The World and Everything in It: December 17, 2025

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Trust in journalism is a slow build. It comes from consistency—showing up day after day and working hard to get the story right.

NICK EICHER, HOST: WORLD’s founder Joel Belz put it this way: “Every day, earn their trust.”

That means earning it sentence by sentence, story by story, podcast by podcast.

MAST: And that kind of work depends on listeners coming together to support it.

WORLD’s December Giving Drive is one such rally point—so the reporting stays careful, grounded, and thorough.

EICHER: We’re grateful for your support at wng.org/donate.

MAST: Good morning!

Republicans in Indiana block their own partisan redistricting, will Democrats return the favor?

PAUL: I'm saying it's a mistake of both parties. And I don't know exactly how we de-escalate this …. And how do you put the genie back in the box?

EICHER: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Hunter Baker is standing by.

Also today, WORLD Tour.

And later: A Christmas celebration in a neighborhood that once had to hide its heritage.

CLARK: They changed the name from that of a German hero to that of an American hero

EICHER: And WORLD commentator Daniel Darling on the lasting legacy of The Mayflower and its passengers.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, December 17th. 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.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Military strike controversy latest » Republicans and Democrats continue to clash over U.S. military strikes against cartel drug boats — and one in particular … with Democrats demanding the Pentagon release video footage of that strike. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

SCHUMER:  We need full transparency, at least to the hundred senators, and much more transparency to the American people. We don't want another endless war. We don't want to stumble into something.

Many Democrats claim a followup strike in waters near Venezuela that killed two survivors of the initial strike was illegal.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth says he has decided not to release that video. But he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security advisor did brief lawmakers Tuesday on those counter-cartel operations. Rubio spoke with reporters after a Senate briefing.

RUBIO:  We're headed to the house now to do a similar briefing and provide updates on this counter-drug mission, which is focused on dismantling the infrastructure of these terrorist organizations that are operating in our hemisphere.

The Trump administration has designated Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua drug cartel and others as foreign terrorist groups, and the administration says they’re being dealt with accordingly.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune Tuesday punted on the question of whether the Pentagon should release the video footage. He kicked that question back to the Armed Services and Intelligence committees.

THUNE: Both of which have, I think, uh, great insights into how best to handle important sensitive, uh, information like this. And so I'm gonna trust their judgment on that.

President Trump is widely expected to touch on this issue in an address to the nation tonight.

Trump BBC lawsuit » President Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation, saying a BBC documentary misrepresented his January 6, 2021 speech.

TRUMP:  I'm suing the BBC for putting words in my mouth, literally to put words in my mouth. They had me saying things that I never said coming out. I guess they used AI or something.

The suit, filed in federal court in Miami, accuses the broadcaster of defamation and violating Florida’s deceptive trade practices law. It claims the BBC’s Panorama program edited separate parts of Trump’s remarks to suggest he urged violence before the Capitol riot, omitting portions where he called for peaceful protest.

The BBC acknowledged the edit was an “error of judgment” and apologized, but denies it defamed Trump and says it will defend the case.

Moscow reparations for Ukraine war » Moscow should foot the bill to help rebuild Ukraine whenever the war finally comes to an end.

That’s the word from EU Foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who says the biggest challenge is funding the rebuilding of Ukraine.

But she points to a UN arrangement in the 1990s, after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

KALLAS:  United Nations Compensation Commission was able to use Iraqi oil revenues to pay reparations because a percentage of the oil sales went directly into the UN compensation fund. Russia is no less liable for the damage in Ukraine than Iraq for for the damage in Kuwait.

European leaders have launched an international commission to assess claims against Russia. Kallas is urging EU states to back plans to use frozen Russian assets to help pay compensation.

Zelenskyy on peace plan » Meantime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Kyiv could finalize peace proposals for U.S. officials to present to Russia within days.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking in Ukrainian]

He says that a draft peace plan discussed in Berlin with American and European officials this week is "very workable."

Zelenskyy added … "Of course, not all aspects are simple. There are complicated things, in particular the topic of territories.”

