet, and now, two cell phone hotspots.

LEININGER: When there's high call volume, or like from 3 to 7 o'clock at night, they really drop off in their sense of productivity and capacity.

Millions of Americans and 3 billion people around the world have a similar story. They all lack access to high-speed internet or broadband of any kind. That increasingly hinders economic development, education, and communication.

But some companies are coming up with creative solutions. That has consumers like Jason Leininger excited.

LEININGER: Yeah, so like, isn't Elon Musk putting up all those little satellites?

Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial project is called Starlink. It’s made up of thousands of satellites hovering close to the earth, beaming the internet to homes. Eventually, Starlink plans to launch 42,000 LEOs or Low Earth Orbiting satellites.

Traditional communication satellites travel about 22,000 miles above the earth’s surface. LEOs hover as low as 300 miles.

Jeffrey Westling studies technology and innovation at the R-Street Institute. He says bringing satellites closer to the earth could eliminate major issues with current satellite internet: time delays and signal interference.

WESTLING: The tricky thing for satellites has always been latency, right. The low Earth orbital side of it tries to fix that by shortening the signal length.

Because the satellites are closer, it takes less time for a signal to travel to a router. That also means less possibility for signal disturbance.

Westling and other tech analysts say Starlink’s technology has big potential. Radio waves can travel quicker through the vacuum of space than infrared light-waves can move through fiber-optic cables. So LEO satellites could eventually rival or even beat the fastest ground-based networks.

But right now the service can cost more than many people pay for wired internet.

WESTLING: The materials are expensive, the technology is expensive for development. So it's like they cost a lot to recoup the costs of just manufacturing them.

Westlink expects those costs will come down eventually.

WESTLING: I've talked to satellite folks who think they're going to continue to be able to lower those prices and are optimistic about it.

And Elon Musk isn’t the only tech titan banking on satellite technology. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission gave Amazon permission to launch its own LEO satellite constellation called Project Kuiper.

But some analysts say LEOs still have to prove their worth. Josh Koenig is the co-founder of Pantheon, a software and web-services platform.

KOENIG: A satellite has to like, ricochet the signal around and get it back down to the ground somewhere, that actually can start to introduce an amount of lag that people will notice. Hypothetically, from the laws of physics standpoint, it's totally possible to do, but it's complicated.

Koenig and Jeffrey Westling at R-Street say there are other internet innovations that could connect hard-to-reach places. One of those is Internet balloons.

WESTLING: You're going to have a radio up above, and then you'll be able to send the signal down to a community that's within the range of that.

Internet balloons act as floating cell phone towers hovering 12 miles up in the sky. Google was one of the first companies to develop them. It launched what it calls Project Loon in 2011.

Google envisioned its balloons providing internet to rural places as well as disaster areas. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, Google’s balloons provided internet access for 100,000 people on the island. Then in 2020, its balloons started servicing Kenya.

But earlier this year, Google announced it was abandoning the project. It said the balloons cost too much to maintain. It also noted many people in poorer countries can’t afford the equipment needed to connect to the internet.

R-Street’s Jeffrey Westling says that doesn’t mean internet balloons are gone forever. For now, they just might be better in specific situations.

WESTLING: I do think they've got a lot of applications for like emergency usage and getting, you know, temporary coverage out there to rural areas that maybe are hit by a disaster and can't get connected.

5G cell phone networks are also giving rural internet users hope. The network eventually promises to provide lightning fast loading speeds that will make using data and hotspots on phones better than ever.

Pantheon’s Josh Koenig says the technology is coming out just as more Americans than ever surf the web on their phones.

KOENIG: Last year was finally the tipping point of more than half of all web traffic being on mobile devices.

But so far, 5G’s struggling through a slow rollout. That’s because the network requires new towers. And a lot more of them.

KOENIG: The way in which 5G works to provide the amount of bandwidth that it does, requires the radio frequencies that are there to like, not get distorted at all, which is why it doesn't have great range. Because it's a short range technology, the amount of infrastructure that has to get rolled out to really get 5G everywhere is really significant.

