The World and Everything in It — December 1, 2020

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Mask mandates are coming back in some places. But enforcing them falls to police, who have plenty of other things to worry about.

NICK EICHER, HOST: But vaccines could soon solve the mask problem. We’ll talk to WORLD’s medical correspondent about the latest developments.

Plus the Classic Book of the Month.

And commentator Les Sillars on why so many young Americans find communism appealing.

BROWN: It’s Tuesday, December 1st. 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 has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Moderna seeks vaccine approval from U.S., European regulations » Biotech firm Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine is ready. 

The company is asking U.S. and European regulators for the green light to start distributing it to the public. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said he expects the FDA will grant an emergency use authorization. 

AZAR: It’ll ship within 24 hours after FDA approval, and then it’s going to be up to our nursing homes, our hospitals, our pharmacies to get that dispensed. So it really could be within days of FDA approval, we’ll start seeing vaccines in people’s arms. 

An FDA panel will meet on Dec. 17th to review Moderna’s application one week after the committee reviews a Pfizer application for its vaccine. 

Moderna got the final needed results over the weekend to submit its application. 

Tens of thousands of volunteers participated in Moderna’s clinical trial.

Of those who received the real vaccine, rather than a dummy shot, only 11 people tested positive for COVID-19. And none of those 11 got severely ill. 

Moderna Chief Medical Officer Dr. Tal Zaks said Monday…

ZAKS: When I saw the final results last night—they came in a little earlier than we had planned for—I allowed myself to cry for the first time. 

Moderna said the shots’ effectiveness and a good safety record so far mean they meet requirements set by the FDA. European regulators have signaled that they’re open to faster “conditional” clearance for the vaccine. 

SCOTUS hears arguments in census case » The Supreme sounded skeptical Monday of President Trump’s plan to exclude people living in the country illegally from the population count.

The government uses that census data to determine how many representatives each state sends to Congress.

During oral arguments, Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall argued…

WALL: The president has at least some discretion to determine that at least some illegal aliens lack enduring ties to the states.

He said one possibility is that the president might try to exclude from the headcount immigrants now in detention centers or those who have been ordered to leave the country.

Justice Samuel Alito said he can see an argument for that. But…

ALITO: If they’re going for the bigger picture and trying to identify everybody who is in this country unlawfully, I don’t see how they can provide a partial answer to that. 

He said with only a month left in the year, trying to identify and exclude some 10 million immigrants would be “a monumental task.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett was among several justices wary of the president’s efforts to claim broad discretion over who to leave out of the count. She told White House counsel—quote—“a lot of the historical evidence and long-standing practice really cuts against your position.”

The court is fast tracking the case because time is running out. The Census Bureau is supposed to send the data to President Trump by Dec. 31st. 

Biden names leaders of communications team » President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received their first Presidential Daily Brief on Monday. 

The classified briefing summarizes the most important and sensitive U.S. intelligence.

Also this week, Biden announced the leaders of his White House communications team. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Biden will have an all-female senior communications team with Kate Bedingfield serving as director. 

Jen Psaki, a longtime Democratic spokeswoman, will be his press secretary.

Both are veterans of the Obama administration. Bedingfield served as communications director for Biden while he was vice president. And Psaki was a White House communications director and a spokesperson at the State Department.

Ashley Etienne, who once led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s comms team will assume that role for Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. 

Another Obama administration alum, Karine Jean Pierre, also will join the team. She’ll serve as Harris’s principal deputy press secretary. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin. 

Biden fractures foot » President-elect Biden will likely wear a walking boot for the next several weeks after breaking his right foot while playing with his dog. 

His office said Biden suffered the injury over the weekend and visited an orthopedist in Newark, Delaware, on Sunday afternoon.

Fractures are a concern generally as people age, but Biden’s appears to be a relatively mild one. At 78 he will become the nation’s oldest president when he’s inaugurated in January.

Iran accuses Israel of using “electronic devices” to kill nuclear scientist » A top Iranian security official is accusing Israel of using “electronic devices” to remotely kill a top nuclear scientist. 

