The World and Everything in It: December 20, 2024

PREROLL: Good morning friends! This is George Grant. Today, I’m talking about paradoxes. So I’ll start with one: This program you’re listening to is free. But also costly. That paradox is why we come to you a couple of times a year to ask for your support. Would you make a gift today at WNG.org/YearEndGift? I hope you will … and thanks! Stick around to the end. I’ll tell you about some more great paradoxes. Enjoy!

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday RFK on the hill winning over pro-life skeptics and a justice on Broadway.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by for Culture Friday.

Also today …

SONIC: Hold on, hold on. Is this a race?

TAILS: You’re going down.

A wise-cracking hedgehog stars in one of two family-oriented films opening this weekend.

WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino is also standing by.

George Grant has Word Play.

And the music of Advent.

BROWN: It’s Friday, December 20th. 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 with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Spending bill » On Capitol Hill,  Speaker Mike Johnson is scrambling to avoid a pre-Christmas government shutdown. But Republicans and Democrats have continued to lock horns over a government spending bill, with the deadline now just hours away.

Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise:

SCALISE:  The ultimate goal is to get a bill that addresses our immediate needs, uh, but also sets President Trump up for success when he comes into office.

A massive bipartisan spending bill was expected to come to the floor earlier this week. But a conservative revolt, which Donald Trump joined at the 11th hour, torpedoed that legislation.

The top Democrat in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last night:

JEFFRIES:  Extreme Magga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.

But conservatives said the 15-hundred page bill was stuff full of reckless deficit spending on pet projects, as well as a pay raise for members of Congress.

On Thursday, Speaker Johnson brought a considerably slimmed down bill to the floor, but …

AUDIO: On this vote, the yeas are 174. The nays are 235. The bill is not passed.

Dozens of Republicans joined nearly all Democrats in shooting that down.

The bill would have averted a shutdown largely keeping government funding at the same levels for one month.

The deadline to pass a new funding bill is midnight tonight.

Fani Willis removed from election interference case » The prosecutor who launched the election interference case against Donald Trump and others in Georgia is off the case. WORLD’s Paul Butler has more.

PAUL BUTLER: A state appeals court in Georgia has removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case, reversing a lower court’s decision.

The court cited a "significant appearance of impropriety"... related to Willis' relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

Thursday’s ruling leaves the future of the prosecution uncertain.

It will now be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find another prosecutor to take over the case … and to decide whether to continue to pursue it.

However, Fani Willis could appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court, which would delay that process.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

SCOTUS SC abortion » The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a case arguing Planned Parenthood should not be eligible for federal Medicaid funds.

The state of South Carolina is arguing in the case Kerr v. Edwards that taxpayer dollars should not go to abortion facilities.

Attorneys for the state’s Department of Health and Human Services contend that states have the right to choose which providers are qualified to receive Medicaid funding.

Planned Parenthood argues that cutting off funding violated the Medicaid Act’s provision to let beneficiaries choose their provider.

Putin at annual news conference » In Moscow …

PUTIN: [Speaking Russian]

Vladimir Putin boasted of military gains in Ukraine during his annual news conference.

He denied that the war has weakened Russia.

PUTIN (translated): I think that Russia became much stronger over the past two or three years. Why? Because we are becoming a truly sovereign country.

The Russian leader used the tightly choreographed event to reinforce his authority and demonstrate a sweeping command of everything from consumer prices to military hardware.

Israel latest » Meantime in central Israel …

SOUND: [Israeli school]

Crews surveyed damage at an elementary school in Tel Aviv after a missile attack from Yemen.

Air defenses partially intercepted the missile, but debris collapsed a portion of the school. No casualties were reported.

SOUND: [Houthi missiles]

Also on Thursday, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen released a video which claims to show two hypersonic missiles blasting off taking aim at targets in the Israeli port city of Jaffa.