Koenig says he isn't sure which of these technologies will be the answer to rural internet woes. Or if any of them will. But he’s confident we’ll eventually get a solution.

KOENIG: You do have a lot of people working on it from multiple fronts, and I'm pretty sure it'll be a solved problem.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

As American and NATO forces complete their withdrawal, Taliban forces are rapidly gaining ground against the Afghan military.

On Monday, the extremist group captured two more provincial capitals, bringing the total to five.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: At the same time, they’re on an assassination campaign targeting senior government officials in Kabul, the country’s capital.

So is the Taliban on track for a total takeover of Afghanistan? And what would that mean?

REICHARD: Here to help answer those questions is Michael Rubin. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He’s an expert in Middle Eastern culture and conflict. Good morning to you, sir!

RUBIN: Good morning!

REICHARD: Now, first of all, you understand the Taliban better than most people do. You spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. How did that come about and what did you learn?

RUBIN: Well, I had spent some time with the Taliban back in March of 2000. Now, what was going on in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of the Soviet forces is that for a short time they had a government, but then the country devolved into civil war. And back in 1994, a new movement erupted called the Taliban. And over the next couple years, they steamrolled through the country. And by 1999 or so, they had captured about 90 percent of Afghanistan.

Now, at the time, actually, the daughter in law of the former CIA Chief, Richard Helms, a woman named Layli Helms was a lobbyist for the Taliban. And she was going around Washington in New York, saying, you know, you should come and see what the Taliban have done. They’re really no worse than Saudi Arabia. And so since they control 90 percent of the country, since they've secured the country, you should come and see what happened and the United States recognize them. I was a graduate student at the time, and I called her bluff, and I went. But she may not have realized that I was a Persian speaker, and a lot of Afghans speak a dialect of Persian. And so what I was told was actually, "No, they haven't closed the terror training camps. And while they promised security, now they're abusing our security, and we really don't like them."

Well, I wrote a number of articles. They were all rejected. And then 9/11 happened. Obviously, they hadn't closed the terror training camps.

REICHARD: What a fascinating background you’ve had. Michael, talk about the gains that the Taliban has made so far and explain the significance of those gains. How much power have they seized in recent weeks?

RUBIN: Well, the first thing to understand about the Taliban is when they are seizing these provincial capitals. In many cases, they're doing so without a fight or with a minimal fight. And that that was also the case back in the 1990s. They would negotiate back deals with either local governors or the local governor's competition. And Afghans are prone to judge momentum. They see who seems to have the better chance, and if they feel that they can't win the fight, they're just going to open the door.

But what's not being as actively reported is they're not being completely successful. They tried, for example, to seize the major Western city of Herat, and they were pushed back by the locals who want nothing to do with them. And that's also happened with a couple other provincial capitals. Now, the Biden administration and the Trump administration before that said, "You know, we've trained, we've spent billions of dollars training the Afghan army and they really can fight." And that's absolutely true. The problem is whether they can get to the place where the fight is. It seems that the Taliban has pre-positioned a number of their forces. And while the Afghan army can fight when they are in the location, what they had relied on the Americans and other forces for before was the logistics to get from point A to point B. And that's where they're falling short right now.

REICHARD: Okay, so do you think the Afghan military is capable of limiting the Taliban’s gains or are we looking at a complete takeover, eventually?

RUBIN: Well, ultimately, the Afghans with whom I’m talking say they're not going to be able to take over the entire country. It's going to be a reversion to civil war. People like the U.S. Special Envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, who admittedly I've been critical of, will say that, you know, it's a different generation of Afghans and they're not willing to sacrifice the freedoms, the liberties and the interconnections with the outside world they previously gained.

