The World and Everything in It: August 9, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Caring for the environment doesn’t have to mean lack of economic development. A project in Africa shows how.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also NATO may expand to include Sweden and Finland. We’ll talk about what it means.

Plus a preview of Legal Docket Podcast, season three!

And when you hear trains rollin’ round the bend, it does something to you! WORLD commentator Steve West reflects on that.

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

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden in Kentucky » President Biden was on the ground in Kentucky on Monday to witness the damage from historic flooding.

The president told survivors and first responders in the town of Lost Creek …

BIDEN: I promise you, we’re staying until everybody’s back to where they were.

Behind him as he spoke was a single-story house that the storm had dislodged and tilted sideways.

More than a week ago, torrential rains dropped nearly a foot of water in some places in the span of just 48 hours.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said mountain water roared downhill crashing into homes and businesses.

BESHEAR: Sweeping them clear off their foundations, crashing them into bridges. And for some, their home’s just gone. We may not even know where it is. Maybe not one scrap that we can locate.

Officials raised the death toll from the flooding on Monday to 38.

Ukraine grain » Ships carrying Ukrainian grain docked in Turkey on Monday after Russia allowed the ship to sail safely across the Black Sea. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Twelve ships have been authorized to transport grain across the sea. Ten will haul grain out of Ukraine, another two will ship it into the country.

Russia, Ukraine, and Turkey will be inspecting all the ships leaving and entering.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv are both accusing each other of shelling the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in southeastern Ukraine.

UN nuclear chief Rafael Grossi says is calling for a military-free zone around the plant.

And he wants an independent third party to take over operations of the facility to avoid a potential disaster.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Israel/Palestine » In Gaza, a fragile cease-fire appeared to be holding on Monday as Israeli and Palestinian officials argued before the UN Security Council.

Dozens of Palestinians died, including children, during three days of fighting.

Palestinian diplomat Riyad Mansour asked the council, “How many more years does Israel get to impose its inhumane blockade on 2 million people?”

MANSOUR: How many more children do we have to bury until someone says enough is enough.

But Israel points to evidence that a misfired Palestinian rocket was responsible for many of the deaths over the weekend. And Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan told the council …

ERDAN: The Palestinian Islamic Jihad deliberately fired 1,100 rockets at Israeli civilians, with roughly 200 landing inside the Gaza Strip, killing innocent Palestinians and among them young children.

The cease-fire allowed Gaza’s sole power plant to restart operations … as Israel began reopening crossings into the territory.

Muslims killed in New Mexico » Albuquerque police said Monday they are searching for a car believed to be used by a suspect in the shootings of 4 Muslim men over the last nine months.

Deputy Chief of Police Cecily Barker said…

BARKER: If you see a dark-colored, four-door sedan Volkswagen Passat or Jetta we encourage you to call the police with that information.

Three of the killings took place in the past week. The other occurred last November. Police say they have reason to believe that the killings are related.

McMichael life sentences » The father and son who chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery in a south Georgia neighborhood have each received a second life sentence.

A federal judge on Thursday announced the new sentences against Travis and Greg McMichael after convicting them on federal hate crime charges.

A third man, William “Roddie” Bryan, who recorded cellphone video of the shooting. He received another 35 year sentence.

Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said she wanted to hear from him in court.

JONES: So it really showed the court, it showed the family, it showed everybody who’s been saying justice for Ahmaud what kind of people really took my son away.

The state court sentenced both Travis and Greg McMichael to life without parole earlier this year.

Olivia Newton John » SONG: [You’re the One That I Want]

Grammy-winning superstar Olivia Newton-John has died. She topped the charts with songs like “Physical” and “You’re the One That I Want.”

And millions will remember her as Sandy in the blockbuster film version of “Grease.”

She died Monday at her southern California ranch. She was 73.

I’m Kent Covington.

Coming up: Caring for the environment doesn’t have to mean lack of economic development.

And what could Finland and Sweden add to NATO?

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 9th of August, 2022.

