The World and Everything in It: December 11, 2024

PREROLL: It’s WORLD’s Year End Giving Drive. As we like to say, Reporting Worth Supporting. Would you consider a gift today? Everything helps us to bring you the program: wng.org/yearendgift Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy today’s program.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

DEI and gender confusion bog down defense funding in Washington, and lawmakers talk government efficiency with the DOGE team.

BEAN: Where we can assist in making government leaner, more efficient that’s where we want to have the debate going.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Washington Wednesday straight ahead.

Also today, WORLD Tour.

And later, a woman who chose life after she’d begun to take it.

GREENE: She told me that, you know, she was going to do everything that she could to help me, and that she's so glad that I called

And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney with an antidote to Brain Rot.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, December 11th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

AUDIO: [Woman screams "ALLAHU ACKBAR!!!"]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Syria: future, White House remarks » A Syrian Muslim woman screams, "God is great!” and “Syria is back."

She was one of many still celebrating in the streets of Damascus … after the ouster of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad.

SOUND: [More celebrants]

The Biden administration says the U.S. government will recognize and support the new government in Syria, provided that it is committed to certain principles.

State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller:

MILLER: Respect for the rights of minorities, facilitation of humanitarian assistance. The prevention of Syria from being used as a base for terrorism or posing as a threat to its neighbors, securing and safely destroying any chemical weapons stockpiles.

Syria: Israeli operations » Those stockpiles of weapons — of all varieties have been of great concern to Israeli leaders who are not taking any chances.

SOUND: [Israeli rocket launches]

The Israeli military released video footage that it says shows missile strikes in Syria destroying Syrian military assets. Those strikes have targeted air bases, missile systems, and weapons stockpiles and have already destroyed Syria’s navy.

Israel says those operations are aimed at making sure assets don’t fall into the hands of extremist groups that could threaten Israel's security.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters:

KIRBY: These are exigent operations, uh, to eliminate, uh, what they believe are imminent threats to their security. Um, and, uh, you know, we certainly recognize that, uh, that they live in a tough neighborhood and that, uh, um, they have as always the right to, um, to defend themselves.

Israel has also moved ground forces into a buffer zone along Syria’s border with Israel to secure the area.

Netanyahu corruption trial » Meantime, Tel Aviv … 

SOUND: [Netanyahu trial demonstrations]

Supporters and detractors of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gathered outside a courthouse where he took the witness stand for the first time in his long-running trial on corruption charges.

Prosecutors have accused him of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate cases. Netanyahu vehemently denies wrongdoing, and has described the trial as a witch hunt and a political prosecution.

GOP cabinet meetings / Schumer on Rubio » In Washington, Republican senators met with President-elect Donald Trump's nominees for various cabinet positions on Tuesday.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune:

THUNE: One thing I can tell you coming out of that conference is Republicans united around making sure that President Trump's nominees are put in place and ready to roll up their sleeves and go to work.,

Among those on hand for those meetings: FBI director nominee Kash Patel, defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth and Trump’s pick for national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard.

Some of the nominees will face stiff opposition from Democrats, and even some very tough questions from Republicans. But Trump’s pick for secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, is not expected to be among them.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters:

SCHUMER:  I look forward to seeing Senator Rubio's hearing in the new year. I've worked closely with him in the past, we've had a good relationship. I think he's qualified for the role and I certainly don't start out with any negative disposition.

Nominees need 51 votes to be confirmed. Republicans will control 54 seats in the new Senate.

United Healthcare CEO shooter » A judge on Tuesday denied bail to the man accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan.

26-year-old Luigi Mangione faces a weapons charge in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested this week. And prosecutors in New York want him extradited to face a murder charge.

His attorney Thomas Dickey told reporters:

DICKEY: We did not waive extradition. We are contesting extradition. We are going to fight this along the rules and with the constitutional protections that my client has, and that’s what we’re going to do.

But Blair County, Pennsylvania District Attorney Peter Weeks said yesterday …

WEEKS:  We're in the process now of securing a governor's warrant from the state of New York and we'll be prepared when the judge schedules the hearing to do what's necessary to get him back to New York.

