The World and Everything in It: August 2, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Max Kizziar and I live in Carrollton, Texas where I work as an information technology consultant and project manager. I hope you are edified by today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Identity politics take center stage in the presidential campaign…schools start taking phones out of the classroom…and what the sexual revolution and French revolution have in common.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: We’ll talk about it with John Stonestreet on Culture Friday.

Plus 85 years of Batman.

BATMAN: It’s Gotham, Pennyworth. Does the corruption really surprise you?

MAST: And Ask the Editor for the month of August.

BROWN: It’s Friday, August 2nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Russia prisoner swap » Jet engines buzzed on a tarmac in Turkey last night … as four Americans boarded a plane for their long awaited journey home.

That after the United States and Russia made their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said their return home would be a joyous event.

KIRBY:  It'll be huge. It'll be a big night. Very emotional night. Um, I think in a very important one, not just for them and their families, but for the United States of America.

Among the Americans returning home are former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan … and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich

Their return comes as part of a large deal involving several nations … and 24 prisoners.

The White House says the Americans never should have been behind bars. Vice President Kamala Harris:

HARRIS:  Russian authorities arrested, convicted them in sham trials, and sentenced them to long prison terms.

Among those the Russians got back is Vadim Krasikov, who was convicted in Germany of killing a former Chechen rebel in Berlin.

Crackdown on free press » This was the sound in the Wall Street Journal’s New York newsroom upon hearing news that Evan Gershkovich was coming home …

[AUDIO]

But many more journalists remain behind bars in Russia and elsewhere. Clayton Weimers heads the group Reporters Without Borders. 

WEIMERS:  We're seeing other countries following suit and increasingly cracking down on the free press and feeling emboldened to arrest more journalists.

He said authoritarian regimes feel they can punish journalists just for doing their jobs … or hold them as bargaining chips … with impunity. He called on the free world to impose greater costs on dictatorial regimes for persecuting the press.

Israel defends actions » Tensions are boiling over in the Middle East … with Iran promising revenge for the killing of Hamas’ political leader while in Tehran.

But Israeli diplomat Jonathan Miller told world leaders at the U.N. … it is Iran that fuels terrorism in the region, providing arms to terror groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. 

MILLER: This is in addition to the more than 260 million annually provided by Iran to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, an amount which has increased over the past nine months. The actions of Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah are not just an Israeli or Jewish problem. The Islamic regime will target any who stand in its way to achieve global tyranny.

The Biden administration is trying to lower the temperature in the region.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan: 

SULLIVAN:  We are determined to engage in deterrence defense and deescalation to try to ensure that we do not have a wider regional conflict or escalation that goes unchecked.

But the leader of Hezbollah … says the conflict with Israel has entered a “new phase.” His remarks also follow the killing of a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut.

Presidential politics » President Trump’s vice presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance, campaigned in Arizona on Thursday: 

VANCE:  The best way to give our people hope for the future. The best way to preserve that American dream. The best way to give our kids that better life is to re-elect Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. 

Donald Trump is leading Vice President Kamala Harris by 4 points in Arizona. But she may soon make a play for the state. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly is believed to be on her short list to be her running mate.

Trump currently leads Harris in every major battleground state except Michigan in an average of recent polls. In national surveys, he leads the vice president by about one point.

America2025 » Former presidents from both sides of the aisle are gearing up to throw a historic birthday party for the United States of America. WORLD’s Mary Muncy explains.

MUNCY: America’s semi-quincentennial celebration is just around the corner. That’s a fancy way of saying … America is about to turn 250 years old!

And former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are co-chairing a group … tasked with coordinating nationwide celebrations in 20-26. It’s a nonprofit group called America250.

Former First Ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama are also on the multi-year planning panel.

The celebrations range from an essay competition and compiling oral histories…to burying a time capsule in Philadelphia.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy. 

Officials say it’s okay for men to beat up women at Olympics » A female Italian boxer pulled out of her Olympic match in the first round … after being forced to compete against a man — who identifies as a woman … an Algerian boxer named Imane Khelif

After the fight, a tearful Angela Carini said after taking a series of painful head punches … she soon came to the realization that she—in her words—could “not do it.”

Just minutes after sharing the ring with her biologically male opponent, … Carini said she’d never been hit that hard before … and she wanted to prevent herself from being seriously hurt.

I’m Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 2nd of August, 2024.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, John, last week, my husband and I were surprised by the invitations that kept popping up in our social media feeds, invites from supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris using the hashtags “Win With Black Men,” Women for Harris, and this week, I saw a post about “White Dudes for Kamala.”