But Israeli jets were already in the air launching their own strikes in Yemen. The Israeli military says it carried out strikes on ports and energy sites targeting infrastructure the Houthis used to stage attacks in the Red Sea.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister says the Houthis are learning a hard lesson that anyone who harms Israel will pay a very heavy price.

Mangione extradition » Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down the CEO of United Healthcare on a Manhattan sidewalk landed in New York City on Thursday.

He was cuffed and shackled in an orange jumpsuit. And he was flanked by investigators, who walked him slowly to another port, where he was then taken here to the federal courthouse.

He faces numerous charges, including murder “in the furtherance of terrorism.”

Mayor Eric Adams:

ADAMS: This act of terrorism and the violence that stems from it is something that will not be tolerated in this city.

Mangione previously fought extradition from Pennsylvania, where he also faces weapons charges. But he dropped those objections on Thursday. His lawyer, Thomas Dickey, explained …

DICKEY:  We're ready to do this now. Uh, we didn't do it before because we weren't ready. Today was the day to do it. This is in his best interest.

And Mangione now faces federal charges as well. The feds have charged him with stalking and murder including a murder by firearm charge that carries the possibility of the death penalty.

I'm Kent Covington.

What leads a troubled teen to bring a gun to school? That’s straight ahead on Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Word Play for December with George Grant.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 20th of December, 2024.

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.

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: Just an awful story, a deadly school shooting at a Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin. Lots of initial speculation, questions around possible gender-identity problems. And in batting that down, Madison police chief Shon Barnes just had to fan the flames.

BARNES: I don’t know whether Natalie was transgender or not. And quite frankly, I don’t think that’s even important. I don’t think that’s important at all. 
I don’t think that whatever happened today has anything to do with how she or he or they may have wanted to identify. And I wish people would kind of leave their own personal biases out of this …

So whether or not she was, he was, they were transgender is something that may come out later. But for what we’re doing right now today, literally eight hours after a mass shooting in a school in Madison, it is of no consequence.

Getting the pronouns right, even when it’s not the issue, my goodness, that is not how you stamp out that kind of thing.

But John, clearly, troubled young lady here, and shocking that we’ve got another female school shooter, and you read what is likely her twisted rationale for the attack.

What’d you take from it, do you trust it?

STONESTREET: Well, I read it the day of—the manifesto that was shared widely online. Of course, it’s really difficult to trust that. I did trust it, mainly because the same source also confirmed the name, the age, and the identity of the shooter six or seven hours before it was confirmed. Because we’re talking about a young woman who clearly had a very large engagement and involvement on social media. The identification was, I think, more quickly done that way than in other ways.

There’s so many aspects of this that elicit, I think, proper reactions. We were shocked by the incident itself. God help us the day that it no longer shocks us.

I think when you look at the manifesto, the question is, how could it be possible that anyone, much less a 15-year-old girl, could be so overwhelmed by hate, by pain, by alienation. For a girl to reach that, and by the way, we have lots of girls in our society that have reached that: We’ve seen the incredible spikes of despair and depression and anxiety and mental health struggles and identity problems of that demographic in the last 10 years. But oftentimes they do take the form of sexual experimentation or identity experimentation.

This was new. This was overwhelming. She hated people, she hated herself, she hated her parents. That spoke to me about another take on this, and I’m speaking specifically of the statement from President Biden and some other officials. I was just struck by how many people talk about, how is it that we can’t protect our children from these acts? It was a child who carried out the acts!

So often, when public officials, claiming government responsibility to “do something,” they talk about the act as if it were an act of natural evil instead of moral evil. They act as if it were like a tsunami that no one saw coming unexpectedly, as opposed to a completely alienated part of our demographic—the one that used to be filled, you know, with hope and wonder and adventure and all that now filled with despair, meaninglessness and an identity struggle.

We see that as an epidemic across America, and then we talk as if, wow, you know, “How can we not protect our kids?” The problem with saying, which we always say, “do something.” Well, do what?

You have to know what’s wrong, to know the right thing to do. You have to be clear on what to do, to know the right thing to do. You have to be clear on who should do it.