Thank you for listening to World Radio today! Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Every year, large tracks of forests are cut down through global deforestation. And while millions of acres of trees are planted—or replanted—scientists have discovered that mature trees often have a greater positive effect on the environment than new ones.

BROWN: That’s led to a new initiative that uses the roots of old trees to start new tree growth. The results are bringing hope to many arid regions of the world. WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis reports.

ALOK SHARMA, COP26 PRESIDENT: We turn now to the negotiations. Detailed discussions have continued across a whole range of issues.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: Last fall leaders from more than a hundred countries met in Scotland to attend the UN Climate Change Conference, or COP-26. The resolution that came out of the meetings was the Glasgow Climate Pact. One of its aims is to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by the year 2030.

ALOK SHARMA, COP26 PRESIDENT: Hearing no objections, it is so decided. [APPLAUSE]

The day after her country signed the pact, Indonesia’s Minister of Environment and Forestry Siti Narbaya Bakar said the requirements were inappropriate and unfair. She claimed ending deforestation is at odds with Indonesia’s economic development.

But World Vision Australia’s principal climate action advisor Tony Rinaudo says it doesn’t have to be either ‘save the forests’ or ‘develop economically.’

RINAUDO: There's more than enough. God's provided more than enough. And so I've become really a global campaigner, to work with God's creation.

Rinaudo and his wife Liz are both agronomists. They spent seventeen years in Niger developing a method that allows poor farmers and countries to get more yield from their land. The method encourages trees to grow instead of chopping them down. It’s called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration or FMNR and has been adopted in 26 countries so far.

RINAUDO: It actually does what it says. It's farmer managed, and it's regenerating naturally-occurring trees, and particularly in the case of living tree stumps. When you cut a tree down, for most species, it's not the end of the tree’s life, and they have this enormous capacity to re-sprout.

The sprouts of a stump already have a tree’s-worth of life buried underground. A newly planted sapling doesn’t have the same advantage. Rinaudo’s wife Liz explains.

LIZ: You've got these little shoots with maybe 10 metres of root down there and vast network of fibrous roots, you know, collecting water and nutrients. So when you regenerate trees from a living tree stump, you don't have to water them, they and they rarely, very rarely die.

Rinaudo had spent more than two years trying to plant trees in the Sahel region of Africa. The people called Rinaudo the “crazy white farmer.” One day on a trip to deliver saplings, Rinaudo prayed in desperation.

RINAUDO: Dear God, forgive us for destroying your gift of your creation. And as a consequence of that, people are suffering. They're hungry, they're poor. They're fearful for tomorrow. But you still love us. You sent Jesus to die for us. Show us what to do. Open our eyes. Help us.

He looked up and noticed bushes. The same bushes he’d been driving past for years.

RINAUDO: But on this particular day, I took the trouble to walk over and take a close look at this useless looking bush.

The leaves looked familiar.

RINAUDO: It's not a bush. It's not a weed. It's a tree. And brushed a bit of sand away. There's a stump there. Yes, that's the answer I was looking for. There are millions of these things strewn across this landscape. We don't have to plant these things. They're there.

God allowed Rinaudo to discover the forest underground and begin training farmers to manage the suckers.

RINAUDO: In developing country contexts where we don't have electricity and gas, wood is our cooking source and our lighting, we encourage farmers not to leave a single stem because you've got a need. And you're going to cut that single stem down as soon as that need’s apparent. But if we leave up to five, then in any one year, we can harvest one, allow the others to continue growing. Allow a new sucker to replace the one you cut—and you’ve got this rotation system so that you never leave the land bare.

It took time for the idea to take root. But this year US Geological surveyor Gray Tappan, who maps land-use and vegetation, verified farmers had restored over 200 million trees on 15 million acres of land. All without planting a single tree.

Farmers found that instead of suppressing crop growth, trees helped their crops. Their animals improved production. When drought came, their crops survived while their neighbors’ crops in treeless fields died.