The Ukrainian president has signaled a willingness to compromise. But he has maintained that Ukraine will not surrender territory to Russia.

Jobs numbers » The U.S. added more than 60,000 jobs in November, but that modest gain came after a steep loss the month before. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: The economy added about 64,000 jobs last month. However, that came after 105,000 jobs in October, according to new government data. Data has been delayed following the recent government shutdown.

Many economists say the October drop was expected and not alarming, but further evidence of a soft job market.

The unemployment rate climbed to 4.6%, the highest level in more than four years. Though that was due in part to more people entering the workforce.

Health care and construction added jobs in November, but manufacturing continued to shed workers.

Wages barely moved last month.

For WORLD I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Reiner update » Nick Reiner is now facing two first-degree murder charges in the death of his parents, famed film director Rob Reiner and producer Michele Singer Reiner.

Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman filed the charges on Tuesday:

HOCHMAN: These charges carry a maximum sentence of late basis without or the death penalty. No decision at this point has been made with respect to the death penalty… currently, Nick Reiner is being held without bail.

Authorities arrested the 32-year-old just hours after his parents were found dead with stab wounds in their Southern California home.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is standing by for Washington Wednesday. Plus, Chilean elections on World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 17th 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.

And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

Today, we back up to last week—

NATPOP: The Senate will now come to order.

—a moment in the ruby-red Republican state of Indiana, when GOP lawmakers had the power to act—and chose not to. The issue was whether to use their power to redraw the political district map to make it more favorable, as Texas Republicans and California Democrats did, and maybe pick up an extra congressional seat.

MAST: Democrats voted no as a bloc and so the debate was entirely up to Republicans. Indiana state senator Andy Zay framed it as a real opportunity to keep a national GOP majority.

AUDIO: There’s a lot of consternation about the midterms coming up, and Indiana is in position to be able to help with that by broadening our seats where we have more opportunity for the Republicans.

State Senator Sue Glick is a Republican who says her district was overwhelmingly opposed.

AUDIO: I like to reflect my district, as well as my belief that government is a representative form of democracy, and we want to be fair to everyone concerned.

EICHER: Senator Zay said passions were high—too high.

AUDIO: I had a bomb threat at my business that was a surprise to me, and it does come down to a question of, is it worth it? I mean, is our family safety worth it?

he idea that political maneuvers can escalate beyond institutions and spill into real-world instability … is something U-S Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky warned about over the weekend.

He was talking about redistricting nationwide, and what happens when voters begin to believe the system is rigged. This is from NBC’s Meet the Press.

AUDIO: I'm concerned if there are no Republican representatives in California, or no Democrats in Texas that it will be so thoroughly one sided that people will feel like their vote isn't counting. And so I think it's a mistake, but I'm not saying it's a mistake of the Republicans. I'm saying it's a mistake of both parties. And I don't know exactly how we de-escalate this …. And how do you put the genie back in the box? I mean, how do you do something better? But I think there is the potential that when people have no representation, that they feel disenfranchised, that it can lead and might lead to violence in our country.

Joining us now is political philosopher and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: You heard all that, Hunter, more Indiana Senate Republicans opposed a new partisan map that would’ve helped them, than Republicans who supported it. Do you think Democrats will see reason here—and reciprocate in deep-blue states when they get the opportunity? And what about Rand Paul’s warning we just heard: how should we understand that warning without treating violence as justified or inevitable?

BAKER: We may remember that Rand Paul was himself a victim of political violence. I think he was badly injured in an assault by one of his neighbors. But I resonate very strongly with his comments. Even in the normal case, redistricting can be a pretty toxic thing. I remember being around the Capitol in Georgia around the turn of the millennium, when it was happening there, and I have never seen such vicious fighting and sort of enemy making, as I saw at that time. And so the idea of, let's not just keep doing it the way we did after each census, but let's do it literally every time we think there might be an advantage in redistricting. I think it's a terrible idea, and I'm sorry that we kicked it off with Texas doing that, and now California, all we do is kind of encourage more rivalry, more hatred, more advantage seeking. And so this is a good time to try to return to some of our previous political traditions and habits, because I think that we'll do better that way.