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh founded the country’s military nuclear program in the 2000s. 

AUDIO: [SOUND OF FUNERAL] 

Iran held a military funeral for the late scientist on Monday. 

Officials in Tehran are now changing their story on how he died. Authorities initially said a truck exploded and then gunmen opened fire on the scientist. 

But now state TV claims investigators found electronic devices at the scene of the attack that bore the markings of the Israeli military industry. 

The new reports claimed the attackers controlled the weapons “by satellite.”

Israel has declined to comment, but Iran suspects the country of killing other nuclear scientists over the past decade.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: vaccine safety and ethical concerns.

Plus, Les Sillars on communism and college students.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 1st of December, 2020.

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. First up: vaccines.

Coronavirus cases are surging around the world. But help is on the way, and soon. Several vaccines are set to hit the market in the next few weeks. More will soon follow. They’re reportedly effective, but are they safe? And can Christians get them without violating their pro-life principles?

BROWN: Joining us now to help answer those questions is WORLD’s medical correspondent, Dr. Charles Horton. Welcome back to the program!

CHARLES HORTON, GUEST: Thanks for having me!

BROWN: Let’s start with these new vaccines. Trials have shown they are a lot more effective than epidemiologists thought they would be. And that’s partly because of the way they work. Can you explain what an RNA vaccine is and how it differs from other vaccines?

HORTON: Conventional vaccines are given in the form that’s meant to make the immune system respond. You can give patients inactivated forms of a virus, as with the injectable flu shot. You can give them what’s called an “attenuated,” or inactivated form of a virus, as with the FluMist nasal vaccine or the MMR—the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. You can give a different virus that doesn’t make people very ill, but that brings about antibodies to the real bug you’re trying to prevent. That’s what the smallpox vaccine did. Or you could give a “toxoid,” an inactivated form of something toxic—which is how the tetanus shot works.

Here, it’s something new. Instead of making the protein that the immune system is supposed to attack—again, usually with a live virus or an inactivated virus—the RNA vaccine has one’s own body cells produce the protein so that the immune system can see it and learn to attack it.

BROWN: Have vaccine makers used this RNA process before?

HORTON: In the lab, yes. It’s one of those tools that’s existed in some form for a long time, but it hadn’t come to market yet. A lot of this relates to how the timeframe for vaccine development had always worked up until now: things happen slowly and over a course of years. 

One of the advantages, though, of RNA vaccine technology is if this works, it will allow future vaccine development to happen much more quickly, and it would let us respond to future threats in a much more timely fashion. 

BROWN: We’ve gotten some questions about these vaccines from listeners who’ve read some worrisome things about them online. One claim is that they actually modify the recipient’s RNA. How can we know these RNA vaccines are safe?

HORTON: We should probably take a moment here to discuss the difference between DNA and RNA, which is what’s used in these vaccines. They sound very similar, and they do work together, but their roles are very different. DNA is the language in which God writes each person’s genetic code. Cells don’t make proteins directly from DNA, though. First they transcribe it to what’s called mRNA, for messenger RNA, and then they make proteins from the messenger RNA.

If you remember vinyl records—I know I’m dating myself here—DNA is like the aluminum master disc that they made with a lathe. Now, when you transcribe it to mRNA, it’s like making a vinyl record from that aluminum master disc. Using that information, then, to make proteins is like putting the record on a turntable and playing it. Here, we’re dealing with mRNA and leaving DNA out of it—so we can play the record, but you can’t make more copies of it. And that’s relevant here because it’s not changing your body’s genetic code, which is your DNA. It’s giving a new transcript. It’s sort of putting a different record in the player, if you will. And then when that RNA is gone, it’s gone. 

Now, safety-wise, it doesn’t have the track record of conventional vaccine designs. And as with any development in medicine, it is not impossible for problems to crop up in future. But, again, changes to patients’ genetic code are one problem we don’t need to worry about.