RINAUDO: What scientists have discovered is the tree is bio-irrigating the crop. It draws water from deep in the soil profile. And at nighttime the shallow roots which are within reach of the crop roots, the shallow roots are leaking some of that moisture into the soil.

Liz Rinaudo works with Global Evergreening Alliance that works on restoration of degraded land around the world. Changing mindsets about what works isn’t easy.

LIZ: One of the really challenging things is convincing donors that it's worthwhile using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration because they very much want to have a cost per tree, you know, and planting trees seems somehow more sexy, you know, than, than regenerating trees.

The Rinaudos have seen whole regions transformed from being desert-like to being forested and green. But they’ve seen an even bigger transformation.

RINAUDO: The land is rehydrating. The life is coming back. Actually, the biggest change in one sense is invisible. It's the restoration of hope. And this is very, very powerful. And if you consider what it's like to be a parent, and you can't feed your children adequately, clothe them, educate them, it's very soul destroying. And then you bring in this simple thing literally at their feet. I don't have to depend on outside or government, God's given me everything that I need for life. And their whole attitude, their willingness to take sensible risks, to work harder, send their kids to school, everything changes. I have the privilege of seeing this transformation. And it’s powerful.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next on The WORLD and Everything in It, adding two new members to the world’s largest defense alliance.

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, founded in 1949, is built upon the “peace through strength” doctrine, deterring attacks with might. It's the world's most powerful military alliance, featuring 30 member nations, including the United States, Canada, France, and the UK.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Article 5 of its founding document states that an “armed attack against one or more of them shall be considered an attack against them all.”And that security, along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, is why Sweden and Finland now wish to trade generations of neutrality for membership in NATO.

The US Senate last week gave its stamp of approval for the Nordic nations to join, but there’s plenty of work left to do before it's official.

So what would their memberships mean to the United States and all other member nations?

REICHARD: Joining us now is Bradley Bowman. He is a former congressional affairs officer on the Army staff in the Pentagon. And has served as a top national security adviser to members of the U.S. Senate.

Good morning, Brad!

BOWMAN: Good morning.

REICHARD: Let’s start with the big question. Why do we care that Finland and Sweden are likely joining NATO? What does their membership do for the United States and its allies?

BOWMAN: I think what's at stake here is nothing less than war and peace in Europe, which obviously impacts core American economic and national security interests. And it will also have an outsized impact, of course, on whether American forces are engaged in a military conflict there. We know that we were pulled into two world wars there over a 30 year period in the last century—not all of that is in the rearview mirror as much as we might like it to be.

Other reasons why listeners might want to care is that, you know, this is not something that happens every day. NATO has 30 members, including the United States. Twelve were included when the alliance was founded in 1949. Greece and Turkey in 1952. Germany in 1955. Spain in 1982. The Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999, and seven Eastern European countries in 2004. And then four more in 2009 to 2020.

That sounds like a lot. But keep in mind, that's over 73 years, and so that this is something that we've seen before, but doesn't happen every day. And when members are added, or when we're considering whether a member should be added, what Americans are getting are some combination of assets and obligations.

And so by assets, I mean, from a military perspective, what size military they bring in, what capability, capacity, readiness? Do they have any particular areas of strength or niche capabilities?

We're also bringing on an obligation under Article Five of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty. And we're saying that if that country is attacked, that we'll consider that as an attack against our own country. So that's no small thing. And it's an obligation that we should not take on lightly.

And then lastly, a point that you hinted at as well as that, you know, Finland and Sweden have long standing positions of essential neutrality. But you know, this formal departure from these generational—and one case centuries long—policy of neutrality is significant, and I think can only be viewed as a natural response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

REICHARD: Neither one of these countries are very big, so talk a little bit about what military capabilities they bring to the table.

BOWMAN: My honest opinion after detailed objective analysis is that we're getting more than we're giving by adding Finland and Sweden to the Alliance. And I say that because when you look at their militaries, they're not huge, but they're pretty darn impressive. And just some quick examples, you know, I won't get too wonky here. But if you look at the number of aircraft, the two countries will collectively contribute over 150 fighter aircraft—including 96 Gripens and 62 F-18 Hornets.