When you read this creed that this poor girl wrote, it is obvious that the government didn’t do this. It’s more obvious that the government can’t fix this.

It’s not in politics, it’s not in our policies. It’s in the power of God working in the lives of people, and that comes through the church, and that comes through the home, not through the state.

EICHER: RFK Jr was making the rounds in the Senate this week … trying to shore up support with senators ahead of his confirmation hearings for secretary of Health and Human Services … very large federal agency. The buzz is that he’s drawing praise from pro-life Republicans. Despite Kennedy’s past comments on abortion … very inconsistent—ranging from supporting the right to abortion even up to full term, to expressing concern about the high number of abortions. But he’s assured pro-life senators that he will enforce Trump’s pro-life policies if confirmed. That includes reinstating the Mexico City Policy, barring federal funds for organizations that promote abortion, and restoring conscience protections for healthcare providers. What do you make of it?

STONESTREET: Yeah. I mean, look, I think Kennedy has sparked an overdue and an important conversation about health, about the healthcare industry. This is all coming out of the COVID chaos. But his views on abortion have troubled me from the very beginning.

It is encouraging to me that the Mexico City Policy will be reinstated and he will not fight that. I mean, listen, if there’s one thing we should not export around the world, it is the sexual revolution. But that is our number one export, not only from the media we send, but by basically tying things like abortion and transgender ideology and everything else to federal funding.

That’s an important part of this. If the Mexico City Policy is reinstated, that will have implications, not only whether, you know, we’re bribing abortion onto developing nations, but we’re bribing all the other sexual confusions that we export, right? I mean, these things come in a package deal. You know?

I think what’s clear is to get Kennedy’s endorsement, Trump promised him a lot. Kennedy asked for a lot, and Trump gave him everything.

The last thing I’ll say is I’m glad that we’re seeing more of Kennedy’s willingness to follow Trump’s agenda on life, but Trump’s agenda on life has not been consistent from the last term. You know, this is the same week that the former and future president said that he wanted to preserve access to the abortion pill, or more accurately, the abortion pill regimen. That’s a real problem, because that often comes along with binding the conscience of pharmacists, that comes along with states then passing legislation to ban abortion pill reversal, which has saved about 5,000 lives to the best that we know right now.

That’s a real problem, you know? So Trump’s not clear on this. I’m hoping the cabinet comes around the president, stabilizes his views on abortion, that that stabilizes the RNC views, that there’s some consistency that’s brought in there, and that Kennedy will follow that lead. But that’s a whole lot of pieces that have to be put in place first.

BROWN: Well John… moving from RFK to KBJ… that’s Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her Broadway debut.

She appeared in a couple of scenes in New York City for a one-night role written just for her. She called it the fulfillment of a life-long dream.

Look, if I’m honest I have to admit one of my bucket list items is to perform in a stage musical… so I get that.

What I also wonder about is her timing. She’s gotten a fair share of criticism and skepticism over her participation in a production that has so-called nonbinary and queer characters and storylines…just weeks after the Tennessee case on transgenderism. Does that make her an activist, John? What do you say?

STONESTREET: Well, you know, look, I think that the best explanation is the simplest one. I don’t know that it’s a problem that she performed in a stage musical or not. You know, we remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg became quite a pop culture celebrity before she died. Never anything like this. And I think it’s certainly, you know, fine to question the wisdom of jumping into something like this. But let’s be clear, this looks to us like Clarence Thomas or a conservative justice speaking for one of the religious liberty groups looks to the other side. In other words, the issue here is not the performance itself. Although I do think it is amazing that we’ve reached a point where this kind of a storyline is not considered uncouth or, you know, reserved for late-night cable television. This is kind of mainstream, and that tells you a whole lot about these ideas and the culture.

But I think what we’ve seen from the very beginning, from her confirmation hearings, where she refused to answer the question, "What is a woman?" She said she didn’t know the answer. We know that’s not true, but she has to say that. Because she’s a loyalist to a set of ideas, to a worldview, to a way of seeing life in the world. Doing something like this,I’m not sure that it would have occurred to her that it would be considered so far beyond the pale by so many. Was it? Yes. But that’s because the culture has moved that far, and this set of ideas about life in the world is so dominant for a big part of the population.

