The World and Everything in It - August 9, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

This week is WORLD Radio’s 10th anniversary. We have some special reports to mark the occasion.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: We’ll hear from some familiar voices and get their reflections on their early work on the program.

And you’ll hear how the program got both its name, and its theme music.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, August 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR:

Senate votes to end debate on infrastructure bill, sets up final vote » Lawmakers in the Senate appear set to pass a massive $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill, possibly within the next 24 hours.

The Senate voted last night to cut off debate on the bill. 

SOUND: On this vote, the yeas are 68, the nays are 29. That was the final hurdle to clear before the full Senate votes on the bipartisan package.

It does look likely that bill will pass, but it’s not a sure thing. Some Republican Senators still oppose the bill, largely because it will add to an already spiraling deficit. Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn …

BLACKBURN: This is something too expensive to afford. Supporters argue that the bill will pay for itself over time because of long term benefits of the package.

A final vote is expected sometime early in the day tomorrow.

Wildfires rage in Greece, California » In Greece, pillars of smoke and ash turned the sky orange and blocked out the sun above the country’s second-largest island Sunday.

That as a wildfire devoured pristine forests and threatened villages. That triggered more evacuations as helicopters dropped water and fire retardant.

SOUND: HELICOPTER

The fire on Evia island began Aug. 3rd and cut across the popular summer destination from coast to coast, burning out of control. Flames have destroyed scores of homes and businesses and thousands of residents and tourists have fled.

Meantime, in California, the Dixie Fire has grown to become the biggest single blaze in the state’s history.

The fire last week destroyed the historic Gold Rush-era town of Greenville. It has now engulfed well over 700 square miles, an area larger than the size of New York City.

And as of Sunday,it was just 21 percent contained, as it’s fueled by strong winds and bone-dry vegetation. Cal Fire spokesman Ryan Bain …

BAIN: Fuels are 99 percent receptive in the afternoon. That means out of a 100 embers that are cast up into the air, 99 of a 100 of them will likely start a fire.

The weather is expected to begin cooperating a bit more today.

Officials are still investigating the cause of the Dixie Fire.

Taliban takes key northern Afghan cities » The Taliban continues to gain ground in Afghanistan as U.S. and allied troops complete their withdrawal.

Taliban fighters seized most of the capital of northern Afghanistan's Kunduz province on Sunday.

Kunduz city was the fourth provincial capital to largely or entirely fall to extremist group in less than a week. That as it ramps up a push across Afghanistan.

The Taliban took control of the governor's office and police headquarters after a day of firefights. It also captured the main prison building, freeing 500 inmates, including Taliban fighters.

Biden pays tribute to American Olympic athletes » President Biden paid tribute to U.S. Olympic athletes over the weekend as the Summer Games came to a close.

BIDEN: I know you have a sense of it, but I don’t think you’ll appreciate till you get home how proud you made America. You really represented America. You represented the soul of the country.

The United States won the most gold medals, 39—one more than China—and was way ahead in the overall medal standings with 113 compared to China’s 88.

The Russian Olympic Committee had 71 overall medals followed by Britain with 65.

Japan came in fifth. The host country enjoyed its best Olympic production in both gold medals with 27 and total medals with 58.

Hall of Fame college football coach Bobby Bowden dies at 91 » Bobby Bowden has died. The Hall of Fame coach built Florida State into a college football dynasty that powered its way to a dozen conference titles and two national championships.

BOWDEN: That was probably the most exciting game we’ve had with Florida in years. I don’t know how we came back and won it.

Bowden heard there in 2003 after a Seminoles victory over the rival Florida Gators.

He piled up 377 wins during his 40 years as a major college coach. He spent 34 of those years with Florida State.

Bowden died early Sunday after a bout with pancreatic cancer. He was 91 years old.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: WORLD Radio’s origin story.

Plus, searching Scripture to find the perfect program name.

This is The World and Everything in It.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Monday the 9th of August, 2021.

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

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

First up, humble beginnings.

Ten years ago this Wednesday, our first program aired on the Salem Radio Network. We’ve heard from some of you who listened to that broadcast on August 11th, 2011  and have listened to every program since!

But perhaps you joined us more recently and might not know how WORLD Radio got started.

So we asked our founding fathers, so to speak, to reach back into their memory archives and tell us the story.

NICK EICHER: I'm Nick Eicher. I'm the Chief Content Officer and one of the inventors of World Radio along with Joseph Slife.

Before I came to WORLD, radio broadcasting was something that I was highly interested in. And I have always been a big fan of National Public Radio. NPR, for all of its secular sort of faults, it's, uh, insufficient worldview, they were the best in the business in a lot of ways. They did seek to do serious journalism. And I thought, well, WORLD does that. What would World Magazine sound like if World Magazine were a radio program? It was just sort of a thought experiment.