And by the way, they're procuring the next generation F-35. You know, Finland's set to acquire 64 of those. I can go through their navies and their ground forces and point to similarly impressive capabilities. And so these are not people coming with hat in hand. These are nations with significant militaries with particular niche capabilities that in my view, on balance, will increase deterrence of additional provocation aggression from Vladimir Putin.

REICHARD: We mentioned that the US Senate ratified Finland and Sweden’s membership, but this process is, again, a long way from being over. Where does the process go from here and what has to happen before their membership is official?

BOWMAN: The United States has now essentially ratified their accession protocols, but it's not over yet. So we've got the following countries that are still to ratify. Let me list them quickly: it's Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, and Turkey. I would just highlight on that list two countries: Hungary and Turkey. You know, Hungary is led by [Victor] Orban and has had, I'd say, an unfortunate disposition toward Vladimir Putin. And Turkey, of course, has tried to elicit a number of concessions as a price of getting their thumbs up for the accession of Finland and Sweden to the alliance.

REICHARD: Might Turkey still throw a wrench into things?

BOWMAN: You know, I'm not an expert on Turkish domestic politics. I would say that many times in the past, Erdogan who leads Turkey has been someone that's highly problematic—who has not been acting like a NATO ally.

Some of your listeners may remember, Turkey acquired the S400 Air Defense System from Russia. So a NATO member—acquiring an air defense system from the leading threat for the Alliance—that's an ally, not acting like an ally. But yet, Turkey has provided TB2 drones that have been very helpful for Ukraine—and have been used to great effect to take out Russian vehicles on the battlefield.

So Turkey is trying to play some sort of awkward balancing act. They have a highly problematic record of hostage diplomacy. You'll remember the pastor that was held hostage there for a long time. And they also have deep concerns about, about what they call Kurdish terrorist groups. And so they're trying to get concessions on that. If I had to guess I would say in the end, they will support adding the two countries to the alliance after getting all the possible concessions they can that they can get.

REICHARD: There’s a good chance that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine never would have happened if Ukraine had been a NATO member. Why wasn’t Ukraine a member?

BOWMAN:  I think for what it's worth your premise is correct. I mean, and this goes to a little bit to what is another reason why I think it's wise to add Finland and Sweden—some people say, oh, you know, this is provocative. You're provocative to Vladimir Putin. I think that's exactly wrong. I think Putin knows that NATO is not an offensive threat to Moscow. The reason he resents NATO enlargement is because he knows that once a country becomes a member of the alliance, he can no longer bully, coerce, invade and occupy them.

Okay, well, what's your evidence for that? Well, I got 73 years of evidence of Moscow never invading a member of NATO. But in 2008, he invaded and occupied part of Georgia. In 2014 he invaded and illegally annexed Crimea. He started a war on Ukraine's Donbass since then, since 2014. And then of course, on February 24, he initiated the largest land invasions since World War Two against Ukraine.

So note to self: Vladimir Putin invades, occupies and bullies non-NATO members. And Moscow for 73 years has not dared mess with members of NATO. So that's why I think adding Finland and Sweden makes sense. Increases deterrence, and creates all sorts of dilemmas for Russian military planners and Vladimir Putin, if they're contemplating additional aggression.

Ideally, someday we'd get to the point where Russian leaders recognize that the best path to security and peace for Russia is to recognize the sovereignty of its neighbors and their borders. Until that time, I think we're going to have to continue to beef up our security in Europe.

REICHARD: Bradley Bowman is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bradley, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

BOWMAN: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: The first round of photos of outer space from the Webb telescope captured the imaginations of people around the world.

SOUND: Everything we planned through cycle one was bold, but it wasn’t bold enough. So I’m really excited for what people now plan to do for the second cycle--seeing just how capable the facility is.

