The World and Everything in It: August 22, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: designer embryos and screening out suffering.

SIDDIQUI: It could be possible for us to use data at the earliest stage so that a baby has the maximum chance of being healthy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by to evaluate the promise and the peril of making perfection the measure of life.

Also today, two fantasy blockbusters from Asia shake up the global box office.

And later:

SHIRLEY DOBSON: This is Shirley Dobson. My precious husband Jim is now with Jesus.

Remembering Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

BROWN: It’s Friday, August 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel offensive » Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will immediately renew ceasefire negotiations with Hamas.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

He says the objectives are to secure the release of all Israeli hostages still held in Gaza and to end the war with the terror group on Israel's terms.

But the prime minister also said he has approved plans to expand a military campaign to capture Gaza City and defeat Hamas.

SOUND: [Demonstrators in Israel]

Thousands took to the streets in Israel calling for a ceasefire and the release of all Israeli hostages. Lawerence Sargent was one of those demonstrators.

SARGENT: I think the world doesn't understand that Hamas has the key, has the key of the end of the war. If you want to end the war, the simple thing is to free the hostages and public. Israeli public won't let Netanyahu continue to make war. I'm sure about that.

Negotiators from Egypt and Qatar are now working to broker a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza.

U.S.-EU trade deal outline » American and European Union officials have released new details about a major trade deal that President Trump and European leaders announced last month.

Senior trade advisor the president, Peter Navarro, told reporters

NAVARRO:  We get Europe reducing all their tariff bear, uh, tariffs to zero. We continue our global tariff to fight the trade deficit at 15%.

That’s a 15% tariff on most imports from Europe.

The US says it will cut its 27.5% tariff on European autos and auto parts to 15% if the EU takes steps to lower tariffs on American imports.

EU also agrees to spend $750 billion on US energy and another $600 billion in other US investments.

House Biden probe » Members of the House Oversight Committee grilled another former Biden White House official Thursday.

They questioned Ian Sams amid an investigation surrounding former President Joe Biden’s mental fitness while in office.

Sams served as spokesman for the Biden White House Counsel’s Office. And committee Republican Chairman James Comer described Sams’ testimony as among the most revealing yet.

COMER:  This was a huge interview today, and I think it contradicts, uh, everything that, uh, the, the former Biden people are saying with respect to the president's mental fitness.

Comer stated that Sams, despite his key position, had only met President Biden in person twice.

Republicans on the committee say the investigation aims to find out if any former White House officials covered up Biden’s mental decline and if anyone other than the president was making presidential decisions.

Appeals court reverses Trump civil penalities » An appeals court in New York has ruled that the penalty in a civil fraud case against President Donald Trump was unconstitutional. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports.

BENJAMIN EICHER: A five judge panel ruled on Thursday that the penalty imposed on Trump of nearly half a billion dollars was over the top.

And the panel found that it violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

The panel narrowly upheld a finding that Trump engaged in fraud by exaggerating his wealth for decades.

As such, the president and his two sons will still be barred from serving in corporate leadership in New York for a few years.

Nevertheless, Trump praised the ruling as courageous and remains adamant that he did nothing wrong.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Pew report on illegal immigration » Illegal immigration in the US hit a record high in 2023 of more than 14 million.

That’s according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

It reported that the number of people in the country illegally was up sharply from just under 12 million in 2022.

And Pew said the increase was driven by some 6 million who were in the country with some form of legal protection under President Joe Biden.

Texas House passes camp safety legislation in wake of flood » The Texas House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at increasing safety measures at summer camps following last month's deadly flooding in Central Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott:

ABBOTT:  There's an, an attempt, uh, to meet both goals. One is to, to meet the, the needs, uh, and the expectations, uh, of the families who lost a child while at the very same time, uh, not putting these camps outta business.

The bill would require camps to develop detailed emergency response plans.

It also bars state licensing for camps that place cabins in designated floodplains.

Additionally, the measure directs millions toward warning systems and emergency training.

The state senate will now take up the bill.

At least 137 people were killed during the July 4th flooding, including 27 children and counselors at an all-girls summer camp.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: our weekly conversation with John Stonestreet on Culture Friday. Plus, remembering Dr. James Dobson.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 22nd of August.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday and John Stonestreet joins us. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well John, I want to start with a story. I read a really pointed, powerful opinion piece that sent me looking to find out more about this tech entrepreneur it was criticizing.