BROWN: What about ethical concerns? Some of these vaccines use cell lines taken from babies killed in abortion. Are there some that don’t?

HORTON: The short answer, thank God, is yes. One of the unique things about non-replicating mRNA vaccines is they actually don’t have to use cell lines at all, whether ethically sourced or not. And according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, both of the leading mRNA vaccines—the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer/BioNTech one—are indeed produced without cell lines. I do have to note here that the news is not as good for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine or the Johnson & Johnson ones, which do use those unethical cell lines.

Incidentally, Sanofi/GSK and Novavax are also OK—according to the list that Charlotte Lozier Institute publishes. They use a cell line called Sf9, which is derived from insects. As far as inactivated vaccines, listeners in the U.S. aren’t likely to see those. They’re from China. But apparently all three of those use a cell line from monkeys—so our listeners overseas can keep that in mind.

BROWN: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask about COVID tests. Are they getting more accurate? And what about at-home testing kits?

HORTON: We’ve had something sold as at-home testing kits for awhile, but they were really at-home sampling kits. People would use the kits to get a saliva sample or a nasal swab, which they would then send off to a laboratory. So it did avoid needing to drive to a lab or doctor’s office, but it was not a true in-home rapid test. It was a test where people would get the sample, put it in a package, and then days later—after it had reached the lab and been analyzed—they would get a result. 

What has come to market in the past few weeks is a true at-home test that doesn’t go to a lab. Users do a nasal swab, put the nasal swab into a vial of reagents, and then put the vial into a little battery-powered tester that’s included with the kit, and it looks for a color change in the reagent vial.

As for tests becoming more accurate, this is one of those “yes and no” questions. Labs have developed better technology, and last week the FDA approved an antibody test that’s supposed to be both very sensitive and very specific—over 98 percent for each. In plain English, that means you’re very unlikely to get a false negative or a false positive.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that if one gets a test, it could be any of a number of different tests. And labs are often using whatever tests they can get their hands on right now because there’s such a demand for testing. Often those are the older ones that have made their way through the distribution system. In my area the positivity rate has often in the 15-20 percent range, and that means we’re missing cases. We’re not testing enough people. The virus is spreading aggressively at this point.

So, I’m very thankful for the progress we’ve had on a vaccine. It looks almost miraculous to me how quickly we’ve gone from “It would be great to have a vaccine” to “God-willing it looks like approval and distribution are just around the corner.” I was reading recently about one vaccine manufacturer already chartering flights to ship doses out, and got an email from Rite Aid encouraging me to get my shot there when they get them. This is great news. But one note of caution: the vaccine only works when it’s given to people! So we need to keep our masks up, and our guard up, for now. But the cavalry really does appear, thank God, to be on the way.

BROWN: Charles Horton is a practicing physician in Pittsburgh and WORLD’s medical correspondent. Thanks so much for joining us today!

HORTON: My pleasure, Myrna.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: mask mandates.

NICK EICHER, HOST: When he enters the White House, Joe Biden may have a difficult time with at least one part of his coronavirus response plan as it’s built on the foundation of a nationwide mask mandate. 

But he can’t legally do that. He would have to rely on governors to implement that requirement. Some already have—with mixed results.

WORLD’s Kyle Ziemnick reports.

KYLE ZIEMNICK: Colorado Governor Jared Polis urged mask-wearing for months after the start of the pandemic. He finally instituted a statewide mask mandate in July.

POLIS: And that’s why today, I’m signing an executive order, that’s effective at midnight tonight, that requires every Coloradan age 10 and up wear a mask or face covering. 

Polis pointed to evidence that a mandate would actually make more people wear masks. But a week before making that announcement, he admitted the statewide mandate was more like a request.

POLIS: So the state has minimal capability of enforcing a mask order. For a mask ordinance to work, it has to have local buy-in, meaning the municipal police, and usually a mayor or city council, and in an unincorporated area, buy-in from the county sheriff.

One of those county sheriffs is not buying in. He says it’s not the police’s job to enforce a public health order. 