Meanwhile, others are raising questions about Kamala Harris’s ethnicity…is she who she says she is? Donald Trump raised the question during a panel discussion with the National Association of Black Journalists this week. Here’s a clip:

TRUMP: So I've known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much. And she was always of Indian heritage and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black. So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black?

BROWN: What is it with this campaign and ethnicity? A lot of attention seems to be on questions like, Is Harris black? Is she Jamaican? Is she Indian? Not so much on her ideas, policies, her character, intelligence, and what's even more interesting is the historical component, references to electing our first female, black, Asian president.

So John is being the leader of the free world about breaking barriers, or is it about leadership?

STONESTREET: Are you asking whether it should be about breaking barriers about leadership, or whether it is? I mean, I mean, you know, it isn't about leadership. It hasn't been for quite some time. So that's not really this particular candidate's fault, but there is something that has emerged, I think, during this campaign. You know, we we've called it the critical theory mood, in which people tend to see that the most important thing about somebody else is which particular group of people that they belong to, and that that particular group of people then either earns a kind of level of moral derision or a level of moral acceptance.

Obviously, the former president got in a lot of trouble this week by asking the same question, Myrna. I don't think you're going to get in as much trouble for asking the question here with all of us as he did there with the ABC anchor, I think. But you know, it is something that is at the heart of a lot of things in our culture. It's just a confusion about identity. It's not new. Theologians, social scientists, others were looking ahead to, you know, what was being called, kind of an identity crisis that would result in the modern era from kind of losing our place as anything distinct and unique, special among the rest of you know the world. And so then you're left with other identity factors. You know, that's the whole conversation behind the LGBTQ movement is that really what we do is who we are. What we do sexually in particular, is who we are. Our willingness to break barriers of our culture sexually is what gives us dignity, because it's an expression of autonomy. And this is even more highly reductive than than that.

It's really important, though, for this particular candidate to keep this conversation in this direction, because you dig up, for example, the last time she had to campaign, which was, of course, seeking out the presidential nomination in 2020 a lot of her ideas were surfaced, and they're not popular ideas. They're not ideas that can basically win the general election. And I think on just the political—I know this is culture Friday, not political Friday, but it is going to be really interesting to see whether this kind of honeymoon phase of this candidacy bounces back to any sort of, you know, connection to the actual views that she has espoused, then espoused publicly, that are, you know, far to the left of really, any other candidate we've ever seen run for president on a major party ticket in American history.

MAST: Well it’s back to school time–where I live in Georgia, some kids go back Monday. And this year, I’m seeing more changes to cell phone policy to ban or limit students from using cell phones. Among them: New York City, the Los Angeles Unified School District… and other smaller ones.

John, I’m hopeful this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. My husband and I are mean ol’ parents who kept our daughter off Instagram and the like until after she graduated high school–which was this year! I kept thinking more parents would do the same but we could only find one other family to lock arms with us on that. It was lonely for all of us.

So do these changes–states and school districts starting to outright ban phone usage– mean that we are turning the corner on this idea that you can’t separate a kid from their phone?

STONESTREET: I think, I think we are, and solidarity to all the mean parents out there like us, because we know we certainly did the same thing. The evidence is so overwhelming right now, particularly for teenage girls. I mean, it is ignoring of reality to say that this is not something that needs to be eliminated, really, from their lives, but at least their learning.

I ask headmasters of private schools this all the time. I'm like, Look, if there was a creepy old dude walking around whispering awful things into the ears of all of your teenage girls, would you be forced to do something about it as the headmaster of this school? And they're all like, yeah. It's like, well, that's exactly what Tiktok is, except it's a whole bunch of creepy old men, not to mention the whole communist party of China, whispering terrible things in the ears of your you know your teenage girls, and we now have the trend lines. And of course, Jonathan Haidt's book is is remarkable on this, but you just kind of lay down the incredible spike in mental illness of teenage girls with the onset of widespread cell phone use, and by the way, you also throw in the trend line of gender confusion, and these are identical trend lines. Basically, it's not, there's not a distinction worth the difference between these trend lines.

Now look, what I understand, and again, we've taken these same steps that you have as a as a family, but what I understand, whenever I talk to teachers about this. There is no fighting from the teachers on this point. They all want this ban. They all want this to be out of their kids lives. It complicates things. And when you say, Why? Why haven't you enacted this policy? It universally is parents. Parents are the ones that keep cell phones around, more than the kids do. The parents want to have this, this this tether, this connection to their kids. And, you know, look, we have enough stories coming out of mass shootings in schools and so on that. Having that there is sort of important, and it's understandable why it's important to parents, but the downside of this far outweighs any sort of, you know, potential emergency, you know, situation in terms of chances of damage that that's being done, and there's other things that can be done to ensure that sort of access to parents at those awful times.