MAST: Also this week we’ve been following the tragic murder of Rob Reiner and his wife—apparently by their deeply disturbed son.

This story covers several categories: a terrible local crime story, it’s a culture story, but we think it also fits here in Washington Wednesday for two reasons: First, Reiner was active and outspoken in his politics–he was a fierce critic of President Trump. And second, the president’s reaction to the double homicide, when presidents typically speak healing words.

Instead, Trump took to his social media platform and blamed Reiner for his own death ,and I’ll use Trump’s words here. He said the killings were the result of the “anger he [Reiner] caused others” by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Actor James Woods appeared on Fox News, he worked closely with Reiner and deeply disagreed with him politically,Woods is as outspokenly conservative as Reiner was liberal. Listen to this:

WOODS: … When people would say terrible things to me on social media about him, I said you got it all wrong. And yes, I can see how you can disagree with him, but because you disagree with people doesn't mean that you have to hate people. And what Rob and I could do, Rob and I could sit in a room … and say, “look, I think you're wrong about this, this and this,” and … we would find a way to work it out. And that was one of the great things about him …

Hunter, this is an unspeakable tragedy: Reiner and his wife are dead, and their son’s life may be effectively over: he’s in custody awaiting charge and arraignment for first-degree murder charges.

Has the president crossed a new line here—not legally, but morally—in how a national leader speaks about a political opponent after a violent death? We were all rightly horrified by people wishing the would-be assassin in Butler, PA had had better aim ... and Trump talks this way about someone’s murder?

BAKER: It is really tragic. The crime itself is tremendously tragic. I think that many of us can probably identify with the sort of idea of a family where there is one member, you know, often a child who is badly out of step, who, when you see the family portraits, that's the child that's never smiling. Obviously a family tragedy. And so that's something that we, you know, we can all kind of have in common with Reiner in terms of the circumstances that he's had and that we can understand, and even though he is a person who would have thought that conservative Christians were really wrong, really, really wrong, and used his talents to try to demonstrate that, I can also think about him as the guy who directed The Princess Bride,

MAST: As you wish…

BAKER: And what are we looking for from a president? I think that surely we expect that in times of tragedy, that we want a president to be something of an exemplar. Now we all remember that in his first campaign, he criticized John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War, and I really thought that he would not be able to survive, that he did, right? He did. He won office, and he's won office again. But I had really hoped that after his assassination attempt, that we were going to see a new Donald Trump, somebody who had really sort of been at the precipice, who I believe God probably delivered, and had an opportunity to reconsider, but it looks like he's returned to some of his old habits. Now what's going to happen? I think that, you know, there's about 35% who are ride or die with Donald Trump, no matter what, but with everybody else, this strikes a very discordant note, and he's gonna, he's gonna struggle with some of the skepticism that he engenders in people by making these kind of comments.

EICHER: Hunter, I want to turn to immigration and the tension between the state and federal governments. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker last week signed a law aimed at blocking federal immigration officers from detaining immigrants near courthouses, colleges, and other public places—

PRITZKER: This legislation that I'm signing today will allow for a civil lawsuit against law enforcement officers who violate the Illinois or United States Constitutional rights of the members of the public that they are supposed to be protecting.

Hunter, we’ve talked about the legal challenges surrounding National Guard deployments to protect federal agents and facilities in blue states and cities, but this is new. What do you make of it?

BAKER: Well, I think it is new, but I actually see it more as a political issue than a legal one. I think that legally, the issue is pretty well settled. The Federal Government cannot make the states enforce federal law, but the federal government is certainly entitled to actually carry out that enforcement itself. The supremacy clause has not been overturned, and governors are not suddenly permitted to interfere in the enforcement and federal law. So what I see with these laws is not not something that's actually going to change sort of our legal regime, but really probably represent more of an opportunity to capitalize on the issue. I think that governors like Pritzker believe that this is a way to highlight their differences with Donald Trump, and maybe to gain more momentum for their own coalition. So that's what I see. I see politics rather than law at work here.