JOSEPH SLIFE: My name is Joseph Slife. And I was the senior producer and co-host for World Radio from its inception in 2011, until spring of 2017.

For years, my longtime boss, Steve Moore, at Crown Financial Ministries, he and I would kind of discuss in the hallway, you know, it's a shame that there's no type of thing like that. A longer form radio, well-done, good sound production that's done from a Christian worldview standpoint. So one day, we hatched this idea that maybe we should go talk to the people at WORLD Magazine about this because WORLD had been in the print business for a good long while by that time and was doing a very fine job of print journalism.

EICHER: The funny thing is, we both sort of separately had ideas for radio programs. And when Joseph called me one time, he said, "You know, I'd like to, I'd like to pitch a program idea to you." I said, "Oh, man, come on, come on up. And let's talk about it." And we did.

SLIFE: And they said,"That's a wonderful idea. We would love to do that. You guys figure out a way to pay for it. And we're with you." Of course, this was the, this was the problem, because we couldn't figure out a way to pay for it.

Well, fast forward to 2011. And Nick called me and he said, "I feel like the dog has been chasing the truck for a long time. And he's finally caught the truck and doesn't know what to do with it." And I say, "Well, what are you talking about?" And he said, "Well, we have an opportunity—an invitation from the Salem Radio Network to do the type of program that we've been talking about."

EICHER: The way we approached it was, well, here's a chance to reach an audience with the kind of journalism that we do at WORLD. And if we can take that content, put it out in front of a new audience, maybe it will attract more magazine readers.

The board was, the board was appropriately skeptical, let me say that. Nobody really thought back then that podcasting was going to be a viable enterprise or a viable sort of platform for journalism of this sort. It was, here's an opportunity to go on a radio network to do a magazine style program for broadcast, for commercial broadcast.

MUSIC

EICHER: And Nick said, we have an opportunity to do a pilot program for Salem. They won't just sign off on the whole idea. They want to hear a pilot first because we're magazine publishers. We haven't done radio, and they want to make sure we can pull this off. And he said, "Will you help me?" And I said, "Yeah, I'll help you do the pilot. I'm not going to commit to anything else. But I'll help you do the pilot."

CLIP: PILOT PROGRAM

SLIFE: And so for Memorial Day weekend in 2011, we produced a Memorial Day themed pilot program that aired on the Salem radio network and with which they were very pleased. And actually, we were fairly pleased with it, too, for our first venture out.

CLIP: PILOT PROGRAM

And that led to a weekend radio program that they green lighted for August of 2011.

CLIP: FIRST PROGRAM

It was very, very difficult to get that first program out the door. But by the grace of God, somehow we did. And it wasn't bad. And then the next week, we did another one, and it got a little bit better. And the next week a little bit better, and the next week a little bit better.

CLIPS: VARIOUS PROGRAMS

And so we continued with that weekend program for quite some time. And the day came when Nick said, "Alright, we want to do a daily program now."

EICHER: It didn't take us long to figure out there wasn't much of an audience. So we thought, well, maybe maybe the audience is weekday. So maybe we better find a way to get there.

CLIP: FIRST WEEKDAY PROGRAM

SLIFE: Well, at first it was Nick and it was me. Now we did bring in some of the people from WORLD Magazine, the folks who had been writing who would come in and do some segments for us.

CLIPS: WORLD MAGAZINE WRITERS

And so that's how we began sort of cross pollinating with the magazine and bringing those people in. But what we realized is that, ultimately, we needed to build out a radio team.

EICHER: And, you know, we did we did have some freelancers that we went to and, you know, Joseph had a bunch of people that he knew from, you know, from his radio days. So that's where people like Kent Covington came from and Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz. These were all people that that Joseph had worked with. Jim Henry.

CLIPS: WORLD CREATORS

SLIFE: Nick and I prayed about this program. I can remember, he and I were at a National Religious Broadcasters convention, this is probably in early 2012. So we'd been doing the program, you know, maybe six months at that point. And it was very difficult. And we were just, weren't sure how we were going to continue to make this work. Because it was so hard. And there were just not enough people putting their hand to the plow, so to speak. You know, we didn't have enough workers, enough laborers to get done what we needed to get done. And he and I were in a stairwell at this hotel where the convention was taking place. And there was a little bench there. And he and I sat down on that bench and just prayed together, just begging the Lord to help us—to put us in contact with the right people so that we could carry on this project. And the Lord answered that prayer over time and in wonderful ways with the people He provided.

EICHER: So we, you know, we created a radio station friendly daily program. And we just took the content and put it up as a podcast. You know, there's no extra effort, really. The main effort was in producing the program. So we'll throw it out there and make it available as a podcast.

