The World and Everything in It - August 11, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Demographic changes across suburban America spell changes for the political parties, especially for the GOP.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: We’ll talk about some of those trends on Washington Wednesday.

Also World Tour.

Plus highlights of places we’ve visited—and the people who live there.

REICHARD: And reflections on the 10th anniversary of our program.

It’s Wednesday, August 11th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate passes bipartisan infrastructure bill » Lawmakers in the Senate on Tuesday passed the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill on a vote of 69-to-30.

Speaking in the East Room of the White House, President Biden celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bipartisan bill.

BIDEN: A historic investment in the nation’s roads and highways, bridges and transit - and our drinking water systems and broadband, clean energy, environmental cleanup, and making infrastructure more resilient.

Supporters say the bill will pay for itself over time. The White House says the infrastructure package would create about 2 million jobs per year over the coming decade.

But many GOP lawmakers questioned those projections and opposed adding more to the federal deficit. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson …

JOHNSON: There was a way to do infrastructure without further mortgaging our kids’ future. That would have been to take the more than $700 billion dollars of the $1.9 trillion dollar partisan COVID relief package that isn’t even spent until 2022 through 2028 and repurpose that for infrastructure.

Democrats in the Senate will now turn to a second, much larger $3.5 trillion dollar package. That would have to pass straight down partly lines using budget reconciliation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the House will eventually consider both measures together.

New York Lt. Gov. set to take over after Cuomo resignation » New York will soon have a new governor. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul is on deck to take over after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation on Tuesday.

CUOMO: My resignation will be effective in 14 days.

That just days after a state investigation found that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women. Before announcing his departure, the governor once again pushed back against the findings of that report.

CUOMO: In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn.

Cuomo said he didn’t fully appreciate “generational and cultural shifts” in what’s considered to be acceptable behavior.

The Democratic governor has spent more than 10 years in the state’s highest office.

Kathy Hochul, also a Democrat, will become the state’s first female governor.

Chinese, Russian militaries conduct joint drills in China » Troops from China and Russia are participating in joint exercises in northwestern China in a sign of growing military ties between the two countries. WORLD’s Sarah Schweinsberg has more.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Chinese and Russian ground troops and combat aircraft are taking part in joint drills, likely through the end of this week in northwestern China.

They’re conducting the exercise just to the east of the Xinjiang region.

Xinjiang shares a narrow frontier with Afghanistan, and Beijing is concerned about violence spilling over its border as the Taliban conquers more territory.

Russia and China have not announced a formal alliance. But they are increasingly coordinating their military and foreign policies to counter U.S. military dominance.

The Chinese government said the joint exercise “reflects the new height of the China-Russia” strategic partnership for a new era.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

Tropical Storm Fred pelts Caribbean, tracks toward U.S. » Another named storm is taking aim at the United States as it rips through the Carribean.

Tropical Storm Fred is pelting the northern Caribbean with strong winds and heavy rains. That after a quiet month with no major storms in the region.

Puerto Rico reported power outages on Tuesday. The island’s power grid still has not recovered from Hurricane Maria in 2017.

The storm could hit the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the southern Bahamas today.

Jack Beven with the National Hurricane Center ...

BEVEN: People further downstream in the Bahamas, Cuba, and Florida should keep an eye on the system. It is way too early to tell what kind of impact it’s going to have further along the possible track.

Right now, it appears Fred will ultimately head for Florida or the Gulf Coast over the weekend.

U.S. sending Mexico 8.5 million more vaccine doses » The United States will send 8.5 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Mexico. That as the delta variant drives the country’s third wave of infections. WORLD’s Leigh Jones reports.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The White House informed Mexico of the new shipments during a call this week. That according to Mexican Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard.

Hospitalizations are again starting to rise in parts of the country as infections expand rapidly and the health system grows more stressed.

Mexican officials say this COVID-19 wave is different in that the bulk of the new infections this time are not in those 60 years and up, but rather people 20 to 50 years old. Authorities say that’s likely because vaccination rates are lower among younger citizens.

Mexico has received 91 million doses of five different vaccines. Some 51 million people have received at least one dose and 27 million have been fully vaccinated. That’s about 21 percent of the country’s population.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: America’s changing political demographics.