REAMS: So in this particular instance, when the governor issues one of the mandates, what he’s basically trying to do is convince the citizens that they should willfully obey the mandate. 

That’s Steve Reams. He’s the sheriff of Weld County in northern Colorado. It’s more conservative than many of its neighbors. But its COVID-19 case count climbed dramatically in November, doubling in the first two and a half weeks. 

And Reams estimates about 80 to 90 percent of county residents are wearing masks.

REAMS: They’re voluntarily complying with the order. They just don’t want to be threatened with being ticketed or arrested or anything like that. 

Reams argues his department isn’t supposed to enforce public health orders. He’s not alone in believing that. Sheriffs from North Dakota, Nebraska, Mississippi, and many other states say the same. Even if they believe it’s their duty to make people wear masks, Reams says it’s not a priority. 

REAMS: You know, we’ve got our hands full, just dealing with the criminal calls we deal with. I don’t see us putting a lot of prioritization into mask enforcement or restaurant closures or anything like that. 

Reams has faced a little criticism for his stance. Some Weld County residents told him they want deputies to tell their neighbors to wear masks or go inside. But Reams has also received significant support from his county—and around the country. 

REAMS: And then nationally, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback through social media, voicemails, emails here at work. People saying, “Hey, thanks for what you’re doing.” You’re giving my elected official an example to go by.

But even in places where residents object to a mask mandate, local business owners want one.

Graham County in Arizona has less than 40,000 residents. It broke for President Donald Trump by almost 45 percentage points. But last weekend, the county’s Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to its Board of Supervisors asking for a mask mandate.

MORRIS: You know, if we don’t get a hold on the virus here in Graham County, we could lose the open status of our businesses. 

Bri Morris is the chamber’s marketing director. She had a baby this spring, and she’s personally struggled with the impact of the virus on her life. 

MORRIS: So it’s just stressful, you know, to be unsure and exposing your kid every single day. My husband’s a professor, so he’s already exposed every day to his students.

Morris doesn’t actually believe any agency would enforce a mask mandate. 

MORRIS: I don’t think an enforcement thing or a fine or anything like that would go over too well here in Graham County. 

So then, what’s the point of having a mandate? Graham County’s businesses desperately want to avoid another lockdown. They believe a mask mandate would give them more authority to ask people to wear face coverings. 

MORRIS: It’ll at least give businesses some more strength to say, “Not only does our business require you to wear a mask, but there’s a countywide mask mandate. So we ask you to wear one when you’re in our business.” 

The positivity rate measures the number of people who get tested and have the virus. In Graham County, it’s over 30 percent. Arizona recommends a full county shutdown when that number crosses 10 percent. That could be devastating for businesses in Morris’ county.

MORRIS: Well, as the chamber, we obviously want all of our chamber members to be open and thriving and, you know, bringing in their income for their families. We’re a small community.

Americans like Morris are frustrated with the impact of people without masks. Others, like those in Sheriff Reams’ county, don’t want the government involved at all.

REAMS: It’s just a point of frustration. This has been going on for a long time and the citizens are frustrated with it. And so are we in law enforcement. And we just want to see an end.

If President-elect Biden continues to push for a national mandate, he’ll be wading into the midst of this tension. And no matter what he does, as with every political move, some Americans won’t like it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kyle Ziemnick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We remain months away from normal—with COVID policy keeping us apart—disconnecting us from important parts of culture like museums and musicians.

But a creative mind from France saw an opportunity to put those two things together: Camille Thomas plays classic works on cello in and on top of deserted museums around Paris. Then she posts the videos of the performances on the Internet.

AUDIO: [Sound of cello, French woman speaking]

Beauty is an essential food—she says—much more than just entertainment like Netflix.

That is no doubt true and so Thomas seeks to symbolize the loneliness of musicians without the public, and of museums without visitors. 

And in her way, Thomas is silencing the silence.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, December 1st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. 

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the Classic Book of the Month.