And investigators have learned more about the suspect. They say he was raised in a wealthy Maryland family, graduated from an Ivy League school, and worked as a data engineer before last week’s attack.

In a statement, his family members said they were shocked and that everything they know about Mangioni’s alleged crimes has come from news outlets.

Malibu fire » In Southern California, a wind-driven wildfire has forced thousands of residents to flee their homes. The blaze, which was sparked on Monday has already consumed roughly 3,000 acres.

And Los Angeles County Police Chief Robert Luna is urging everyone in the area to stay alert.

LUNA:  Fires can be extremely unpredictable, and we highly encourage residents in the fire areas to be prepared to heed our evacuation warnings.

And LA County Fire Chief Anthony Maronne said Tuesday that the fire was not at all contained as of yet, with more than 700 firefighters trying to get a handle on it.

MARONNE: Because of the difficulties in this particular area, time is of the essence for us to grab ahold of the fire and start getting containment.

Authorities are not yet sure how the blaze was started.

Thousands of homes are under threat, but as of last night, there were no reports of any serious injuries.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a new department is tasked with cutting government waste…but will need the government’s support to make it happen. Plus, one woman’s story of trying to stop a chemical abortion before it was too late.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 11th of December.

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

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

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Today, culture war issues in the 2025 defense budget.

But first, what members of Congress think about President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the DOGE…the Department of Government Efficiency.

MAST: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been tapped to lead the new non-governmental task force. They were on Capitol Hill last week to talk about it.

Washington Bureau reporter Leo Briceno has the story.

LEO BRICENO: Elon Musk and Vivek Ramswamy came to Capitol Hill not to lecture, but to listen. That’s according to South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson.

JOHNSON: They each spoke for about one minute and then they just opened it up. And members have been offering some specific ideas about where can we go to make a more efficient government.

Congressman Johnson said the room quickly went through around nine topics…including technology.

JOHNSON: There’s some areas where the federal government is not utilizing technology well enough, and that that’s an area where clearly the federal government lags behind the private sector. And it’s one area where the private sector has been able to find some pretty substantial efficiencies.

So how will two businessmen from the private sector make changes in the federal government? And how much will President Trump have to rely on Congress to make the cuts he’s promised?

Lawmakers are still figuring that out. Here’s Congressman Aaron Bean from Florida. He’s the Chair of the newly-formed DOGE Caucus.

AARON BEAN: We just want to be assists. That’s my first question. What can Congress do, what do you expect from Congress, how can we help and assist with you.

And it’s not just Republicans. Here’s Florida Congressman Jared Moskowitz, one of the Democrats who will be on the DOGE subcommittee panel next year.

MOSKOWITZ: It’s a wonderful question… It's probably better suited to a historian.

So, I asked one…David Lewis, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. Lewis studies the presidency and its relationship with government agencies.

DAVID LEWIS: There’s a little bit of disagreement about this actually. One thing that everybody is clear on is that if the president could get congress’ cooperation, they could slash government as much as they would like, right? They could fire employees, eliminate agencies, these kinds of things. But I think your question is short of them passing legislation, what can the president do?

Come January, President Trump will only have a few options for reducing the federal workforce on his own, without help from Congress.

LEWIS: The president doesn’t have ton of flexibility other than to freeze hiring…but they can’t start firing people and reducing the size of government because… the money has been authorized to be spent on salaries.

Trump and his team have suggested that recent Supreme Court decisions change the role of agencies in government.

LEWIS: The belief then is if these agencies are doing things that they should not be doing then the employees should stop working on these things. And if these employees have no work, they could be removed though a reduction in force.

Lewis says it’s an interesting legal theory: the responsibilities of agencies have shrunk, so should their workforce. But that argument hasn’t been tested yet.

If that strategy faces too many legal challenges, Congress could delegate some government-shrinking power to the president. Back in 1939, Congress passed a “Reorganization” Act that authorized then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to trim and modify executive branch agencies.

I asked Georgia Congresswoman Marjory Taylor Greene about that approach…she’s leading the House DOGE subcommittee panel.