It is a moment. I mean, I think it’s a "you-are-here moment." It’s less about her and more about the wider culture itself.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, we don’t talk again until after Christmas … so God bless you, brother, and have a wonderful holiday!

STONESTREET: Thank you both, and have a wonderful Christmas celebration with your families. Thank you so much.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, December 20th.

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: what’s happening in theaters.

It wasn’t long ago that PG-13 superhero movies ruled the box office. But this year family-friendly movies have proven to be the big winners. Four of the top five released this year carried a milder PG. And this weekend two more highly anticipated family movies arrive in theaters.

EICHER: Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino on Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

COLLIN GARBARINO: This weekend, Disney returns to the pride lands with a prequel to The Lion King, telling the story of how Mufasa came to rule everything he could see from Pride Rock.

Let’s not call the 2019 version of The Lion King a live-action remake—maybe photorealistic works better. Regardless, it wasn’t a hit with critics who complained it didn’t break new ground. Fans, on the other hand, didn’t care, and the movie set records grossing 1.6 billion dollars world wide. This prequel breaks plenty of new ground, but I’m not sure I like the direction it takes.

MUFASA: Why are you following us?

SARABI: I was hoping to find my pride.

MUFASA: What happened to them?

SARABI: The outsiders happened.

In this story, the young Mufasa doesn’t come from a kingly family… In fact, he loses his family at the beginning of the movie. The lost lion cub is then adopted by another pride, gaining a new brother Taka who we all know will grow up to be the wicked Scar. But then Mufasa’s new family is attacked by a group of killer lions bent on conquering everything they come across.

MUFASA: Back to the trees.

TAKA: We’re trapped. We have to swim.

MUFASA: No! We have to fight.

TAKA: If we fight we die.

MUFASA: But if we swim we drown.

The two brothers embark on a quest to find a new home beyond the horizon where the circle of life is respected.

To be honest, I’m not a fan of this twist that makes Mufasa an adopted brother of Scar and makes both of them immigrants to the pride lands. It doesn’t jibe with some of the dialogue from the earlier films. And it doesn’t fit the original’s Hamlet-on-the-Serengeti feel.

Hamilton fans will be interested to know that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a half dozen original songs for this prequel. A few of them are quite good.

MUSIC: [I Always Wanted a Brother]

Some, however, fall flat due to weak vocal performances. Mads Mikkelsen, who plays the evil lion king pursuing Mufasa and Taka, is especially painful to listen to.

And speaking of these evil lions, they’re all white. Could that be some kind of commentary on European colonialism? I’m not sure.

RAFIKI: Sometimes, when the people most like you don’t love you, it is the hurt that can cause the greatest pain. And this pain can lead you to hate everything.

Mufasa offers muddled thinking on the nature of evil, and really just about everything else. The movie turns the circle of life into respecting others rather than dying and being born. It also takes swipes at patriarchy, and the youthful Mufasa seems dedicated to democracy rather than monarchy. But, you know, he still ends up being the lion king.

I guess the film’s OK, but it doesn’t really know what it’s about, and it somehow still manages to get a little preachy at the end.

However, the other big movie of the weekend definitely understood the assignment.

SONIC: Is this a race?

TAILS: You’re going down.

KNUCKLES: It is my destiny to claim the role of family champion, hedgehog.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 reunites the speedster from Sega’s video game franchise with his trusty friends Knuckles and Tails, along with their adopted human parents played by James Marsden and Tika Sumpter.

Earth is being threatened by a new super powered alien, and this one looks suspiciously like Sonic himself.

SONIC: Are you guys seeing this?

TAILS: He looks just like you.

KNUCKLES: Impossible.

SHADOW: You’re a colorful bunch.

SONIC: Uh. Excuse me. Why do you look like me?