Plus, adventures with a microphone.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 11th of August, 2021.

You’re listening to World Radio and we’re really glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

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

First up on The World and Everything in It: the GOP’s suburban dilemma.

For some time now, the Republican party has outperformed Democrats in rural America while Democrats fare better with voters in large cities.

More and more, the battle is for the hearts and minds of voters in the suburbs. And in the 2020 election, Democrats won that suburban battle in some surprising places.

Around Atlanta, for instance, some areas that typically tilt Republican instead tilted the race to President Biden and Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate.

REICHARD: So what does a changing political landscape mean for Republicans going forward?

Joining us now with more insight is Sean Trende. He recently wrote a report on changing behavior called The GOP’s Suburban Dilemma.

Sean is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. And he is the author of The Lost Majority: Why the Future of Government Is Up for Grabs and Who Will Take It.

Sean, good morning!

TRENDE: Good morning!

REICHARD: You write that “for years, Republicans thought of their party as a three-legged stool, joining social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives.” But you say there’s another way to look at it. How’s that?

TRENDE: We can look at party coalitions in a variety of ways, the kind of ideological one that you just described is one of them, perhaps the most commonplace of them. But another way of looking at them, and kind of how I tend to look at them in my work, is geographic or demographic coalitions. You'll hear people talk about it, you know, African Americans are in the Democratic Party. And traditionally, college educated white voters were in the Republican Party. But you can also think of it in geographic terms, which is how I tend to look at it in this paper.

REICHARD: You make the point in that paper that Bill Clinton really began pushing suburbanites into the Democratic Party and that created a new dynamic in American politics. Elaborate on that, if you would.

TRENDE: Yeah, Bill Clinton is kind of, in a lot of ways an overlooked president. Especially during his presidency, he was kind of dismissed. He never won a majority of the popular vote though a lot of that's due to Ross Perot's presence. But he really played a big role in bringing over these suburban voters who—or starting to bring over these suburban voters who—had been a foundation of the Republican Party throughout the post-war years, you know, the Republicans had won seven of 10 presidential elections from 1952 to 1988, and had won six of those in landslides — in large part because of their strength in suburbs. And Bill Clinton's formula, of kind of moderation on economic issues and, you know, taking some of the sharper edges off of the the Democrats position on social issues, really played a big role in bringing those suburbanites over, especially in the north and remade the politics of this country in many ways in the process.

REICHARD: So that’s the history of Democrats. You say that Donald Trump’s ascension in the GOP helps the party in certain states but hurts them in others. Why is that?

TRENDE: Well, so Donald Trump is in a lot of ways a counter move to Bill Clinton on the part of Republicans. Republicans looked at these suburbs, especially in the north that were kind of drifting away from them. You know, you can look at states like New Jersey and New Hampshire that were heavily Republican or swing states in 1988. And by 1996, they're just not because of the movement in the suburbs. So Donald Trump, in turn, has a strong appeal to working class white voters and rural voters; brings those over. And so in some states, states like Ohio, where I live, that really benefits Republicans because there are a lot of voters that live in rural and small town Ohio. And we don't have a big city like New York or San Francisco or Houston. In a state like Texas, on the other hand, where you know, almost all the vote is cast in large cities or in mega cities like Dallas or Houston. It's more harmful to Republicans because they can't afford to lose those voters in those states.

REICHARD: It’s not clear yet that we are in the post-Trump era. Former President Trump might make another White House run. But whether that’s now or in the future, what will the post-Trump Republican party look like?

TRENDE: Well, that's a really good question. So there's two schools of thought on that. The first school of thought is that the politics sort of revert to their original factory settings, if you will. The suburbs move back towards the Republicans, and so states like Georgia and Texas aren't as competitive as they were during the Trump years. Maybe Ohio and Wisconsin become, you know, Ohio moves towards the center. Wisconsin becomes, you know, more blue again. I'm not sure that—that's kind of a tempting way to look at it, but I'm not sure that's the best way to look at it. You look at things like the Georgia special elections for the Senate where the Democrats won both of those. And, you know, those were held after, you know, almost two months after election day. So, I don't know, I tend to think Trump acted as an accelerant, that these trends are long standing in American politics, and that we're likely to see our future elections look a lot like 16 and 20, if not even more so.