This time, reviewer Emily Whitten suggests an American novel almost everyone knows. But as she explains in this conversation with Mary Reichard, this classic is worth reading again, and again.

MARY REICHARD: Well, Emily, I’m both happy and sad to talk with you today. Happy we get to talk about another classic book together. But I’m sad it’s our last book chat—I hear you’ll be changing the format of your book recommendations for the new year.

EMILY WHITTEN, BOOK REVIEWER: Yes, that’s right, Mary. I’ll still recommend my Classic Book of the Month, but after today, my reviews won’t be in the form of an interview. They’ll be features, more like Megan’s movie reviews. The big advantage will be that I can spend more time interviewing authors and literary critics. Hopefully, that means I’ll be able to dig up better insights and go deeper on our topics. But I will miss our chats, Mary! 

REICHARD: I will too. But we’ll find a way to keep up with each other! Right? 

WHITTEN:  We will!

REICHARD: Well, let’s get going with this month’s recommendation. What book are we talking about today?

WHITTEN: How about a cozy, feel-good, slightly Christmas-y classic for the whole family? 

REICHARD: Tell me more. 

WHITTEN: Some may feel I’m punching a little low today when I recommend Little Women by Lousia May Alcott. But the book offers a lot more entertainment and wisdom than you may remember. And I’m not the only one who discovered that recently. Some of you may know Greta Gerwig produced a film version of the book that came out last Christmas. Here’s her speaking in a 92nd Street Y interview: 

GERWIG: I hadn’t read the book since I had been like 15, and then I read it again when I was 30, and I couldn’t believe it. I felt like it was so much stranger and more urgent and modern than I remembered. There was all this stuff that I had never heard the first time. And I instantly wanted to make it a movie. I had an idea for how I wanted to do it.

I disagree with some of the ways Gerwig interprets Alcott, but I did resonate with her surprise at just what a wonderful classic this is. 

REICHARD: Agreed! For those of us who haven’t read the book in a while, why don’t you remind us about some of the basics of character and plot?

WHITTEN: Sure. Little Women tells the story of the March family. That includes Father, serving as a chaplain in the Civil War. There’s Marmee, the wise and generous mother. And four daughters who are the “little women” of the title. Here’s how Alcott introduces them in the opening chapter. This is from the Penguin Classics audiobook version:

AUDIOBOOK: ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. ‘It’s so dreadful to be poor,’ sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. ‘I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things and other girls nothing at all,’ added little Amy with an injured sniff. ‘We’ve got Father and Mother and each other,’ said Beth contentedly from her corner. The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words….” 

Mary, these characters portray the highs and lows of real family life in such memorable ways. I think of the time Amy burns Jo’s manuscript to get back at her for a small slight. Or when Jo sells her hair to fund Marmee’s trip to see Father in the hospital. As loved as these characters are today, the funny thing, Mary, Alcott did NOT want to write about them. 

REICHARD: She didn’t? Really?

WHITTEN: Yeah. She grew up in Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-1800s. She revered serious, transcendentalist writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, both of whom she knew personally. Much of her young adulthood, she read books out of Emerson’s library. So, she wanted to write serious, literary works, not morality tales for children. But her editor, a man named Thomas Niles, asked her to write a book for young girls. And after much needling, she reluctantly gave it a try. Here’s Alcott biographer Susan Cheever speaking at Harvard Book Store in 2009.

SUSAN CHEEVER: And you know, within about three weeks, she had finished the first part of Little Women. She didn’t like it very much. Thomas Niles didn’t think it was too great either. Thomas Niles had a niece who got hold of the book and was up all night. But the minute, almost the minute Thomas Niles published the first part in November, the outpouring of letters and admiration was huge. And by Christmas, Louisa May Alcott was one of the wealthiest and best known authors in the world. 

One thing that helped Alcott write so quickly–she based much of the story on her own family. She wrote about people and places she knew. She also used a journalistic style she developed writing about her time as a Civil War nurse. Compared to contemporary works like the Elsie Dinmore novels, Alcott’s crisp visual details and active characters make the story feel much more lively and realistic. Christian critic G.K. Chesterton would later say that her style was 20 to 30 years ahead of its time.