GREENE: Um, I haven’t specifically talked about that, no.

Other House Republicans would prefer to keep Congress in the driver’s seat. Here’s Congressman Bean again.

BEAN: I’m a big fan of Congress appropriating money and unappropriating money. I think that should stay. We are directly accountable to the people. But where we can assist in making government leaner, more efficient that’s where we want to have the debate.

In that case, professor Lewis says there’s a third option: by giving the president’s priorities special status inside the legislative process, lawmakers could fast-track collaboration with the White House.

LEWIS: Some sort of reorganization proposal supported by the president would get some privileged process in congress—you know votes, up or down, get to the top of the list in terms of agenda. Something like that is feasible. But it would still have to be legislation, it would just happen through a quicker process.

In any case, President Trump will need Congress on board to approve the massive changes he has in mind. And with the conversations already started, Congressman Dusty Johnson believes the process is off to a good start.

DUSTY JOHNSON: It is remarkable how coordinated the efforts between the legislative branch and the incoming executive branch have been. I think we have an acute understanding that this is a team sport and that if we get mired in the standard ‘one branch of government versus another branch of government’ fighting—we’re not going to get done what we need to get done.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

MAST: Many are looking ahead to the next Congress, but there’s still a lot to do in the final weeks of this session. That includes approving next year’s defense spending.

EICHER: The bill contains plenty that Republicans and Democrats agree on, but also some they don’t.

Here’s WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: Lawmakers have just two weeks to pass the National Defense Reauthorization Act. That’s the annual mandatory legislation that determines defense policy for the next fiscal year. The bill has been through a few iterations so far, and on Tuesday, the House Rules Committee discussed a compromise version.

FISCHBACH: The Rules Committee will come to order…

They’re calling it the “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement” act. The proposed 2025 NDAA rings in at nearly $900 billion dollars. Earlier this year, the Senate passed its own version, but it exceeded spending caps set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act. The House version falls within the limits but also provides a 14 percent pay raise for junior service members.

LANGWORTHY: I'm thrilled at the pay raise for our troops. I think that's the most important thing that we're accomplishing here.

Congressman Nick Langworthy of New York told WORLD the bill also gives military families more housing options and implements shorter wait times for healthcare.

LANGWORTHY: Is it perfect? No. But it continues to help our military where it matters the most, which is recruitment and showing our appreciation for the men and women to keep this country safe and defend our freedom.

Where lawmakers disagree is on non-defense policies in the legislation.

Democrats say they will not support the bill because it includes a provision that prevents the military health program TRICARE, from providing puberty blockers and other transgender procedures to minors. Here’s Washington state Congressman Adam Smith:

SMITH: There is a provision that would bar access to health care for minors of service members, for very specific care. It goes after treatment for minors suffering from gender dysphoria.

Smith helped negotiate this version of the NDAA but urged Rules Committee members to amend the bill to allow body-altering procedures aimed at sex-change.

SMITH:To deny what could potentially be life-saving health care to children of service members for any political reason is something I don't believe we should do.

Democrats on the Rules Committee argued that the policy measure could result in service members leaving to find coverage for these treatments elsewhere. Republicans said it’s not an issue for defense policy consideration. Here’s Texas Congressman Chip Roy during the hearing.

ROY: I think these questions need to be pulled out of the debate of defense so we can get back to the business of defending the United States of America without having to deal with social engineering debates.

The Republican majority on the Rules Committee shot down two proposed amendments, and voted to pass the bill on to the floor.

FISCHBACH: Without objection, the committee is adjourned.

While most Republicans support the negotiated NDAA, conservatives had hoped to increase defense spending while cutting social programs. Instead, the compromise version keeps funding levels about the same as the last one. Congressman Roy has an additional concern.

ROY: …it doesn't get rid of the chief diversity officer. The DEI provision is not as strong as what we had in the House…

Roy told WORLD that worries him.

ROY: I mean, I'll reserve judgment on the floor, but I don't see myself voting for the bill.

In order to pass the legislation by a simple majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose four Republican votes, assuming all Democrats oppose it. On Tuesday, he praised the final package during a news conference.