REICHARD: How does everything we’ve talked about here play into next year’s elections? What do Republican candidates need to understand about the makeup of the party now and the electorate in 2022?

TRENDE: You know, I think one thing Republican candidates need to understand—well, there's kind of two things. I think they need to understand that they have a tightrope to walk. Trump spoke to some unaddressed needs of a lot of American voters in a way that no one had spoken to them in quite some time. Perhaps even going back to when Ross Perot ran in ‘92 and ‘96. And so on some of these things like trade, immigration, you know, things where I actually tend to be more towards the traditional GOP mainstream. But, you know, the Republican Party has done a poor job selling that to a lot of American workers. At the same time, you know, they need to understand that Trump really did hurt them in a lot of suburban areas. And so the key for the GOP going forward, I think, is trying to figure out what Trumpism without Trump looks like. You know, trying to figure out what they need to keep what parts really do improve their brand in and expand their reach, and what parts are more—what parts are really kind of driving suburbanites in a way that is unhealthy for the party.

REICHARD: Well, that was my final question. What is the divide between urban and rural? Why such differences in political desires and interests?

TRENDE: Part of it I think it's just it's just lifestyle. A lot of people—and I'm someone who grew up with a foot in kind of both camps. I lived in a place that wasn't really rural but was rural adjacent in Oklahoma growing up. And so I think a lot of people, especially younger people who live in cities are, you know, they're kind of transient. They aren't rooted in places much, you know. They live in a city and then they move to another city. They can kind of pick up. Whereas if you have people who live in rural areas, community a lot of times is all they have holding them together. They know everyone in the small town. And that translates to how you think about things like a factory closure. You know, if you're young, and in a city jobs come and go, you might transfer jobs, you know, 15 times. In a place like DC, I mean, it's almost unusual to have a job or a job title for more than two or three years, at least when I was there and was young. Whereas if you live in a rural area, you kind of grew up or a small town that had a factory that everyone had worked at for 20 years, you tend to view trade and job closures and job loss a little differently. You know, creative destruction has its winners and it's losers. And that's I think one of the lessons we've kind of had to come to terms with over the last 20 years. I think there's a whole lot more we could go on for hours about the role of faith, family, things like that, but but I think it's, suffice it to say, the lifestyles really are different and that matters in politics.

MR: Okay, Sean Trende has been our guest today. You can find his work at AEI.org and RealClearPolitics.com.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Opposition marks anniversary of disputed election—We start today in Eastern Europe.

SOUND: CELLO

Monday marked one year since the disputed election in Belarus that returned dictator Alexander Lukashenko to power. Opposition leaders in exile held a rally in Lithuania.

SVETLANA TIKHANOVSKAYA: SPEAKING RUSSIAN

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya vowed to continue fighting for freedom. She said the opposition had already accomplished much with the help of international partners.

The United States and the United Kingdom hit Lukashenko’s regime with new sanctions on Monday. But he remained defiant.

ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO: SPEAKING RUSSIAN

During his annual press conference, Lukashenko accused the West of attempting to start World War Three.

Lukashenko has held power in Belarus since 1994. After Tikhanovskaya claimed victory in last year’s election, the government waged a brutal crackdown on dissent. Amnesty International says thousands in Belarus have been detained, forced into exile, or continue to live in fear.

China sentences Canadian man to death—Next to Asia.

MAN: SPEAKING CHINESE

A Canadian man sentenced to death for drug smuggling in China has lost his appeal in a case of what critics call “hostage politics.”

Police arrested Robert Lloyd Schellenberg in 2014 and accused him of trying to smuggle methamphetamine out of the country. He denies the charges.

The court initially sentenced Schellenberg to 15 years in jail. But when he appealed in 2019, a judge called the punishment too lenient and gave him the death penalty instead.

Canadian officials say it’s no coincidence that the ruling came down in the middle of China’s battle with Canada over a senior Huawei executive. She ​​is currently detained in Canada on a U.S. warrant.