It's not just that there's bad stuff, you know, on some of these social media platforms. It's the platform itself. It's the distraction from being all there. It's the perpetual sense of FOMO that happens when somebody else is having a good time and you're not. And you know about it. It is the inability to look real people in the eye because you're living in a digital rectangle. It's all of those things. It's the content and it's the means, it's the means and the message both.

And that's why I'm pleased to see we actually saw this story. And there's dozens of school districts that are making this hard choice and doing it, and you know what? It'll be popular when it's all over. It's something that it should have been done a long time ago. And finally, it's catching up. I do think we're becoming much more aware of the harms of these devices, particularly for young people.

BROWN: John, last question for today…It’s been a week since that awful part of the Olympics opening ceremony when drag performers parodied the Last Supper. But you know, I’ve heard mixed messages since then…I’ve heard what sounds like backtracking from those involved…saying Oh no, it wasn’t the Lord’s supper, it was a feast of greek gods.

So John, did Christians speak too quickly, or are the folks involved trying to backtrack their blasphemy? A week later, what do you make of it?

STRONESTREET: I mean, listen, whether or not the parody with the drag queens was of the Lord's Supper, you know, obviously the information we have is all over the place. And after suggesting, at least some of the participants suggesting that it was now suggesting it isn't. And I, you know, and I'm not putting it past anyone to to kind of gaslight those who who were concerned.

The best take on this, by far that I have seen is a YouTube analysis of this artistically from Jonathan Pageau. And Jonathan, of course, is a Canadian iconographer in the in the Orthodox Christian tradition. And he just walks through this as someone who understands art, understands history, understands culture, and understands performance. And I'm with him, I think, absolutely. I mean, actually, the title of that sort of segment of this program referred to it as referring to the Lord's Supper.

But let me be really clear here, whether or not it was, doesn't change the fact that it was, as many people pointed out, satanic. And it's Satanic in the sense of how Satan works, which isn't always being really creepy. And I'm not even talking about like the creepy karaoke with the Marie, the headless Marie Antoinette, singing the heavy metal stuff, you know, in the window of the building, apparently, where she was kept and beheaded. I'm talking about the fundamental message of the enemy from the very beginning, which is, "you shall be like gods."

To give a tribute, as it was, to the French Revolution and the ideals of the French Revolution, which are really anarchist ideals. One of the thinkers that most influenced the French Revolution was the initial editor of the very first encyclopedia, a collection of knowledge. Of course, this is coming out of the Enlightenment. He was a skeptic and a cynic, and this is Denis Diderot. And Diderot famously said that "man will not be free until the last priest is strangled with the entrails of the last king."

Now, clearly he had a way with words, but you see what this was, this was an understanding of freedom, which is freedom from an autonomy, freedom from constraint, freedom from design, freedom from responsibility, freedom from any sort of fixed morals and the ability to do whatever I want. It's reflective also in Rousseau's famous line, that "man is born free and everywhere is in chains." In other words, that in our in our innermost, untethered, unconstrained desires, is who we really are, and we need to be able to express those.

By the way, that's the whole message of the LGBTQ movement. It was clearly the message of the whole performance from start to finish, and it certainly as much as they might think that this is an expression of freedom, it's amazing how unoriginal it is, because it always goes to either sexual perversion or a direct attack on the Christian religion, or both. And of course, everyone's noted that you're going to attack the Christian religion for two reasons.

Number one is because you're not going to attack Islam. Paris has already learned that in all kinds of different I mean, listen, if that performance had had anything about Muhammad, do we actually think that the games would still be going on right now? Absolutely not. Everybody knows that. No, you know, you don't, you don't have to guess about that. But the other reason is because, you know, France doesn't owe its existence to Islam. It owes its existence to Christianity. It owes its laws to Christianity. It owes its best expressions of beauty, like the true art and the true architectural majesty of like Notre Dame and other things to Christianity. And all this other stuff is a perversion of that good stuff. It's a parasite on that good stuff, and that's what evil is.

So look, I think Pageau's take on the fact that it actually was a reference to the Last Supper is the right one. But even if it's not, it was still a horrible display of human debasement, and is not something then that was inclusive, as the director claimed. It excluded immediately, actually, 2 billion adherents of the world's largest, you know, religion, and that certainly is not in the spirit of the games or of competition or of internet or the history of France, really.