MAST: One last question: On Monday Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was convicted in Hong Kong…without a jury trial. You’ll remember he was arrested in 2020 after major protests against a law subverting Hong Kong’s British justice system. That law was turned against him, and now he faces up to life in prison. For a 78-year-old man who’s spent 5 years in solitary confinement, that may not be long.

Trump on Monday said he’s asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to let Lai go.

TRUMP: He's an older man, and he's not well. So I did put that request out. We'll see what happens

Trump is planning to meet with Xi in April, but do you think he has any real leverage to get Lai released?

BAKER: Well, really Great Britain should be taking the lead. Lai is a British national, and so they should be the ones who are really pushing for some sort of legal relief for Lai now. Certainly the American president can join with the British prime minister and try to work out some kind of diplomatic solution that will save face for the Chinese or not cause them embarrassment. We'll see if that can happen.

But really, what this highlights for me is that is that in the late 90s, when we saw Hong Kong handed back to China, we really wondered what's going to happen. You know, Hong Kong, really one of the great world cities. Would Hong Kong influence China, or would China control Hong Kong? And I think a lot of us thought that Hong Kong is such a great city with sort of a magnificent experience of the 20th century, that it would lead China to be both more economically successful and to respect human rights. And really, we've seen half of that happen. We have seen China become much more economically successful in the way that Hong Kong has been for a much longer time, but in terms of democracy and human rights, that has not materialized. We have seen Hong Kong dragged backwards in that sense, and that's what's going on with a great publisher like Jimmy Lai being arrested here. You know, as far as we can tell, he's really guilty of nothing other than being an advocate of democracy.

To me, this looks like political repression, and that's not new from China, and neither is religious repression. China is a nation that occasionally knocks down churches simply to send a message, and so we're not getting the future that we expected when we opened up free trade with China, we have empowered a nation that has become a rival and possibly a dangerous one.

MAST: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. Thank you, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour, a special report on elections in Chile.

On Sunday, the country held its presidential runoff elections, and swung conservative.

WORLD Associate Correspondent Elisa Palumbo has the story.

ELISA PALUMBO: Following the rightward trend of many of its South American neighbors, Chile has officially elected a conservative president: 59-year-old lawyer and devout Catholic, Jose Antonio Kast.

POST-ELECTION: [People Cheering/saying “Long Live Chile!”]

JOSE ANTONIO KAST: [Spanish] Y este es el día de la alegría. . .

Some say he is the most right-wing candidate to hold office since dictator Augusto Pinochet left office in 1990. This was Kast’s third time running for president.

Kast campaigned on Trump-like promises to build a wall at the northern border, use military presence, and deport illegal immigrants. He also wants to reduce the size of the government, following the example of his Argentinian counterpart, Javier Milei. His victory shows that for many Chileans, security was a deciding factor.

Growing illegal immigration from Venezuela and Colombia has led to a rise in violence, organized crime, carjackings, and kidnappings in what used to be one of South America’s safest countries. And the steady uptick of crime has changed the lives of many Chileans.

In 2024 alone, over 850 kidnappings were reported, the most recorded in over a decade. A report from Ipsos found that 63 percent of the Chilean population now lives in fear of crime. This is more than double the global average in other countries.

Chile’s homicides rates are low compared to other Latin American countries, with 6 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, but they’re much higher than they were a decade ago. Since 2015, homicides have increased 140 percent.

Though pundits originally favored communist candidate Jeannette Jara to win, the results of the first round of elections on November 16th indicated a more unified right than anticipated.

PETER HAKIM: The polling on Boric was down in the 33-34% range. There was nobody, sort of an immediate star emerging.

Peter Hakim is president emeritus and senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank. He says Jara was competent and had celebrated successes… but her party did her no favors.

HAKIM: You know, communist is not exactly a great word to have on your T-shirt when you're playing politics in Chile.