SLIFE: But podcasting wasn't quite the thing then that it is now. As a matter of fact, in 2011, if you had a podcast, the only way people could get this on their device, on their iPod, was to download the program to their computer, and then you had to take a wire and plug it into your device and you had to sync.

But then in the summer of 2012, so we'd been doing the weekend program for about a year at that point, Apple announced an innovation going forward. You would be able to download a podcast directly to your device. And this was the big game changer for a lot of people, but certainly for World Radio, because we knew at that point that access to the program was about to become much easier. People no longer had to download and sync. They could just get it directly to their device.

CLIP: WORLD PODCAST

EICHER: And so what we pretty quickly discovered was that the radio audience wasn't really for us. What we found was that people really loved it as a podcast, not necessarily as a broadcast

CLIP: WORLD PODCAST   

EICHER: At first, we had purposed to put the podcast behind a paywall, and create our own app as the only place that you could get it. And just sort of package it as here's a bundle of content. That is maybe more attractive than just the print magazine, you get all of this stuff. And what we, again, this is accidental. This is accidental, in one sense, providential and another. We couldn't quite make the app work the way we wanted to. And that's just being honest about it. So what we did in the mean time is we thought, well, let's just, you know, we're putting a lot of effort into producing this program. Let's just put it out where it's the easiest to get. That is, make it available on the Apple platform and just give it away. And when we did that, the audience exploded.

CLIPS: LISTENERS

It used to be that World Radio was there to promote the legacy product World Magazine. Now, it's its own thing.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, August 9th.

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

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: voices from the past.

Many of the voices you hear today have been on the program from the early days. But some of our old friends have moved on to other things. In honor of our anniversary celebration, we invited several of them to come back and share reflections of their time at WORLD Radio. Today, we’ll hear from four of them.

REICHARD: First up, our very first staffer who has some fond memories of one of her first field assignments, interviewing Senator James Lankford.

DARNELL: I’m Christina Darnell, and I was one of the first WORLD Radio team members. I was hired out of the WORLD Journalism Institute. I had just graduated with my Masters in journalism and I was excited to be doing one of my first field assignments in Washington, D.C. At that point, I had been working mostly from home. And the work was professional, but the clothes, are not so much. So, I was excited to be in D.C., I was dressed up. I was wearing a suit. I had these black boots with heels. And it didn’t take me long to realize that I had not thought that through all that well.

And Lankford was a busy man. He didn’t have time to sit in his office all day and record interviews, so we had to walk and talk. And I remember walking out onto the tiled walkway and the click and clack of my boots echoing through what felt like the entire building. And I panicked, knowing that sound was going to record louder than anything else. And so I had to bend my knees, almost like a squat, and angle the heels up and walk on my tip toes. And so here I am, trying to maintain some shred of dignity and professionalism, asking serious questions along the hallway of some of the most powerful politicians in the world, looking and feeling like a toddler stumbling around in her mother’s shoes.

And Lankford, thankfully, took it in stride, didn’t miss a beat in answering questions. But I also distinctly remember him trying not to laugh. And I learned that day that professional is good but practical is better. Also, that sound is one of those senses that we tend to underestimate and undervalue the impact that it has on our lives. I think people who are in the audio industry probably have a better grasp of that. But I think that it’s relevant for everyone.

COCHRANE: I’m Michael Cochrane, and I was one of the first members of the WORLD Radio team. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years. I remember attending the November, 2011, WORLD Journalism Institute in Asheville, North Carolina. Mary Reichard and I were both in the same class and both of us had a keen interest in WORLD’s new weekly radio program. Joseph Slife, the founding producer of The World and Everything in It was there in Asheville to talk about his and Nick Eicher’s dream of producing a daily radio program. Creating content for a daily news and features program was a huge task and Joseph was looking for recruits from our class. I eagerly signed on as WORLD’s first technology reporter. But with only a week’s worth of formal journalism training, and zero experience in radio production, I had my work cut out for me.

The first thing I learned is that sound is really important in radio. That may seem obvious, but a good radio feature shouldn’t consist solely of the sound of my own voice. It needs to be full of sound clips that paint an audio picture for the listener. A good produced piece will have, not only clips of people speaking, but even sound effects. For a piece I did in 2014 about the exploration of a 2700 year old Pheonician shipwreck, we found a background track of a scuba diver’s bubbles that really made it come to life. In my time with WORLD Radio, I’ve reported on more than 150 technology stories, ranging from flying cars to advances in medicine and even contemporary linguistic phenomena such as up-talk and vocal fry. And in all those years of reporting, I worked with and learned from some of the most amazing and talented colleagues. Mary, Nick, Joseph, Kent, Carl, and so many others. So, happy 10th anniversary WORLD Radio. I can’t wait to hear what’s in store for the next 10 years.