MAST: John Stonestreet is the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, thank you for your time.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Friday, August 2nd.

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

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Batman

This year marks the 85th anniversary of the Caped Crusader’s first appearance in Detective Comics. He only showed up in six pages in that 64-page issue. No one at the time could have guessed that Batman would become one of the world’s most popular characters.

MAST: Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to talk about Batman’s development through the years and whether a new animated series lives up to his legacy.

MUSIC: [Theme from Batman: The Animated Series]

COLLIN GARBARINO: Issue 27 of Detective Comics arrived on newsstands in 1939 with a cover promising “amazing and unique adventures of THE BATMAN!” Young socialite Bruce Wayne hears about a murder while visiting his friend Commissioner Gordon. Soon Batman is on the case. Much of Batman’s signature style showed up in that first adventure. We first glimpse him in his costume looming over two criminals with the full moon glowing behind him. The pointy ears, the blue-black cowl and cape, the gray tights, and the yellow utility belt—they’re all there from the beginning.

What might not seem familiar to today’s fans is that this Batman is a remorseless killer.

Gotham City’s defender started as a cheap knockoff of the popular radio vigilante the Shadow. And his crime-fighting stories drew inspiration from the noir fiction of the 1930s. But it wasn’t long before Batman made the transition from loner vigilante to kid-friendly superhero. Batman’s creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger decided the world’s greatest detective needed a sidekick—sort of like Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Thus Robin was born. Dragging a kid around made Batman’s adventures less dark. But they also became less dark because of shifts in American culture.

In the 1950s, the character fell into irrelevance and his comics came close to cancellation. Batman and Robin gave up detective work and found themselves involved in fantastic adventures involving time travel and space exploration, tropes meant to appeal to a new generation of youngsters. Those changes didn’t help because youngsters weren’t reading comics. They were watching TV.

MUSIC: [Theme from 1966 Batman]

In 1966 Adam West donned a gray bodysuit and satin blue trunks to dance the Batusi on the Batman TV series, and overnight the Caped Crusader became a cultural phenomenon. The show was pure camp, but for the first time in the character’s three decades everyone in the country knew who he was. Batman’s true fans hated it.

Both comics readers and creators reacted savagely to the series, finding its lack of seriousness an affront. So DC Comics pushed the character in a darker direction. Over the next 30 years, the Batman of the comics went through multiple phases, but his multiple incarnations tended toward a brooding self-seriousness. None of these versions of Batman appealed to the general public.

It wasn’t until the Dark Knight made his transition from print to silver screen that Batman became one of the world’s most popular and profitable superheroes.

BATMAN: I want you to tell all your friends about me.

CRIMINAL: What are you?!

BATMAN: I’m Batman.

Fifty years after Detective Comics No. 27 debuted, Tim Burton’s Batman starring Michael Keaton arrived in theaters, breaking the record for opening weekend box-office receipts and becoming the fastest movie up to that time to reach $100 million.

The movie spawned a slew of sequels and reboots. After Burton’s version of the franchise fizzled, Christopher Nolan took Batman in a grittier, more brutal direction, gaining acclaim from both critics and fans. Later, Zach Snyder brought a different Batman into his Justice League story, and then recently Matt Reeves rebooted the character, focusing on his detective skills rather than superheroing.

MUSIC: [Theme from The Batman (2022)]

What accounts for Batman’s long standing popularity? Is it that he’s one of the few comic book heroes without superpowers? I think there’s a theological truth embedded in the relatability of Batman. The character is often depicted as the epitome of rationality, something that’s emphasized by the fact that his enemies are usually criminally insane. Many theologians claim it’s our rational faculties that mark humans as bearers of God’s image. But there’s a crack in Batman’ rationality that drives him to adopt a dark persona in his war against the forces of darkness. Batman, like every other human being, is a tragic figure. He’s fundamentally a broken man who can’t save himself or his city. The best he can do is keep total collapse at bay.

This week a new Batman that attempts to pay homage to the past debuted on Amazon’s Prime video.

Batman: The Caped Crusader will pique the interest of adults who grew up watching the animated series from the 1990s because showrunner Bruce Timm is responsible for both. The vibe will be immediately familiar to fans of the older show. We’re dropped into a brooding art deco Gotham city that looks to be set before the second World War. No cell phones and satellites here.

I was immediately impressed that Timm decided to take the character all the way back to its comic book roots. The costume resembles its earliest style with larger flared ears and no trace of yellow on the logo. We also get some tough guy 1930s-style action complete with mobsters and corrupt cops.

BATMAN: It’s Gotham, Pennyworth. Does the corruption really surprise you?