JOHNSON: This year’s NDAA ensures our military has the resources and the capabilities needed to remain the most powerful fighting force on the planet. I look forward to voting for it later this week, and I think you’ll have a large vote on the House floor in affirmation of all of this.

The bill will come to the floor for a vote on Thursday. After that, it’s back to the Senate before heading to the president’s desk.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta in Washington.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Oduah.

SOUND: [CHEERING CROWDS]

ONIZE ODUAH: Ghana election — We begin today on the streets of Ghana’s capital, Accra.

Crowds cheered after a former president won a Saturday vote.

John Mahama served as president from 2012 to 2017. His weekend victory follows two failed attempts to return to the top office.

Current Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia ran as the ruling party’s candidate and conceded before the election agency officially announced a winner.

The country’s economic crisis dominated the polls with voters blaming the ruling party for the struggles. Many young people are unemployed, and the prices of goods have skyrocketed.

Akasi Danso joined other supporters of Mahama on the streets.

AKASI DANSO: Today, if I'm happy, I'm happy that God almighty has listened to our prayer and chose the one that Ghanaians need to be the next president of the Republic of Ghana. So Ghanaians are happy.

Mahama will be sworn in on Jan. 7.

Romania election — We head now to Romania, where a last-minute court ruling scrapped a presidential run-off vote.

Romanians went to the polls for a first round of voting last month. Centrist candidate Elena Lasconi and far-right independent Călin Georgescu came out on top and were set to face each other last Sunday in a second vote.

But the Constitutional Court moved to annul the first round of votes over reports of Russian interference.

Declassified intelligence documents claim nearly 800 TikTok accounts created by a foreign state  were activated shortly before the vote to support the little-known Georgescu.

Georgescu rejected the ruling as an attempt to keep him from power.

CĂLIN GEORGESCU: Basically, by cancelling democracy, our very freedom is cancelled.

He says the country has canceled democracy by canceling the vote.

But Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called the issue a matter of national security.

KLAUS IOHANNIS:[ROMANIAN] I remain in office until a new president of Romania is elected. When the new president is sworn in, I will leave.

He says he will remain in office until a new president is sworn in.

SOUND: [DRUG BUST]

Dominican Republic drug bust — Next, to the Dominican Republic … where authorities say they have made the largest-ever cocaine bust in the Caribbean nation.

Officials discovered more than nine tons of cocaine hidden in two containers of banana shipments that left Guatemala and were heading for Belgium.

320 bags of drugs spread throughout the shipment arrived at the Caucedo port in the capital of Santo Domingo…with an estimated street value of $250 million dollars. Carlos Deveres is the spokesman of the country’s National Drug Control Directorate.

CARLOS DEVERES: [SPANISH] The Public Prosecutor's Office and the DNCD are investigating at least ten people linked to the port, while they investigate the frustrated shipment to Europe.

He says the public prosecutor is investigating at least 10 people connected to the port.

The drug stash is three times the size of the country’s previous record when authorities uncovered more than 5,600 pounds of cocaine at the same port in 2006.

Monitoring agencies have said the Caribbean is becoming a major trafficking route again for drugs entering the European market.

SOUND: [LEADING LIGHTS]

Nobel lights — We close today in Stockholm, Sweden, with a tribute to the 66 women who have won the Nobel Prize since its inception in 1901. One of the honorees is Marie Skłodowska-Curie who won the award twice, once for physics and then again for chemistry.

The “Leading Lights” presentation includes colorful light displays, glowing art installations, and animated vignettes projected onto local buildings.

Alexis Turchet is the show’s artistic director.

ALEXIS TURCHET: To create this show, we worked with around 12 different artists who come from different artistic backgrounds. We worked also with the Nobel prize museum, who have helped us a lot with research and what we could use actually during this show to talk about.

The show wrapped up with the Nobel award ceremony Tuesday.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Forget snakes in the plane. You need to worry about snakes in the lane the fast lane, that is.

Down in Australia, a woman was heading down the freeway when she felt something on her leg. Somehow she held it together enough to weave through traffic, pull over, and leap out of the car so fast she left her shoe behind.