That said, the Taliban are capable of extreme brutality. One video, which has circulated widely in Afghanistan, shows 21 Special Forces members surrendering to the Taliban and subsequently getting machine gunned down. And the lesson there which the Taliban is trying to show is if you resist us at all, this is what will happen. So right now, the Taliban is playing mind games. The question is what's going to happen once the Taliban feels you know, all outside forces are gone, the Americans have lost interest in with their air support, and we can simply get away with taking over the country. And Secretary of State Anthony Blinken can say, you know, if they try to take over the whole country by force, there'll be a pariah state. But you know, most of the Taliban ideologues simply don't care. They're fine being a pariah state. And that's what we need to worry about.

REICHARD: What will that ultimately mean for the United States? Will this be, frankly, no longer America’s problem to solve or might U.S. forces have to reengage in Afghanistan to counter terrorism threats?

RUBIN: Well, those are the two scenarios. The Afghans really are understanding this sense of betrayal. That's what they're perceiving us doing. The question is now whether the US withdrawal, and the narrative which the Taliban would put forth, that we've defeated two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, will lead to a huge recruitment drive, which is going to allow far more radicals to join the movement. At the same time, if the Taliban control the territory, what they did before 9/11, of course, was allow various terrorist groups to establish training camps. And while the Taliban had promised the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under the February 29, 2020, peace agreement that they would have nothing to do with al Qaeda, since that time, airstrikes have actually killed two al Qaeda leaders under Taliban protection inside Afghanistan.

REICHARD: Michael Rubin with the American Enterprise Institute, appreciate your insight. Thank you.

RUBIN: Thank you.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Well, the Olympic Games in Tokyo wrapped up over the weekend and these Summer Games were unusual in many ways.

One of the strangest incidents occurred on the equestrian track.

Horses do not like surprises—like a lifesize statue of a sumo wrestler squatting right next to a jump they need to clear.

Riders complained that “sumo man” distracted several horses during a qualifying event.

British rider Harry Charles said, “As you come around, you see a big guy’s” posterior. He said he noticed several horses really got spooked by that.

A few horses pulled up short of the barrier, accumulating enough penalty points to prevent entry into the finals.

Olympic officials took the statue away for the team competition, knocking sumo man right out of the equestrian event.

REICHARD: So, a happy “tail end” to the story!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 10th.

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

Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Anniversaries!

It’s a big week for us around here at WORLD Newsgroup. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first issue of It’s God’s World—a Christian newspaper for kids. Soon after its start, parents began lobbying for a news magazine for adults from a Christian worldview. WORLD founder Joel Belz:

Parents of our young readers more and more frequently came back to us, saying: “We like this. We read this with our kids. When are you going to do an edition for adults?” Wisely or not, we listened. WORLD magazine appeared in 1986. No, the God’s World News papers are not a junior version of WORLD. WORLD is actually, and historically, a senior version of the kids’ papers!

Forty years of Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

BUTLER: We’re also celebrating our 10th anniversary of The World and Everything in It this week. So over the next few days you’ll hear highlights from some of our most memorable profiles and feature stories over the years. We polled our reporters and staff, and they nominated their favorites. One that many mentioned was a story from Susan Olasky: The Search for the Man From Olevsk.

REICHARD: That feature aired on Thanksgiving, 2012. It chronicled a journey of discovery as Marvin and Susan searched for clues about the Olasky family tree. We pick up the story as they arrive in Olevsk, Ukraine.

SUSAN OLASKY, REPORTER: Barkov asks, What now? What’s the plan? Marvin doesn’t have much of a plan. Just 15 year-old information from the internet.

DRIVER: This used to be a totally Jewish city.

AMBI: FOOTSTEPS IN CEMETERY

We arrive and get out. We walk slowly through the crowded graveyard. Iron fences surround many of the graves. Stones with the star of David and etched with photographs—in the Russian style.

Marvin looks for graves with the name Chaya, his great grandmother, or Yehoshua his great grandfather.

Where did all the Jews go? Many died in Stalin’s famine of the 1930s. The Nazis killed millions more. Those who survived left for Israel and the U.S. in the 1970s and 80s.

We left Olevsk knowing little more about Marvin’s family than when we came. He found no grave. He found no long lost relatives. So what did he learn?