BROWN: Well, that bold photo came last week from a French scientist claiming it was a new image of Proxima Centauri. That’s the closest star to the Sun.

Etienne Klein tweeted the photo saying the detail in the new photo shows “a new world is revealed day after day.”

Well, not so much. Get this, Mary. That picture? It was actually just a slice of spicy Spanish sausage. But 100-thousand people liked the tweet before Klein ‘fessed up.

Some people took it well. Others did not!

Klein responded that we should all learn to be wary of arguments from authority as much as of the “eloquence of certain images.”

REICHARD: Right!? Free association here, but this makes me think of Wallace and Gromit.

WALLACE: I don’t know lad. It’s like no cheese I’ve ever tasted.

REICHARD: If the moon can be made of cheese, maybe Proxima Centauri is made of Chorizo.

It’s the World and Everything in It.

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

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

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a sneak peak into season three of Legal Docket Podcast! Mary, how’s it going?

REICHARD: It’s going full steam ahead. Let’s pull in Jenny Rough who is my capable co-writer and co-host. Hi, Jenny!

JENNY ROUGH, GUEST: Hi, ladies!

BROWN: Well, you two hit a home run right out of the gate during the very first season in the summer of 2020. You went to #1 on iTunes in your category of podcasts.

ROUGH: We did, with our faithful listeners making that happen in a big way. And that’s fueled seasons two and three!

BROWN: Let’s take a moment and set up a clip from this season’s first episode that we posted this morning on the Legal Docket Podcast feed. A man on death row is fighting for religious rights in the execution chamber!

REICHARD: This one shattered me, let me tell you. John Henry Ramirez is on death row for the murder of Pablo Castro in Corpus Christi in 2004. He’s not fighting his conviction. He acknowledges his guilt. But Ramirez wants his pastor to be physically present with him at the moment of death, praying out loud and laying hands upon him.

Here’s some of what he told me when I visited death row earlier this year:

RAMIREZ CLIP: You know, it always comes back to that, oh, you had a terrible childhood. And I always like to curtail that. Eh, then, because it comes across, like the pity party thing, you know what I mean, it comes across so insincere, and so, like, an excuse, you know, and it's like, there's loads of people that grow up like I did, or worse, and they don't end up being murderers, they don’t end up on death row. Yeah, I had a bad childhood but I still made my choices.

REICHARD: You’ll hear a lot more from Ramirez in our first episode.

BROWN: Mary, what was it like coming face to face with someone you know murdered another person?

REICHARD: I saw a man who’d done a terrible thing, and I also saw a man who lives a life of meaning behind bars. He brings Christian ministry to other death row inmates and has for years. My heart ached for his victim and his victim’s family and I brought that out in the episode. I’ll just say it was hard.

ROUGH: I do want to point out, though, not all the episodes this season are quite that dramatic. Like a case about arbitration agreements. In arbitration, you agree to handle legal conflicts through private dispute resolution. In other words, you’re signing away your ability to sue in court. We’ll hear from arbitrator Tom Stipanowich we have all signed those agreements, whether we know it or not.

TOM STIPANOWICH: The real controversy with arbitration relates to contracts of adhesion, which means a company issues a contract and this is a contract you have to use if you want to do business with them. It's take it or leave it. And often people are not aware of the fine print, and certainly not when it comes to arbitration.

ROUGH: Arbitration dates back to ancient times.

STIPANOWICH: Let me just say, arbitration goes way back. There are examples of arbitration in the Bible. The fact is, we often refer to compromise decisions by arbitrators as, forgive me, splitting the baby.

ROUGH: Mary and Myrna, have you ever served on a jury?

BROWN: Been summoned but never served.

REICHARD: I did, when I was 21 years old. Now I’ll get called to serve on a jury, but get thrown off as soon as one or other of the lawyers learn I have a law degree. But that’s another topic we’ll cover this season: the importance of impartial jurors.