The young lady’s name is Noor Siddiqui. She’s founder of a biotech startup called Orchid.

She’s got a personal story that explains why she started her company, let’s listen:

SIDDIQUI: My mom has this condition called retinitis pigmentosa. So what that means is that she started progressively going blind in her 30s. Just because of a typo, a random letter change that she, you know, when she was being formed, she ended up having just totally changed the trajectory of her life. And it wasn't her parents’ faults, but just spontaneously, randomly, like, just sheer horrible luck happened to her. And I think that just struck me as like, this is a huge unfairness.

In school at Stanford, Siddiqui realized that genetic science and big data were colliding—and that in the future parents might one day be able to avoid what she terms “random suffering.” In other words, avoid the blindness that afflicts her mother.

SIDDIQUI: Now, it could be possible for us to use data at the earliest possible stage, before you're even pregnant, so that you can identify an embryo that is free of these pathogenic or disease causing mutations so that a baby has the maximum chance of being healthy.

EICHER: And she’s not shy about where she thinks all this is headed.

SIDDIQUI: Yeah, I think maybe one of my spicier opinions is that I think that embryo screening is actually going to be the default way everyone has kids. I think that sex is going to be for, you know, connection and for fun with your partner, and for something really important, like having kids, everyone is going to choose to do embryo screening.

So there you go. That’s the vision.

In the opinion column I mentioned, writer Seth Troutt lays out a clearly plausible scenario. So imagine a couple using IVF and the services of Orchid. All the genetics are mapped for all the embryos. The predictions made. Quoting now from the column:

“This one has a chance of developing bipolar? This one has Downs Syndrome? This one will need hearing aids? This one will need insulin injections? Pass. Discard.”

He goes on: Here’s the irony in this: Noor would not exist if the technology and plausibility structures she’s promoting existed before her mother was conceived. Her mother would have been [one of the discards].”

So now that you have the vision and the critique—that this is eugenics in high-tech packaging—what do you think should be done … how do you think this through?

STONESTREET: Well, you have to think it through historically, because, honestly, this is a necessary consequence of a whole lot of, to use the phrase here, plausibility structures that have been in place for a long time. So you have this, what G. K. Chesterton might have called a triangle of truism—sex, marriage, and babies—and we’re separating these things, and the final stage of that is the one that we’re in right now. We separated sex from babies and sex from marriage, and marriage from babies and babies from marriage. And now we’re separating baby making from sex.

In fact, that’s what the founder of this company so clearly has said. In fact, she said it even more succinctly than she did in the clip we played earlier, where she says, “Sex is for pleasure. IVF is for babies.”

Now, one of the things I want to point out is that the discarding of babies based on certain conditions—this company is not offering anything new. They’re just offering the same thing in a far more holistic and efficient, and they’re promising a higher rate of success. Do we all remember just a few years ago when the nation of Iceland announced that it had eradicated Down syndrome? It had not eradicated Down syndrome; it eradicated all the children with Down syndrome in utero. In IVF, this kind of screening already happens. In her podcast with Ross Douthat she just clarifies she’s just doing it better because of the technology of being able to screen the entire genome and to use AI in order to do these calculations in a much more fast and efficient sort of way. This is what she is promising.

But make no mistake, we’ve already embraced this technology. Millions of Christians have already embraced IVF as it’s currently practiced. All she’s doing is two additional things. Number one, she’s offering a more efficient way to do this screening with more categories screened. And number two, she’s suggesting that it should apply to everyone, not just those who are trying to do a workaround to infertility in order to achieve a child. That all children should be made this way.

This is the natural and logical consequence of what has already been put in place. When it comes to artificial reproductive technologies, there is nothing different here except better technology. That’s what everyone needs to understand. It’s already been made commercial. It’s already treated an embryo as if it’s a commodity. It’s already treated an embryo as if it is disposable. It’s already separated the sacred act of sexuality from the child, and that’s a part of it no ethicist that I know has even really weighed in on. But Ross Douthat did ask this question in his interview: what will be lost if children now come into the world not out of an act of love, but out of an act of manufacturing?

He didn’t quite say it that way, but that’s the question. What will be lost for the kids? What will be lost in terms of the sacredness of the sexual act? But this is just the train going down further, the same tracks that have already been laid.

EICHER: Do you recall, John, what the answer was? What did she say to that question? That’s a great question.