Burkina Faso celebrates first Olympic medal—And finally, we end today here in Africa.

SOUND: MEN CHANTING

Burkina Faso celebrated its first Olympic medal when Hugues-Fabrice Zango returned home from Tokyo on Sunday.

Zango won the bronze in the men’s triple jump.

ZANGO: SPEAKING FRENCH

Zango thanked everyone who supported him and encouraged other young athletes to dream big. He plans to train for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, where he hopes to win his country’s first gold medal.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: August means hot and dry in many places.

It’s like that a lot in the United Arab Emirates. It gets about 4 inches of rain a year. That’s it.

But a new high-tech solution to chronic drought may be in the offing: drones that zap clouds with lasers.

Last month, the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology posted videos online showing heavy rainfall. The agency said it basically electrocuted the air into rain: lasers charge water vapor with electricity that in turn creates water droplets which then promote rain.

REICHARD: Does that rain fall mainly in the plain?

Cloud seeding’s been around for years, but this process is different.

REICHARD: Could it be something new under the sun?

Nope. Clouds already make rain.

It's The World and Everything In It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 11th.

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 up next on The World and Everything in It: interesting places! As we continue to celebrate 40 years of WORLD Newsgroup and 10 years of the podcast, we’re taking some time to listen back.

BUTLER: We asked our reporters and staff to nominate some of their favorite stories from the last decade. So during each program this week we’re playing highlights from a few of those memorable moments.

REICHARD: Our first story is from five years ago when I visited the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. It’s full of many interesting displays and medical artifacts. It was also the first time that I met Paul Butler.

BUTLER: That’s right! WORLD sent me along as your audio technician to help you gather the sound while you interviewed the curator.

REICHARD: If I recall, you were a little green around the gills at times.

BUTLER: What really did me in was the Civil War amputations exhibit. We won’t play that part of the interview today. Instead, in this excerpt we join you about halfway through the tour, just after handling the bone saws.

MARY REICHARD, REPORTER: Another room filled with artifacts. Here’s a large, vertical, wooden box with a step on one side and two optical tubes on top.

JUSTINA: So here we have our x-ray exhibit. Another really popular exhibit. So I’ll just talk about the shoe fitting x-ray machine in the middle of the room here. So this was very popular - it was in shoe stores across America. Kids loved putting their foot in the back of the machine, there’s a hole in the back, then their parents and a shoe salesman could look in the top of the machine and see a live action x-ray of the child’s foot wiggling around in the shoe. This was before they knew the negative effects of radiation, of course. So once they found that out, these were pulled from shoe stores across America, but I still do get people who come in and remember using these as kids.

I can’t think of a clearer example of good intentions with unintended consequences.

Next, a medical development near and dear to all of us who’ve suffered.

JUSTINA: So we can go through to the left here to the pain exhibit. It’s one of my favorites. The pain and pain management exhibit. Right through here.

The science of pain management had a bumpy roll out.

JUSTINA: Heroin was actually developed at the same time as aspirin. They liked it better than aspirin because it was stronger. It was sold through the Sears catalog, so anyone could get their hands on it.

Once it became known that heroin was terribly addictive, legal sales of it ended in 1913.

AUDIO: VINTAGE ELEVATOR NOISE

We took the vintage elevator back to the ground floor. I thought of what I’d seen: I had a renewed feeling of gratitude that I live in a day of anesthesia, decent prosthetic devices, antibiotics, and trained doctors.

And yet, the medical frontier remains unconquered. Who knows what future discoveries will fill future rooms in museums?

Reporting from Chicago for WORLD Radio, I’m Mary Reichard.

BUTLER: Our next interesting place is the nation’s capital.

REICHARD: When I think of Washington, D.C., I imagine the Lincoln Memorial, Capitol Building, and of course, the Supreme Court. But in our next story highlight from 2019, WORLD Correspondent Jenny Rough brings us to the streets of a Washington D.C. neighborhood. Brian Bakke lives there and serves his neighbors in a very practical way—by sweeping their streets and sidewalks.