She flagged down some help and police realized they needed a specialist: snake catcher Tim Nanninga who sniffed out the venomous tiger snake, and knew just how to charm that charmless reptile.

This is audio from talk radio 3AW Melbourne.

NANNINGA: I was pretty lucky, actually. I had an old Barry White CD, so we had the keys to the car. We put it on and calmed the snake down and crawled towards the back.

Must’ve been a girl snake.

WHITE: My voice is extremely low. It’s different from a lot of other guys in the world.

Baby, it didn’t take / my all of my life / to find you /

Works every single time.

o, oh, babe /

Barry White, snake charmer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 11th.

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

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A second chance at life.

Earlier this year, a Colorado woman made a choice she regretted. As WORLD’s Leah Savas reports, that mom turned to the internet for help to make it right.

GREENE: There'd be one moment where I was like, oh, maybe it's not too late. Maybe you can do something about it.

LEAH SAVAS: That’s Mackenna Greene. She’s talking about what was going through her head about a year ago, in the 24 hours after she started a chemical abortion.

GREENE: And then, you know, the other side of me is like, No, you want to be successful. You want to, you know, buy a new house, like, you know, and you can't do those things if you have a new baby, you know, you can't do it, Mackenna.

Greene had found out she was pregnant just days earlier.

GREENE: I have a two and a half year old. I had started a new position at work, I was really wanting to jumpstart my career a little bit. And then, relationally, you know, me and my boyfriend were, we're not married. It was just more of an unexpected pregnancy.

At the time, Greene was 25. All of those factors played into her decision to Google, “abortion pills, delivered to me.”

GREENE: And a couple different agencies popped up, and I went with the one that I did go with because they advertised low pricing.

Greene lives in Colorado Springs. Abortion is legal in Colorado through all 9 months of pregnancy. So she could have easily gone to an abortion facility for the drugs. But she preferred to order them online.

GREENE: I didn't have to meet with, you know, a doctor or anything like that. Just kind of separating myself from having to meet and get emotional with anybody. And then they also offered, like, two day shipping, I think so it was also a matter of, you know, the quicker that I can get it here, the quicker I can get it over with, and the quicker I can forget about it, essentially.

They arrived within two days, as promised. Two drugs. One to block progesterone, a hormone essential to continuing pregnancy. Another to cause contractions. She took the first drugs around 7 p.m. one evening after work.

For the next 24 hours, leading up to the point when she was supposed to take the second set of drugs, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she had done.

GREENE: So I would just kind of really be battling with myself and then just telling myself, well, it's already too late, so you better, you know, you better get used to it.

That’s when her mom stopped by.

GREENE: I broke down and I kind of told her what was happening. And she's like, Well, is there anything we can do about it, and I was like, I don't know.

That’s all it took to prompt Greene to do another Google search: how to stop the effects of the abortion pill. Heartbeat International’s abortion pill reversal website was one of the first results. Her mom watched her son in the other room while Greene ran into the bathroom to call the hotline.

GREENE: I was a wreck. And the woman on the phone, she was wonderful. She told me, you know, like that, no judgment, that you know, she was going to do everything that she could to help me, and that, you know, you know, she was so glad that I called.

The rep said that an abortion pill reversal provider would reach out soon to prescribe progesterone to help halt the effects of the abortion drug. Within an hour or two, A nurse practitioner called from nearby Castle Rock—Chelsea Mynyk. Greene updated her on what was going on, and Mynyk prescribed the progesterone pills. She started taking those pills that same night.

Greene went to Mynyk’s office for an ultrasound the next day.

GREENE: She had said that, you know, things look good right now. Again, she didn't make any promises to me that, you know, things were gonna, like, be 100% or anything.

At that point, there was still a chance the baby wouldn’t make it. Greene kept taking the progesterone and returned to Mynyk for her prenatal care for the first 20 weeks.

At one of the early appointments, she got to see the little flutter of her baby’s heartbeat.

MYNYK: And then this is baby and right here you can see the heart beating

GREENE: Oh, look at that!