STONESTREET: Oh, I mean, it’s the same stumble. It’s basically, “Don’t impose your religious values on me,” which was essentially, no one has to do this—even though she argues everyone should do this, because why would you subject your kid to unnatural suffering? And it is fascinating that, by her own reasoning, her own mother, which motivated this whole process, would have been, quote, unquote, discarded.

But don’t miss this part of the story. The same week that Douthat interviewed the Orchid founder—and that’s what sent my spidey sense tingling—there was an article that was published talking about the doctor in China who had created embryos and used CRISPR, the gene-editing technology. Do you remember this story from a couple years ago? He was put in prison. I think it was a show just from China, but it didn’t actually stop things. Well, this guy now is out of prison, now lives in Austin, Texas. He married a woman, and they got divorced. She’s just as interested in it as he is, and now they have started competing companies to mainstream CRISPR technology in terms of gene editing.

So let’s do the math, kids. You have the ability to screen embryos, add in the technology of being able to genetically edit these same embryos, and now children are absolutely being made in a lab and not out of the act of love.

BROWN: In Britain, a 65-year-old woman named Amanda Bloom — a crafting influencer with a big following online — recently traveled to Switzerland to end her life at a clinic called Pegasos. She wasn’t sick. She said she couldn’t live with the grief of losing her only daughter to cancer several years ago. In a farewell video she posted to Instagram from inside the clinic, she said, “By the time you see this, I’ll be with my Jenny.”

She’s not the only one. Pegasos has also ended the lives of other people who were grieving but otherwise healthy, sometimes without even telling their families until after the fact.

We don’t grieve as the world does. John, this is an example of why we as believers don’t grieve as those without hope.

STONESTREET: It is—I just want to remind everyone of a quote that should haunt our days, probably until at least for the rest of our lifetimes, from Stanley Hauerwas: that if Christians in 100 years are known as those who did not kill their elderly and did not kill their young, we will have done well.

This story is a story about grieving as without hope, and then what that looks like when it’s actually enabled by technology and it’s encouraged by state forces. And when that becomes possible, it becomes thinkable. And when it becomes thinkable, then it just takes little nudges here and there. And the story out of Switzerland is an incredible example, right? Because what does it mean, for example, to justify doctor-assisted death on a hopeless diagnosis? But suddenly, in the middle of the game, the language changes, and then it’s like, well, no, this is not a terminal condition, but it’s a hopeless condition. It’s a condition from which the person will never heal. Well, that includes almost all of us. I mean, all of us have some sort of thing that we’ll have to live with for the rest of our lives.

But then what’s that line between that and what allows someone to kill themselves? Well, it has to do with unbearable suffering. Some people can bear up under all kinds of suffering. I think of Joni Eareckson Tada, for example. Some people are hypochondriacs and can’t deal with anything. And then—but are we just talking about physical suffering? Are we talking about emotional suffering?

I mean, I watched this happen in Colorado, where the whole thing was sold on alleviation of physical suffering, and then I saw the stats from Oregon, which had had doctor-assisted suicide at the time for 20 years, and all the reasons they gave were emotional suffering, especially the “I don’t want to be a burden.” And that’s why I appreciate so much Gilbert Meilaender’s piece years ago, “I Want to Be a Burden,” because that’s the sort of thing you should be able to rely on your family about, and that’s the sort of love we should be able to give each other.

And here you have someone who’s struggling with a deep set of grief. There’s nothing physical at all, and then all of a sudden, it should be left up to the individual. Well, but what about an individual that can’t give consent? And what about consent for minors? Like, we haven’t even figured out whether minors can consent to sex or not, or mutilating surgery. Are we talking about minors being able, then, to consent to death? And then what if they can’t? Can someone consent on their behalf?

And I think that this story is only outpaced by the stories we’re seeing out of Canada, just because Medical Assistance in Dying only got legalized like yesterday, and now you see this right to die become the pressure to die and the duty to die. And then you have financial incentives being worked in where, you know, oh yes, the state health care will pay for these medications that’ll kill you, but they will not pay for these medications that will treat your pain.

These sorts of ethical problems are unavoidable if you do not keep straight the doctor’s profession. This is not the doctor’s profession, but it’s what the doctor’s profession is being made to be.

EICHER: Sobering. John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast, thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, August 22nd.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the biggest animated movies of the year, both of which take their inspiration from Asian folklore.

Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: The global box office is usually dominated by Hollywood, but you might be surprised to find out that this year’s most popular movie worldwide is one most Americans have never heard of. With global box office receipts of a staggering 2.2 billion dollars Ne Zha II has become the highest grossing animated film and the fifth highest grossing film of all time. Of course, more than 1.8 billion comes from its home country of China. This weekend, A24 Films is releasing a version dubbed in English for the American market.

TAIYI ZHENREN: Take a look for yourselves.

Ne Zha II is the sequel to 2019’s Ne Zha which also performed well in China. Both are animated adventures inspired by a 16th-century Chinese story entitled The Investiture of the Gods. Understanding the events of the earlier movie will keep viewers from feeling lost in this one.

NE ZHA: What’s this? Huh?

TAIYI ZHENREN: He says you’re on your own.

NE ZHA: Fine. You want something done right, you’d better do it yourself.

TAIYI ZHENREN: This could take a while.

In the first movie, the Lord of Heaven subdues the Chaos Pearl, splitting it into a demon orb and a spirit pearl. The demon orb is accidentally incarnated into the human baby Ne Zha, while the spirit pearl inhabits Ao Bing, the son of the dragon king. Both children lose their lives performing heroic deeds at the end of the 20-19 movie. In the sequel, Ne Zha gains a new body, and he must complete three trials set by the Court of Heaven to gain immortality and save his friend Ao Bing. But things get complicated because he must complete his tasks without letting the immortals see his demon nature.

NE ZHA: Death may come. But I’m not scared. What fate may come, I’ve never cared.

Ne Zha II might be a cultural phenomenon in China, but the film isn’t likely to become a favorite with American families. The film contains no sensuality or foul language, but it has bathroom humor and some truly horrifying scenes of destruction. Some of the action sequences will be too intense for small children. And even though the word “demon” has a more neutral connotation in Chinese folk religion, I think many parents will find the antics of a child with a demon soul off putting. It’s also worth considering that some of these characters are still worshiped in modern-day China.

SHEN ZHENGDAO: In your training, only through sacrifice can you become an immortal.

But for older moviegoers wanting an authentic cross-cultural experience, Ne Zha II might be worth their time. It’s interesting how the film simultaneously affirms and subverts traditional Chinese mythologies, and one could even read this story as a patriotic metaphor for the overthrow of the imperial Chinese government that led to today’s communist regime.

The other big movie steeped in Asian myth is Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters.

CELINE: The world will know you as pop stars, but you will be much more than that. You will be hunters.

KPop Demon Hunters came out earlier this summer and it’s on track to become Netflix’s most-watched movie ever. The film has been so popular that Netflix has decided to put it in theaters this weekend, something the streaming giant almost never does.

This movie follows the adventures of the Korean pop band Huntr/x. But the three girls who make up the band aren’t just singers. They also, you guessed it, hunt demons. Their positive songs weave a protective shield over the world, but if any demons slip through from the underworld, these pop stars destroy them with mystical weapons.

RUMI: Not our fans.

ZOEY: When you mess with our fans…

MIRA: We need to make it hurt.

Things appear to be going well for Huntr/x until a new boy band shows up to woo away their fans, a boy band that’s made up of demons in disguise.

KPop Demon Hunters is rated PG, but when the girls slice and dice their way through demonic hordes the visuals include some bubblegum inflected gore.

On the surface, this film has some commonalities with Ne Zha II, but KPop Demon Hunters is much more accessible for western audiences. The storyline isn’t strictly consistent with Christian theology. Humans can become demons in this film, and sometimes demons can be redeemed. But if one takes the idea of being a “demon” as a metaphor for being a “sinner,” the movie offers some interesting insights.

RUMI: Demons don’t feel anything.

JINU: Is that what you think? That’s all demons do. Feel. Feel our shame. Our misery.

The king of the underworld acts as an accuser, just like Satan of the Bible, keeping his minions in chains by reminding them of their own guilt. We also see a character freed through the act of confession. And we see love in the form of sacrifice coupled with the idea that we are strengthened by being part of a community. I was honestly surprised at how well the entire movie was executed.

Also, the music is pretty catchy. Songs from the soundtrack have been topping the charts for almost two months now. Be warned. If you start listening, you might find it hard to stop.

MUSIC: [Golden song]

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, August 22nd. Good Morning this is The WORLD And Everything In It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

We end the week remembering a familiar voice.

DOBSON: You’re listening to Family Talk. The radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. 

For decades God used that folksy style to help strengthen families around the world.

DOBSON: What amazes me about children is they know precisely where your action line is.