MARVIN: Our lives are short. Left to ourselves, if it’s just ourselves, if it’s just our material existence, we do die and we may be remembered for a while, but basically other people will forget us. The joyful thing is that God does not forget. Those lives have not been lived in vain.

For The World and Everything in It, I’m Susan Olasky.

MUSIC

BUTLER: Since 2011 there have been many times when we’ve had the privilege to really live up to our name—as can be heard in this excerpt from November 15th, 2018. Reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt profiled Gilbert Brabant, a French sand collector.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT, REPORTER: It all started about 20 years ago, on a vacation. Brabant took his family to a new beach. His children claimed the sand was “lighter and finer” than their usual beach. Brabant told them that was nonsense. He said all sand was the same. To prove it, he scooped up a handful to compare to the sand from their regular beach.

FRENCH TRANSLATION: At the beginning it was just out of curiosity and to show that I was the boss and that the boss is always right. [LAUGHS]

Turns out, the kids were right. Brabant learned that sand is not at all the same.

SOUND: VOICES AND SHAKING VIALS OF SAND

A hobby was born. Word soon got out, and friends and family started bringing him sand. Red sand, black sand, orange sand, pink sand, and every gradation of gray and brown imaginable.

In 2006, Brabant discovered there’s an online world of sand collectors. They’re called “arenophiles.” Finding them was a watershed moment for him.

Brabant’s initial dream was to collect sand from every nation on earth. He fulfilled it last year when he traded for sand from North Korea. So now he has a new goal: Sand from every region of France and every state of the United States. He only needs 16 more states.

So why collect sand? Brabant says the real quest isn’t the sand. It’s not the creation. But the Creator.

FRENCH TRANSLATION: What we know of creation is truly a tiny, tiny, tiny piece. And you realize that our perspective, and therefore, our understanding, is very limited in relation to the universe, in relation to creation. And for me, that shows that we should be very humble, especially humble in relation to our knowledge of God and to our understanding of our Creator.

So Brabant says next time you go to the beach, be careful where you step. You never know what marvels may lie just under your feet...

BUTLER: WORLD Reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt.

REICHARD: And our last story highlight for today is the one most mentioned in our internal poll. It comes from last year’s COVID-19 coverage. WORLD Reporter Bonnie Pritchett introduced us to an 83-year old school bus driver who went from delivering students to delivering school lunches.

TOMMY BATES: Hello Andrew! How are you?

BONNIE PRITCHETT, REPORTER: For the last six years, Tommy Bates has driven a school bus for Gwinnett County Public Schools, in northeastern Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a post-retirement career. Ten years of retired life left him stir-crazy. Not sure what he wanted to do, Bates found inspiration while driving home one day.

TOMMY BATES: And there was a big sign in front of the school that said ‘Bus managers needed.’ And I thought to myself, I don’t know what that means but I guarantee ya, I can manage a bus...

SOUND: [BUS ENGINE AND RADIO CHATTER]

He passed the training course and became Mr. Tommy, school bus driver. During a typical school year, his day begins at 4–dark–30.

SOUND: [SLOWING AND DOORS SWOOSHING OPEN]

But these days he’s not up before the sun. And the students he sees at each stop, never climb aboard his b

BATES: We are now at Norcross High School. And this is where we pick up the sandwiches.

Bates and his bus driving colleagues no longer pick up and deliver students to their schools. Instead, they pick up and deliver lunches to most of the district’s 181,000 students learning from home since March 16th. That’s when schools closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

BATES: Alright. We’ve got our sandwiches.

Does he worry about himself? Yes. Sort of.

At 83-years old, Bates understands he and his wife Katie are among those most vulnerable to potentially deadly complications should they contract the coronavirus. So, he takes what precautions he can, leaves the ‘what-ifs’ to God, and goes to work each day. Besides, he says he’s a “young” 83.