Midway through that first episode, I could sense that something was off. Despite Timm’s faithfulness to Batman’s original look, he updates the story for today’s audience. Freed from the confines of kids network television, he introduces some mild swearing into the series. I found his attempts to pander to left-wing sensibilities even more irritating. He gender swaps the Penguin who’s now a large cabaret singer.

AUDIO: [Penguin singing]

And he race swaps many of the characters. Halfway through the season we get a gay kiss. All the DEI boxes checked. The series also suffers because this version of Batman isn’t actually likable. I’m starting to understand why Warner Bros sold this show to Amazon rather than airing it on its own streaming service.

If you want to watch some Batman this weekend, I recommend skipping this new series and queuing up Batman: The Animated Series from 1992. In my estimation, out of the countless iterations of this relatable psychologically tortured character, it’s the best Batman.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, August 2nd, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next, this month’s Ask the Editor. WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler is back with some feedback to your feedback.

PAUL BUTLER: Borrowing inspiration from Charles Dickens let me start off by saying: opening your emails is the best of times…and the worst of times.

It’s usually mostly good…insightful questions and clarifications, loving challenges, interesting suggestions for follow-up stories, and encouraging notes. But occasionally listeners misunderstand what we’re trying to do through our stories, questioning our motives, accusing us of having hidden agendas, and sometimes they are just plain nasty.

But some of the most aggravating feedback is what we dryly refer to as: “actually mail.” For instance:

Actually, the name is pronounced like this…

Or, actually, it happened in 1894, not 1893...

Or, actually, Eisenhower wasn’t president when he said that…

Let me be clear, when we get our facts incorrect, we need to know about it. So please don’t stop telling us when we’re wrong. We realize that if we can’t get the little details right, it’s hard for you to trust us on the big details.

But let me also say that when you do write in about those details, don’t stop there. Take a moment and tell us how the story motivated you to dig deeper into the topic, or inspired you to take action, or gave you a chance to consider a story from another point of view.

Our favorite emails are from listeners who interact with our content.

Let me give you an example from this month’s mail bag. Listener Nathanael Batson lives in Fairfield, Maine, and he’s a recent graduate of the University of Maine Honors College. He writes that his whole family enjoys listening to the podcast and hearing the Word of God. Let me read you a few lines from his feedback to our July 4th segment on John Philip Sousa because I think it illustrates what I’m hoping more listeners will do. Here’s what he says:

As someone interested in music and politics, I enjoy listening to your segments. I wanted to make one note about your July 4th segment on “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Your explanations and quotes were certainly correct and accurate…

But then Nathanael goes on to give us one detail we left out which he thinks would have been interesting for our listeners. He quotes from music historian Paul Bierley who is the author of: “The Works of John Philip Sousa” published in 1984 by Integrity Press. The quote is about Sousa’s inspiration for his most famous piece. Here it is:

Someone asked [Sousa], “Who influenced you to compose ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’” and before the question was hardly asked, Sousa replied, “God–and I say this in all reverence! I was in Europe and I got a cablegram that my manager was dead. I was in Italy and I wished to get home as soon as possible. I rushed to Genoa, then to Paris and to England and sailed for America. On board the steamer as I walked miles up and down the deck, back and forth, a mental band was playing ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ Day after day as I walked it persisted in crashing into my very soul. I wrote it on Christmas Day, 1896.”

That led Nathaniel to this reflection:

So the march not only represents a symbol of American patriotism but also the need to come together during adversity. After hearing of his manager’s death, Sousa became deeply saddened, but writing the piece allowed him to express his love for God and remember his loyalty to America.

Nathaniel then ended his note with an explanation of how he approaches music history, hoping it would be helpful for our reporters. I thought he had some good insights for our writers, so I’ve taken his suggestions, and added some of my own thoughts and written updated guidelines for our reviewers. Guidelines I’ll be sharing with them in this month’s meeting. Here they are:

1. Start by understanding the composer: what is their style, their philosophy, their technique?

2. Then become familiar with the historical time the composer lived and wrote. Who are their contemporaries? What did other figures of their time say about them then? What were they responding to with their work?

3. Then think critically. Don’t just react to their work—whether you like it or dislike it—but evaluate it and analyze it. Is it good? Is it valuable? What can we learn from them that informs us today? What do the scriptures say that helps us think about their work?

So Nathanael, thanks for your thoughtful email, and I hope it not only makes our music history pieces better, but I hope it models what I hope more listeners will do when they write…

And for the rest of you, I await your emails with great expectations.

I’m Paul Butler.

CLOSING

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.