ROUGH: Well, if you’ve ever on a federal jury, the court probably showed you a video that went something like this.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOHN ROBERTS: Hello, I’m John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States. I welcome you to jury service in the federal courts and thank you for taking the time to serve your country and your community in this way. The right to a jury trial is guaranteed by the sixth and seventh amendments to the U.S. Constitution. But that right would mean very little if people like you didn’t take time from their busy lives to serve on juries. I know jury service can be difficult.

BROWN: Compelling topics. Well, you two are working on a total of 10 episodes. One is an interview with a famous courtroom artist. Tell us about that.

ROUGH: Well, Mary and I got to travel to Virginia where that artist, Bill Hennessy, lives.

REICHARD: You know when you’re in the presence of someone with unusual talent, and this man has decades of experience sketching courtroom scenes. Sometimes he only has a few seconds to get it down on paper, and he has high ethical standards for what he does draw. Here’s how he puts it:

BILL HENNESSY: Accuracy is one thing I’ve, it’s certainly been drilled into me over the years. There’s an ethical responsibility as an artist that’s just like a journalist. You gotta get it right and don’t embellish. Don’t get it wrong. And if you didn't’ see it, don’t draw it.

BROWN: Well, I can’t wait to hear this! Season three of Legal Docket Podcast is underway! Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. The first episode lands today!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, August 9th. Good morning to you! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Most of us feel something when we hear a train go by. What is it? Here’s WORLD commentator Steve West.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: From my home it is nearly four miles to the nearest train tracks. Yet late on a clear night, when the wind blows from the southwest, I sometimes hear a plaintive whistle - even the faint clickety-clack of wheels on the tracks.

AMBI: [TRAIN]

“It takes a train to cry,” sang Bob Dylan. Train whistles provoke longings. Trains bring compelling visions of mountain gorges and lonely prairies and desolate, moonlit deserts that stir the wanderlust.

In a poem entitled, “Travel,” Edna St. Vincent Millay testified to her love for trains:

"The railroad track is miles away,


And the day is loud with voices speaking,


Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day,


But I hear its whistle shrieking."

Friends are wonderful, she concludes,“Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, no matter where it’s going.” Reading that, I nod my assent back across time.

Once our family took an overnight train from Jasper, Alberta through the fir trees and mountains of British Columbia. We were lulled to sleep by the hypnotic sway of our sleeper car and the rare and lonely station light. Another time we traveled across the high plains, from Montana to Minnesota. When would I next be in tiny Minot, North Dakota? Likely never, I thought, smiling–unless I came by train.

Once, I stood a mere ten feet away from another freight passing through Fargo, North Dakota, enjoying the snapshots of Main Street between the passing cars. Crossing bells clanged and lights flashed as the endless linkage of cars trailed off into the horizon.

When I was a child in Greensboro, North Carolina, I watched the Southern Railway trains pass en route to Atlanta. I wanted to jump aboard too–to see what could be seen, to get loose of my little world, unable to articulate my sadness when the caboose faded from view.

“Trains tap into some deep American collective memory,” wrote historian Dana Frank. “Trains seem timeless throwbacks to an earlier age, reminders that we are always moving.”

But Christians know we aren't just moving. We have a destination. “It takes a train to cry,” sang Bob Dylan, in 1965. But decades later, Dylan returned to the imagery of a train with Slow Train Coming. This time he focused on an apocalyptic vision of God’s reckoning. “There’s a slow, slow train comin’ up around the bend,” he warns.

Next time you hear a train, consider where you are and where you’ve been, as well as where you hope to be. The whistle you hear is longing. The power rushing past is reckoning. Yet as the last car rounds the bend it’s hope that with grace you too will soon reach your hobo home, where longing meets laughter, where all our wandering leads.

I’m Steve West.

CASSIDY: [:22] People get ready, there’s a train a comin’. Don’t need no baggage, you just get on board. All you need is faith to hear diesels a hummin’. Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Washington Wednesday and WORLD Tour.

And, we’ll meet an outspoken Christian who’s day job is front and center on the grid-iron for the Cincinnati Bengals.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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 says the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity....” (Job 2:3)

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.