From books to radio programs, his teaching on the family was a blend of his Christian roots as well as his training as a child psychologist.

MOHLER: James Dobson is one of those names that will go down as indispensable and telling the story of evangelical Christianity in the United States.

EICHER: Albert Mohler served on the Focus on the Family board for a decade beginning in 2004.

MOHLER: I don't know anyone who had a greater gift for being able to speak to children. It was very honest. You could tell he was a professor of pediatrics at one point, and that was translated into the ability to talk to moms and dads and parents.

In 1977 Dobson founded Focus on the Family. The daily broadcast, as well as children’s programming like Adventures in Odyssey, and a flood of books and teaching tapes made him widely known.

BROWN: Here’s an excerpt from one of the teaching videos Dobson produced back in the 1970’s. This one, on how to raise the strong-willed child.

DOBSON: You do not need anger to control children that teacher who said I have to stay mad all the time to control my class. You see, he was using anger to control. It doesn't work.

Mohler pointed out that in the heyday of Dobson’s public life, everybody knew who a boy was and who a girl was. All 50 states defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. But cultural forces were tearing at family life and the abortion battle was raging and that drew Dobson into activism.

MOHLER:It was a revolt in the entire civilization that called forth a conservative Christian response, and a part of that was a response in politics and public policy. I think Dobson discovered he had a very powerful voice there. He leveraged that.

EICHER: Dobson got involved with the Family Research Council in the 1980s.

He tells the story of being invited to speak at a conference on the family, where his conservative views stood out

So much so, one of the conference leaders suggested his perspective was missing and needed in the nation's capital.

Here is Dobson recalling what happened next. Audio courtesy of the FRC.

DOBSON: And I went back. I had seven buddies. There were eight of us there last night. And I told them what he had said. And we all agreed we have to change that. The voice of Biblical truth as related to the family must be represented in this town. We got on our knees that night and prayed and we asked the Lord to bless what we were going to try and do because it was not going to be easy. And that was the beginning of the Family Research Council. That’s what was organized that day.

Dobson served as an adviser to five U-S Presidents, including Ronald Reagan. Heard here in a 1985 conversation with Dobson. The audio from the Reagan Library.

DOBSON: Would you express your views on the degree in which healthy individual families are related to a strong and healthy nation? Is there a connection between those things?

REAGAN: Yes, I don’t believe you can have one without the other. A strong healthy nation. Without that the family unit is the very base. I just finished saying to another group a little while ago, as the family goes, so goes the nation.

BROWN: Dobson publicly criticized Republican leaders for not standing firmly enough for pro-family policies. In 2009, Dobson resigned from Focus and ended his broadcasting career there, citing “significant philosophical differences.” Not long after, he began his own nationally syndicated show, Family Talk.

The New York Times once called him the nation’s most influential evangelical leader. So who is to follow him? Again, here’s Mohler:

MOHLER: I think it would honor God in a way that would honor Jim Dobson as well, to say that parents take up the responsibility to raise their children in the nurtured admonition of the Lord, that Christian pastors make very clear a biblical theology of the family, and that Christians continue to contend for the things that uphold the family.

EICHER: Dobson leaves behind two children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, and his wife of 64 years, Shirley.

SHIRLEY: My heart is aching. Jim will always be the love of my life. I want to thank you and millions around the world for opening your hearts to Jim over the decades.

James Dobson was 89 years old.

BROWN:Albert Mohler has a personal remembrance at WORLD Opinions, you’ll find a link in the transcript.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, it’s time to name the team who helped make things happen this week:

Colin Garbarino, Josh Schumacher, John Stonestreet, Cal Thomas, Mary Muncy, Hunter Baker, Elizabeth Schenk, Janie B. Cheaney, Will Fleeson, Lauren Canterberry, Maria Baer, David Bahnsen, Emma Eicher, Lindsay Mast and Mary Reichard.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Travis Kircher, Christina Grube, Steve Kloosterman, and Lynde Langdon.

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros: Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz …

Paul Butler is executive producer.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, and Les Sillars is our editor-in-chief. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

If you enjoyed the program this week, could you take a moment and share it with a friend? Send a link to a particular story, or from your podcast player share the link to the whole thing. Thanks!

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

The Bible records [someone saying to Jesus:]“‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.’” —Luke 12:13-15

Here we are at the end of another week, be sure to go to a Bible-believing church this weekend and give praise to the Lord. Encourage others, and let others encourage you.

And Lord willing, we’ll be right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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