OLASKY: I’m Susan Olasky. For about a decade I was a reporter and story coach for the podcast. I remember the first time I did a feature story. It was 2012. Nick gave me a mic, a recorder, some operating instructions, and sent me on my way.

The story was about our international Hope Award winner in Ghana. I took that recorder everywhere. At night, I would upload the sound to Dropbox using the hotel’s very slow internet. I brought back great ambi: car on a bumpy highway, a woman talking about her Tupperware business, singing, sewing machines starting. But I messed up on recording voices. I didn’t get the microphone close enough to people’s mouths.

That’s one difference in writing for radio. Tech matters, and bad sound makes for bad radio. We were blessed to have talented technical people, who made lemonade out of my lemons. And gradually, I improved. After a while, I began editing feature stories for others and then began recruiting writers from our mid-career class to join the gang. The podcast is more polished now, but I remind myself not to despise the day of small beginnings.

SMITH: I'm Warren Smith and I was one of the first members of the WORLD Radio team. I vividly remember meetings—sometimes harried and frantic meetings—with Nick Eicher, Joseph Slife, Kevin Martin, Marvin Olasky, and other members on the WORLD team in the months before we launched. Many of us had previous radio experience, so we thought we knew what we were getting into, but we came face-to-face with the old saying, “You have your whole life to get ready for the first broadcast, but only 24 hours for the second one!”

We made a lot of decisions in those first months that we had to revisit. A lot of change, adaptation, and flexibility ensued. We had to learn new processes and technologies. We had to adopt a schedule and pace that was far different from that of the magazine and the website. But I’m also amazed that some of the decisions we made then have stood the test of time. A commitment to Permanent Things. Ideas, biblical ideas, that don’t change. A relentless commitment to a biblical worldview, and to serving you, the listener, with content that you simply can’t get anywhere else.

It’s been one of the great privileges of my professional life to have been a part of WORLD radio from the beginning and to continue to be a part of it—through the “Listening In” podcast—today, a decade later. Please pray that we will remain faithful to the biblical foundation on which WORLD Radio rests. And here’s to another 10 years of WORLD Radio, all for the glory of the great and good God we serve.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Monday, August 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

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

Have you ever wondered how the program got its name, or where the theme song came from?

One more time, here’s former senior producer and WORLD Radio co-founder Joseph Slife.

JOSEPH SLIFE:  The program got its name because I was reading the scriptures, which is a good thing to do. And Nick had invited me up to talk about this program idea, invited me up to Asheville. And I had just read Psalm 89. And in verse 11, it talks about the world and about the Lord, he has founded the world and everything in it. And I thought, you know, that's a really good name for this program that Nick is talking about doing.

The name, All Things Considered, which comes from G.K. Chesterton by the way, had already been taken up many years before byslack.com National Public Radio. And I was trying to come up with something that was kind of like that. And to find this scriptural phrase, the world and everything in it, which is also in Acts 17, by the way, so it's in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament. It's in Acts 17 where Peter is speaking on Mars Hill, and proclaiming the unknown God. And so I thought, you know, this, this gives us such great rails to run on, because this program can be about the world, and everything in it from the context of the God who founded it, to this God who is unknown to most of our culture. But everything in the world is something that he that he created, or is there because of his creative activity.

And we also wanted to stress the idea, and this is very important to me, that this program is not about how terrible things are. And we all know that things are terrible in many ways. And the news is often very sad. The news is often very concerning. But nonetheless, there is the God of the universe, who is working out his plans and purposes to a good end. And we can always be confident in that. And we can always be joyful, we can enjoy the things that are around us that are good and noble, and of good report. And so we wanted to make sure that the program not only gave the news of the day, which is often not good, but also had this overarching idea that God is in control. And we can live confidently and we can be happy warriors. And because this is his world, and everything in it.

AUDIO:  THIS IS MY FATHER'S WORLD

JOSEPH: The theme music for The World and Everything in It comes from a hymn that many people know. It's in many, many hymnals. It's called, This Is My Father's World. And the reason that we chose that music is the tune is actually called Terra Biata, good earth. And this connects to this whole idea that the world is God's world. And he is superintending this world. And he made this world good. So this is the good earth.

But the reason in particular that I chose that theme is because there's a lyric in I think is the third verse of This Is My Father's World that says, "and though the wrong seems oft so strong, he is the ruler yet." And this is the the idea that we wanted to convey with this program. That though we hear about all this stuff that is so wrong, God is still in control. He is still the ruler yet.

MUSIC: THIS IS MY FATHER'S WORLD

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Tomorrow: broadband alternatives. The White House wants to invest in wired internet infrastructure. But innovators may have better ideas.

And, more 10th anniversary reflections.

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. For ten years now! What a ride!

WORLD’s mission now and then is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says we who take sweet fellowship together, within God’s house we walk in the throng. (Psalm 55:14)

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.