Today, the biggest concern for voters is crime and immigration. In the last seven years, immigration has doubled in Chile. Statistics show 8.8 percent of the country’s population of 20 million are now foreign-born. And approximately 330,000 illegal immigrants currently live in Chile. Mike O’Brien is a strong Christian and former miner. He lives 70 kilometers outside of Santiago, Chile. He believes immigration grew significantly worse under Boric:

MIKE O’BRIEN: [Spanish] El parte de la campaña presidencial …

TRANSLATION: Part of Gabriel Boric’s presidential campaign, who is our current president since 2021, was related to this—to opening the doors, being a good partner, a good neighbor, and making it much easier to receive immigrants and give them the means to enter. But this message was taken very literally, because everything was really opened up and there was no control at all over the Chilean border.

Most of the illegal immigration comes from Venezuela and Colombia and enters through Chile’s northern border. Certain areas are now dominated by foreign gangs, like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua. O’Brien says illegal immigration has made the country feel more dangerous and pushed many to vote for the right.

O’BRIEN: [Spanish] La sensación de seguridad …

TRANSLATION (MARK REININGA): The sense of security among people is completely different. If you talk to someone on the street today, they feel totally unsafe regarding the actions of the police, and they believe there is much more freedom for criminals.

O’Brien also says the left’s voting records have frustrated many Chileans. Boric’s allies in congress consistently struck down laws that would have fought organized crime and terrorism.

O’BRIEN: [Spanish] Justamente la izquierda …

TRANSLATION: In fact, the left, over the last four years, has voted against all the bills related to the security of Chileans.

As a candidate, Jose Antonio Kast called Boric’s presidency the worst in Chile’s democratic history and reminded voters that Jara would be a continuation of it.

Some critics say Kast could become an authoritarian and curb personal freedoms with his right-wing views, his Catholic beliefs, and his pro-life stance. But O’Brien sees his policies as a return to tradition.

O’BRIEN: José Antonio Kast representa para muchas personas dicen la extrema derecha …

TRANSLATION: José Antonio Kast is considered by many to represent the far right, but to me, the far right has to do simply with respecting things that were respected from the beginning and that, in one way or another, have changed over time.

Despite fears of what Kast could do as he shrinks the government, many hope he will make Chile safe again.

That’s this week’s WORLD Tour. I’m Elisa Palumbo.

NICK EICHER, HOST: You do not have to be a type geek to know Times New Roman.

You may not know the technical term—a serif typeface—but you know it when you see it. It is the font of term papers, office memos, and court filings. It’s familiar. Traditional. Official.

So when the State Department this month quietly returned American diplomacy back to Times New Roman, some framed it as more than a design tweak. Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrapped a Biden-era shift to a modern sans-serif font, calling the change wasteful and politically correct. And casting the return as part of a broader move away from diversity initiatives.

The argument was about aesthetics. But it was also about symbolism: modern versus traditional. Trendy versus old-school.

Well, now old-school is trendy again.

Suggesting that when institutions want to be taken seriously—they still reach for what looks serious.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A German celebration.

Neighborhoods across the U.S. have a long list of quirky Christmas traditions, from sledding competitions and polar plunges to the even quirkier, like the Bayou Bonfires in Louisiana:

AUDIO: So the Cajun Santa Claus, that’s Papa Noel, comes down the Mississippi River and on foggy nights … he has a hard time finding river parishes … we lightin’ the way for Papa Noel so he can find the communities along the river to drop all your presents off.

Or the Surfing Santas of Cocoa Beach, Florida.

AUDIO: On the Christmas Day paper in 2009, they put a picture of me riding a wave and it said “Surfin’ Santa.” Surfing Santas is an event that is always held on December 24th, which is Christmas Eve.

MAST: Along with traditions, every neighborhood also has a history, including stories many have largely forgotten. WORLD’s Maria Baer brings us this report from a Christmas tradition in German Village, Ohio — where one hundred years ago, cultural tensions almost tore the community apart.

SOUND: [Piano playing]

MARIA BAER: It’s the first Friday of December, and the bumpy brick streets of German Village are glowing with thousands of handmade luminaries. German Village is a small neighborhood on the south side of Columbus, Ohio.