BATES: I’ve got a ready smile and I’m a happy guy. And I’m an up guy. And they see that. And that’s just naturally who the Lord has made me. And the way I see my relationship with them, the hope that I see, is kinda like, kinda like a ripple on a lake. You know. You throw a rock in the lake and it creates ripples and the ripples go and go and go and go. You just don’t have any idea what influence you’re having. I hope it’s good.

SOUND: [BUS PULLING AWAY]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett.

REICHARD: We’ll include links to the complete stories we featured today in our transcript. You can find that at wng.org.

And tomorrow, three more stories from the past as we celebrate 10 years of The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 10th. Good morning! You’re listening to World Radio and we are so glad you are! I’m Mary Reichard.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

This week marks 10 years since The World and Everything in It began. Yesterday you heard from the two founders whose idea became reality, after several stops and starts. And lots of prayers.

And you heard former staffers reflect on their time with us. Now they pass the baton to our current crop of worldlings with reflections of their own.

MYRNA BROWN: Christina Darnell’s reflection actually triggered my own shoe-inspired memory. And I’ll get to that in a second. I’m Myrna Brown and in 20-17 our pastor introduced my husband to TWEII. “You gotta listen to this,” he said. My husband not only listened, but told me about it and while perusing the website found the WORLD Journalism Institute. So it all happened quickly. I had already started to transition out of secular TV news and was part of WJI’s 20-18 mid career course.

Now back to my shoe story. It was the summer of 20-19. I had been with WORLD for about a year and half now. For this story I got to go back to my hometown of Mobile, Alabama to do a feature on the Drake family.

Bryan Drake is a Christian illusionist. His wife Carla and their two cutie pie daughters travel around the country sharing the gospel using their unique gifts. I am at their house trying to capture the sounds of their life when they’re not on the road. The coffee’s percolating. Bryan is teaching his daughter a card trick. Remember he’s an illusionist.

As I’m leaning in with my recorder to capture the sound of five- year-old Harper handling a deck of cards, 14-month-old Ella is on the floor and apparently mesmerized by the velcro on my sandals. I’m literally leaning in with my recorder and I feel these tiny, sticky fingers touching my toes and then I hear the detaching and reattaching of the velcro strap on my sandals. She’s trying to take my sandals off. And I’m trying not to laugh and lose my balance. It was a precious, definitely unplanned moment that their mom managed to capture on her phone. What a fun assignment. And the story turned out pretty well, too!

KATIE GAULTNEY: Katie Gaultney here. Like many of you, I came up on WORLD Magazine. I had a subscription as a teen, and WORLD’s journalism inspired me to join the yearbook and newspaper staff in high school. Fast forward to college: I stayed on the journalism track, studying under one Dr. Marvin Olasky. That led to a WORLD internship. I remember the magazine sending me on an assignment to Tennessee in 2006 where I encountered some trouble at a rental car agency. They weren’t too keen on renting a car to a 20-year-old. But it all worked out.

In 2015, after I’d spent nearly a decade away—working, going back to school, and starting a family—my old college professor, “Dr.” Olasky, was kind enough to let me dip my toes back in the journalism waters. I started writing for WORLD again, here and there. Then, knowing next to nothing about broadcast journalism, I got a chance to do my first podcast segment in 2016. But there’s a learning curve, so my stories were quarterly, then bimonthly, then monthly—and now I’m deeply grateful to be on the podcast weekly.

I may have joined the WORLD Radio team at the halfway point—five years into its tenure—but what a five years it’s been. This work has grown my world, as I report on everything from refugees to aerial acrobatics, tornados to quadruplets. Ten years is a good chunk of time. I have a flesh-and-blood reminder of just how much time that is; my oldest was born 11 days before WORLD Radio’s debut. But by that same token, 10 years—whether raising kids or recording podcast episodes—goes by in a flash. It’s hard for me to imagine what my world would look like without WORLD Radio. So, happy 10th birthday. And thank you.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow, more highlights of our favorite features from the last decade, as part of our 10 year anniversary.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Paul Butler.

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 Psalmist wrote: Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.