REICHARD: Really a visionary sort of person! 

WHITTEN: Right, exactly. 

REICHARD: Final question, Emily. What should Christian readers know about this book?

WHITTEN: Christians may want to pay some attention to Alcott’s transcendentalist beliefs. She rightly values self-reliance and hard work, but she also suggests we can work our way into heaven. In contrast, Paul tells us we’re saved by grace through faith in Christ. 

One final point, Mary. Feminists like Greta Gerwig often claim Jo’s boyishness and her desire for independence reflect modern, feminist values. They aren’t totally wrong, but I do think they miss the bigger picture. Little Women displays the beauty of a vibrant, loving family. And that’s a divine institution. God created human families to point us to Him as our Father and the home He is preparing for those who love Him. It’s our story, too. 

REICHARD: That’s especially relevant today when so many of us are separated from our families.  So it’s a really good time to read about this family and remember that we will be together again someday. So thanks for this recommendation! 

WHITTEN: You’re welcome, Mary. Happy reading!

REICHARD: For December, Emily recommended Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. For more classic book ideas, just search for Classic Book of the Month at worldandeverything.org.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Tuesday, December 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Conservatives have noted with alarm the rising popularity of communism with young Americans.

WORLD commentator and journalism professor Les Sillars says that hit disturbingly close to home for him recently.

LES SILLARS, COMMENTATOR: I was googling alumni, trying to track down people I hadn’t heard from in a while. One name came back under a 2019 headline, “Woman arrested as protesters clash.” The article described a Marxist group called The Red Guards marching in Austin, Texas. Police charged a woman in the group for assaulting a counter-protester with, quote, “a large stick.” One photo showed a guy on a curb with blood running down his face.

No, I thought. That’s ridiculous. It must be somebody else with the same name. But then I found a police mug shot. It was her.

AUDIO: [Sound of march]

The counter-protestors, a handful of young men, styled themselves the Texas Nomads. One Nomad helpfully posted a video on YouTube. It showed a few dozen chanting Guards in vivid red masks and olive green jackets. They yelled, “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!” They waved Soviet flags and signs of Marx and Lenin and Mao. At least two dozen bicycle cops hung around the edges, eyeing the march.

One big red banner said, “Long live 100 years of Communism in the USA!” The very flattering portrait of Chairman Mao himself didn’t note the tens of millions of people his regime murdered.

Eventually, the Red Guards marched across the street and passed right in front of the Texas Nomads. Taunting commenced.

Then a scuffle erupted, along with some profanity. The cops closed in. The camera tilted to show a blur of grass. I’m squinting at my computer, replaying parts, trying to pick out my alumna. Supposedly she whacked the Nomad with a sign pole. But you can’t see who’s who or who did what. Is that her? I’m thinking. That might be her. No … well, maybe … 

I wish I knew how my alumna ended up with a bunch of antifa. She was very sweet. Clients on her gig-economy page now give her top marks for friendliness and service quality. The idea that she allegedly bashed someone with a Chairman Mao sign astounds me.

But it’s a reminder that people have lots of reasons for believing or not believing things. Sometimes, perhaps, people reject ideas they learned as children after carefully considering the arguments. More often, I suspect, they reject truth itself for reasons that have more to do with personal history than political history or logic.

This student never shared much with me, but I got the impression that growing up in her Christian home had been difficult. And sad. She had trying times at college too. I saw her last at an Anglican wedding over a decade ago. Everybody stood in line to receive communion. She declined.

I’m Les Sillars.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: As the incoming Biden administration puts together its economic team, we’ll talk about what it might mean in terms of policy. That’s Washington Wednesday.

And, we’ll meet a family of pastors from Cuba.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna 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.

Philippians reminds us we are to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

I hope you’ll have a great rest of the day. We’ll talk to you tomorrow!

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