Tonight is Village Lights. Neighborhood shops stay open late, while food trucks serve German sausage and hot chocolate, and musicians play and sing Christmas carols all along the sidewalks.

SOUND: [Jazz piano and drums]

German Village is a windy grid of narrow streets and slate-roofed cottages. Many still have working gas lamps outside their front doors, which flicker yellow-orange at night.

People are filtering in and out of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, a soaring gothic cathedral built in 1866 in the heart of German Village. Inside, the choir is singing the fourth verse of Silent Night in German.

SOUND: [Singing in German]

A little over a hundred years ago, this would’ve been illegal.

By 1914, German immigrants had been settling in this neighborhood for about 100 years. They’d come to escape war and famine in Europe. Audio here from an informational video that plays in the lobby of the local Historical Society.

VIDEO: By 1865, one third of the population of Columbus was German. The south end, as it would be known, seemed to spring up overnight.

But as the first World War broke out, many Columbus locals grew resentful of German Village. It had become a thriving community. They’d established a German-speaking school and St. Mary’s Church. They published a German-language newspaper and founded a German men’s choir and other social clubs.

They’d even successfully petitioned the state government to publish all Ohio’s official documents in both English and German.

But as the war shocked the world, tensions rose. People burned German books on the streets of Columbus. It became socially precarious to speak German in public. Citizens petitioned the city to change the names of some of these very streets.

Local historian John Clark has the details.

CLARK: And a few street names were changed, those that had obvious connections to Germans who were still back in Germany. Schiller became Whittier, they traded a German writer for an English writer. Germania became Stewart. Bismarck, for a short time became Gear Street, for a car parts company…

The streets of German Village are loosely oriented around Schiller Park: two dozen acres of hundred-year-old trees, iron lampposts, and a small pond that ices over in the winter. The park was named for Friedrich Schiller, the German playwright and poet best known for his Ode to Joy, which Beethoven later set as lyrics for his ninth symphony.

But In 1916, Schiller Park, too, almost lost its name — and its 25-foot bronze statue of Schiller himself, which greets visitors near the park gardens.

CLARK: They no longer wanted to call it Schiller so they changed the name from that of a German hero to that of an American hero — George Washington. It became Washington Park.

Locals even petitioned the city to alter the statue of Schiller to look like George Washington.

CLARK: In the end, cooler heads prevailed, we kept our Schiller statue, thank goodness, but they did rename the park.

By 1919, the state of Ohio declared it illegal to teach German to elementary schoolers. The German Village newspaper, Der Westbote — The Western Messenger — shut down, although the street named after its founder, Jacob Reinhard, never changed. Clark says he was too beloved in Columbus.

But Clark says the Germans were also deeply patriotic towards their new home. Many German Villagers enlisted and fought for the Allies. One local hero, Eddie Rickenbacker, became one of the most decorated fighter pilots of the war.

After the war, tensions gradually cooled. By 1930, Columbus officials had revived the name Schiller Park, as well as several German street names. Some they never changed back.

SOUND: [Crowd chatter, singing]

Today that feels like ancient history. On Kossuth Street, a women’s choir sings near the front steps of cozy Schmidt’s Sausage Haus, a German restaurant that’s been in continuous operation since its beginnings as a meatpacking plant in 1886.

Most people who live in German Village today are unaware of its dark chapter during the first world war. John Clark says most of the area’s founding immigrants left during that time or shortly after, when prohibition shut down the local breweries where many worked. But German culture is still alive here, in local restaurants and bakeries, in the German advent calendars on sale at the Book Loft and the hand-carved Bavarian cuckoo clocks on sale at the indie craft shop.

SOUND: [Brass band]

Thanks to a preservation effort in the postwar period, as well as a notoriously stubborn local commission which still governs what changes residents may — or absolutely may not — make to their houses, the neighborhood today looks remarkably like it did a hundred years ago. It’s become a sought-after place to live.

Village Lights is a popular attraction.