JENNY ROUGH, CORRESPONDENT: Not all of his friends understand why Bakke does what he does. They worry he’ll be attacked, but he never has been.

Bakke is 6 feet 6 inches tall with pale white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. He’s not exactly inconspicuous.

BAKKE: When I first moved to the neighborhood, I asked God, “All right, Lord, how does a white man that looks like me enter an all-black neighborhood?” And the Lord said, “Buy a broom and use it.” “Use it in silence.” Meaning, don’t say a thing until someone else talks to you.

Drug dealers were convinced he was an FBI agent. Others asked if he was performing community service, especially the days he wore an orange t-shirt. One morning, a woman stuck her head out the window and shouted questions at him: “What are you doing? Why are you cleaning?” He told her he was trying to be a neighbor. Stunned, she thanked him—and shut the window.

Bakke and Myra are friends now. She brought the village to him.

BAKKE: By the end of that week, every single person on my block was waving, smiling, calling me by name.

His actions have influenced others. Take one neighbor who is a chain-smoker. He used to casually flick his cigarette butts on the ground. Pet owners couldn’t walk their dogs along that stretch of polluted sidewalk because the dogs liked to eat the butts and would get sick.

BAKKE: So I went to this guy, and I said, “What if I put a little jar out here or this beautiful little ceramic vase, would you just drop your butts in there?” He said, “Absolutely.”

Drug dealers were convinced he was an FBI agent. Others asked if he was performing community service, especially the days he wore an orange t-shirt. One morning, a woman stuck her head out the window and shouted questions at him: “What are you doing? Why are you cleaning?” He told her he was trying to be a neighbor. Stunned, she thanked him—and shut the window.

Bakke and Myra are friends now. She brought the village to him.

BAKKE: By the end of that week, every single person on my block was waving, smiling, calling me by name.

During the crack wars, the city cut most of the trees down so the helicopters flying overhead could see better. Bakke and his wife decided to purchase new trees to plant. Soon, other residents chipped in to cover the costs and help plant them.

The block is now considered a safe zone.

Bakke says being “The Street Sweeper” is his calling.

BAKKE: Not everyone has this calling. So maybe it’s not a broom for you. Like think about all the different people in your world that are completely, solely, original to you. Who in it has God just broken your heart for?

Whatever else others do, come tomorrow, Bakke will be on the streets. A quiet, peaceful neighbor. The only sound, the sweeping of his broom.

AUDIO: SWEEPING BROOM

For WORLD Radio, I’m Jenny Rough reporting from Washington, D.C.

REICHARD: Our last story highlight for today comes from early last year. WORLD’s Myrna Brown stopped by a Georgia nursing home. And that’s where she met Robin Dill who uses a family apple pie recipe as therapy for patients with dementia.

AUDIO: OPENING CAR DOOR

ROBIN PRAYS: Well, Lord, I just pray over all of this stuff.

Packed tightly in the backseat of her black Volkswagen Beetle, 40 pounds of apples, more than a dozen pie pans, canisters of spices and that huge bowl of chilled pie dough from the day before.

ROBIN: Here we are!

With the Johnny Appleseed song in her heart, she makes her way to the center’s kitchen.

ROBIN SINGING: For giving me the things I need…

In a matter of minutes she unloads the pie dough, apples, aprons and the hair nets. Denise, a grandmother, is instantly enraptured.

DENISE: I’ve turned into Aunt Lorraine. She always had one of these on her head.

ROBIN: Hey Steve I’m glad to see you this morning.

Steve has gray hair with dark, thick eyebrows. He’s initially reserved and silent, that is until Dill puts a rolling pin in his hands.

ROBIN AND STEVE: Press. Good. Have you done this before? Did your dad bake pies? Grandma? [SIGH] They died. Oh, I’m sorry.

Then she puts Denise in charge of the apples: coring, peeling and slicing.

ROBIN: Ok, you crank. Perfect. Keep going. Look at you.

DENISE: I love it!

ROBIN: Isn’t that cool?

DENISE: Yeah!

Rod, burly and at times impatient, mixes the apples and the spices.

ROD: Can I go ahead and put my top on?