In August, Greene’s son got to hold his little sister.

MALE VOICE: Hold the baby.

FEMALE VOICE: Okay, hold the baby. Awww.

GREENE: It's just unfortunate that it's easier to obtain the abortion pill, the chemical abortion, you know, pill and process, than it was for me to obtain the life saving care of the progesterone or the abortion pill reversal. Because, you know, I actually got to speak with Chelsea. But I didn't have to speak with anybody for the chemical abortion kit. It just was, you know, a questionnaire online.

Mynyk found out soon after she prescribed progesterone for Greene that she was under investigation for violating a Colorado law that effectively prohibits prescribing abortion pill reversal treatment. They say it’s not scientifically proven and dangerous to women. But providers can prescribe the same hormone to women at risk of miscarrying.

Mynyk has since joined a lawsuit arguing that law is unconstitutional.

As someone who saw the treatments as a lifeline for her and her baby, Greene says Colorado sends a sad message.

GREENE: Colorado is essentially saying right now that only one type of woman gets to save their child, ones that are, you know, high risk for miscarriages, they're also prescribed the same medication that I was, the progesterone, and I think that's completely unfair

Abortion pill reversal isn’t guaranteed to work. Sometimes a baby will survive a chemical abortion attempt even without progesterone. Other times, the reversal treatment is ineffective. But Greene says Mynyk didn’t give her any guarantees that night she first prescribed the hormone.

GREENE: She gave me hope. Hope that we've caught it in enough time and that I'd be able to see my baby girl one day, and because of her, I did, and I get to look at her face every day.

AUDIO: [Squealing baby]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 11th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney now with a few thoughts on moving beyond the trivial.

JANIE B CHEANEY: By now you’ve heard, on this podcast and elsewhere, that the 2024 Oxford Word of the Year is “brain rot.” Which is actually two words, but no point in quibbling. It won its distinguished title through a combination of online voting from the public and language analysis by Oxford lexicographers. On its website, Oxford University Press defined the condition of brain rot as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging.” The material in question is primarily banal online content.

The word of the year is considered a cultural flag, and as such attracts comment from social observers. This year most of them passed along Oxford’s reference to Henry David Thoreau, who coined the term in his best-known work. Quoting Oxford:

‘Thoreau criticizes society’s tendency to devalue complex ideas, or those that can be interpreted in multiple ways, in favour of simple ones, and sees this as indicative of a general decline in mental and intellectual effort. In Thoreau’s words:“While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot . . . ?”’

I looked up the reference in the concluding chapter of Walden. It’s typical of Thoreau, plain-speaking mingled with obscure references and meandering thoughts that make the reader think, “Hey! Wait up while I figure out what you’re talking about.” Also the insufferable condescension of a man enjoying a two-year vacation with no wife and children to support. The paragraph in which brain rot occurs begins with this observation: “Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.” Thoreau also scorned newspapers and regarded the telegraph, the harbinger of mass communication, as trivial: why rush to connect Maine to Texas he asks…when Maine to Texas, “it may be, have nothing to communicate.”

Much of the commentary about today’s brain rot is similarly snarky, some of it connecting brain rot with MAGA. The truth is, much of life is consumed by trivia: daily to-do lists, shopping, eating, bed-making, laundry, et cetera ad infinitum. These are the threads that weave our lives into the lives of family and friends and church and school, the little lifts that propel us from one day to the next and on through the years.

But we can be choosy about the kind of trivia we consume. And we can carve out little daily Waldens for ourselves. One of my friends takes time to list 14 things she’s grateful for at the end of every day. Another contemplates a Psalm every morning. I watch my share of YouTube videos but also get up ridiculously early to think and pray and write. The noble, admirable, and excellent things Paul advises us to think about in Philippians 4 are ever at hand, and a little mindfulness can stave off a lot of brain rot.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: the state of Florida is changing course when dealing with the homeless. We’ll have a report on what it may mean for the rest of the country.

And, the incoming administration is promising to crack down on illegal immigration. What's fact and fiction?

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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: “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” —Hebrews 9:27-28

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.