FRANZEN: I love that everyone comes out, people are friendly, people are talking to each other, and all the businesses are out… it just feels like home.

Joella Franzen is handing out free cookies from a booth near the park.

FRANZEN: We’re here with Cross City Church, we’re giving out cookies and hopefully making some connections with the neighborhood.

AUDIO: [Bell Choir]

John Clark says he remembers one of the first Village Lights, when it began snowing just as things got underway. He says it made the neighborhood feel like a life-sized snow globe. As a caroling bell choir begins to ring, it’s easy to see what he means.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Maria Baer in German Village, Ohio.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Up next: World Commentator Daniel Darling says the mission of The Mayflower still matters.

DANIEL DARLING: This week marks the 405th anniversary of a small ship dropping anchor off the coast of Massachusetts in Plymouth Bay. President Dwight Eisenhower once quipped that no one today in his or her right senses would use it to sail across the ocean. But that’s exactly what they did.

Of the 102 passengers who crowded aboard The Mayflower, just under half were English separatists, who broke from the church of England and escaped to Holland. After about a decade they joined up with a ragtag group of merchants to help settle the New World.

The journey across what Pilgrim leader William Bradford called “The vast and furious ocean” was arduous. The merchant ship designed to transport goods afforded cramped and filthy conditions. For the 66 days at sea, most passengers were jammed in the lower, windowless deck, enduring sea-sickness and squalor. Remarkably, only one person on The Mayflower died. One pregnant woman gave birth to a baby…aptly named Oceanus.

What these courageous travelers could not have envisioned was the nation that emerged from their voyage. Bradford writes that they “had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies; no houses or much less town to repair to, to seek for succor.”

Instead all they could see was a “hideous and desolate wilderness.”

Half of the settlers died that first winter from disease and starvation. What is most remarkable about the passengers who arrived by The Mayflower is not their hardiness and endurance…it’s the way in which they organized themselves as a people. The Mayflower compact is a concise yet profound charter that bound themselves to each other and to God.

Historian Rebecca Frasier remarks it “was the first experiment in consensual government in Western history between individuals with one another, and not with a monarch.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in his multi-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples declared it: “one of the remarkable documents in history, a spontaneous covenant for political organisation.”

The document doesn’t spell out laws and bylaws for a national government, but the mere fact that it was a group of people consenting to govern themselves was remarkable and historic. According to Baptist scholar Richard Land, the words formed “the ground out of which the Declaration of Independence grew.”

The passengers aboard the Mayflower were not the only people to attempt to settle the new World, but this cohort has had a disproportionate impact on the forming of the United States of America. Nine U.S. Presidents are descendants of Mayflower Pilgrims, including both Adams, both Bushes, Franklin Roosevelt, and James Garfield. In comparison to Jamestown and its economic goals, the legacy of Plymouth is the mix of religious liberty and devotion to God that is at the core of the American experiment. It is what Alexis de Tocqueville observed as the “Spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion.”

We owe much to the men and women who boarded that ship in England and roughed the high seas. Their courage and bravery were the seeds of a nation their descendants would build and that we, two and a half centuries later, enjoy. On the 100th anniversary of the voyage President Calvin Coolidge saw in this event the hand of Providence, saying: “Forces not ruled by man had laid their unwilling course. As they landed, a sentinel of Providence, humbler, nearer to nature than themselves, welcomed them in their own tongue. They came seeking only an abiding-place on earth . . . On that abiding faith has been reared an empire, magnificent beyond their dreams of Paradise.”

Today as we survey the nation we’ve inherited, it may not seem like “paradise.” Problems confront us at every turn. Yet, to the 100 souls who endured cramped conditions and braved the wilderness to start something new, today’s challenges probably seem light in comparison to their troubles. Perhaps this anniversary might cause us to reconsider the ingratitude of our times and might invoke the courage to renew the nation that arose from their grand and risky endeavor.

I’m Daniel Darling.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: The U.S. seizes a sanctioned oil tanker, and goes after the shadow fleet funding and fueling America's adversaries. And, a pastor fighting threats to Christianity in Uganda. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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