ROBIN: Not yet. We’ve got to have apples in there. He’s so funny. Even people whose brains are failing them, they still want to be purposeful.

After about two hours of apple peeling, dough rolling and crust pinching, Dill jubilantly displays 13 unbaked apple pies across a white table cloth. Denise, Rod and Steve will get to share the fruits of their labor with their caregivers, another benefit of apple pie making.

DENISE: Ahhh, mmm, this is so good. So good.

ROBIN: My tummy says it’s happy, what does your tummy say?

STEVE: GROWL

For WORLD Radio, I’m Myrna Brown reporting from Duluth, Georgia.

BUTLER: If you’d like to hear the full stories we included today, the links to those are in today’s transcript. You can find that at wng.org. Tomorrow, three more stories from the past as we celebrate 10 years of The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: I am really loving all these rewind pieces, Paul. It’s so fun to listen to some of our highlights from the past 10 years! And I like hearing from our original batch of brave prerollers.

BUTLER: Me, too! As part of this week’s anniversary coverage, we’re replaying the first five prerolls we ever got. But next week, we’ll be back to our regular programming, and we need more prerolls. So if you want to be among the first listeners to introduce the program as it enters its second decade, better act fast! Visit wng.org/preroll for all the details.

REICHARD: That’s wng.org/preroll. Go ahead! Jump in! The water’s fine!

Okay, time for another walk down memory lane. Today, two of our reporters reflect on their time with WORLD.

KIM HENDERSON, REPORTER: I’m Kim Henderson. I’m a correspondent. My first story aired about four years ago.

I think one of the podcast’s greatest strengths is having reporters all over the place,from Abuja, Nigeria, to the buckle of the Bible belt. But working remotely has some real challenges, especially when it comes to teambuilding. I remember when Paul Butler came on board as features editor one of the things he wanted to do was to have monthly Zoom meetings. At first, I really didn’t understand why the meetings were necessary—especially the 20-minute icebreakers at the beginning that meant we had to unmute and actually participate. But over time, I’ve come to look forward to the second Wednesday of every month, because at 2 central I get to see the faces of my colleagues. I get to learn the stories behind the story tellers. We encourage each other, we pray for each other, learn ways to improve.

I like it so much that now I mark my calendar for a larger radio team meeting every other Friday, as well as the company-wide devotions on Wednesday mornings. They’re all zoomed, so when I see my computer screen fill up with these faces—these WORLD faces—I’m reminded that we’re a team. We have a mission. And I’m just really thankful that I have a small slot on the roster.

SARAH SCHWINSBERG, REPORTER: Hello! Sarah Schweinsberg here. Radio was never on my radar. When I thought of news, I always pictured TV, websites, or print. But this podcast medium? Never.

Five years ago, I got to intern with WORLD. For part of that internship, I stayed with Marvin and Susan Olasky. I saw Susan writing feature stories for The World and Everything In It, but I didn’t really understand what she was doing.

Then, one weekend, I wanted to go on a four day trip for a wedding. Marvin told me I’d best come back with a story. I got his drift. Suddenly a radio feature seemed like a good option.

In between a bachelorette and a dress rehearsal, I visited a Dutch bakery in a small Iowa town. I grabbed enough sound and interviews to turn into my first radio story with a lot of help from Susan.

I’m so grateful that that was the first of many adventures I’ve gotten to have with a microphone. Some of those have included going on a wild horse roundup, attending protests, visiting the border, covering every animal story I think there is (actually don’t worry I’ll find more), covering the marijuana tourism scene in Colorado, and meeting more amazing people with only stories that God could write than I can count.

I’m so grateful to the incredible team here at WORLD Radio. Here, collaboration is always valued over competition. Over and over again, the editors and older reporters have helped raise up young reporters like myself with a lot of patience, love, and tender care. Voicing is not easy to learn.

I’ve not only grown professionally on this team but as a follower of Christ. And I can’t say thank you enough. And to our listeners. Thank you for all of your corrections, cheerleading, and of course support.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: eviction moratoriums. We’ll tell you why the new bans aren’t any better than the last one, legally or practically.

And, we’ll revisit more stories from the past decade.

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 Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians: "Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." (Galations 6:9)

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.