Keanu Reeves voices Shadow, a teleporting hedgehog who can unleash enough chaos energy to destroy the planet.

SONIC: We don’t want to fight you.

KNUCKLES: Actually, Sonic, I would like to fight.

Jim Carrey also returns as Dr. Ivo Robotnik. Carrey’s over the top performance defines the film. If you like his brand of humor you’ll love Sonic 3, but if you don’t, you’ll want to steer clear since he gets about twice as much screen time as anyone else—partially due to his playing two members of the Robotnik family.

DOCTOR ROBOTNIK: It’s impossible.

GRANDPA ROBOTNIK: Is it?

DOCTOR ROBOTNIK: It couldn’t be.

GRANDPA ROBOTNIK: Couldn’t it?

DOCTOR ROBOTNIK: I’m…

GRANDPA ROBOTNIK: Are you?

This film is just 110 minutes of zany fast-paced adventure in which an adolescent blue hedgehog continually cracks jokes and makes pop culture references. It doesn’t gesture at any grand themes, other than the typical kids’ movie lesson that family and friends are important and that, if you can, you should try to save the world from utter destruction.

SHADOW: This ends now.

But of course, Sonic’s race won’t end with this film. An end credits scene introduces another colorful friend who will launch Sonic and the gang into their next fast-paced adventure.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: Word Play for December.

The word “paradox” means a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement that when explained proves to be true.

WORLD commentator George Grant describes that word in his unique way.

GEORGE GRANT: A paradox is the art of combining seemingly contradictory prepositions to declare a profound yet overlooked truth. It is a statement the seems to be opposed to common sense and yet is uncommonly true. It’s purpose is to reveal the wonder of truths that have been hidden from view.

The word comes to us from the Greek paradoxos, an adjective meaning “contrary to expectation,” combining the prefix para, meaning “beyond” with the verb dokein, meaning “to think.”

Carl Sandburg declared that paradox is “the secret doorway to truth.” It is most often used to startle us, to awaken us, to stir afresh our sense of wonder in a world where the most extraordinary things are the most common, mundane, and ordinary things: the engineering of elbows and knees, a baby’s laugh, a puppy’s breath, the morning fog, the smell of bacon, old love, the foolishness of worldly wisdom, the power of a simple word of encouragement, and the pealing of church bells on a Lord’s Day morn. The world is full of incongruous juxtapositions, that point to deeper, enduring truths.

Paradoxes abound in the Bible: “The first shall be last and the last shall be first;” “He who loves his life, shall lose it;” “He who humbles himself shall be exalted;” “Blessed is the meek for he shall inherit the earth;” We are called to be “in the world but not of it;” If we wish to see Heaven we must “become as little children;” We are to “delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships in persecutions, and in difficulties,” for when we are weak, only then are we strong.

G.K. Chesterton has been called the “Prince of Paradox.” He was a prolific 20th century journalist, novelist, poet, and reformer widely recognized as one of the most epigrammatic prose stylists in the entire literary canon. He was one of the chief inspirations for C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, T.S. Eliot, Dorothy Sayers, and a host of other writers. According to Google stats, next to Shakespeare he is the most frequently quoted writer in the English language. The reason is simple: in nearly every paragraph he wrote was a jaw-dropping paradox that left readers shaking their heads in bemusement and wonder. For instance, he asserted, “We do not live in the best of all possible worlds.” Instead, it is “the best of all impossible worlds.” After all, our existence and the existence of everything we see is an “astonishing miracle.” He quipped, “It takes a big man to know how small he is.” At the same time, he observed, “Pride is the sin of a small man who thinks he is big.” He said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” meaning that if a thing is worth doing, it is simply worth doing.

Maisie Ward, Chesterton’s biographer and friend asserted, “Some men are most moved to reform by hate, but Chesterton was most moved by love and nowhere does that love shine more clearly than in all that he wrote about Christmas.” Indeed, in Christmas reveals , the greatest and most remarkable paradox of all is revealed: He who was infinite, was yet an infant; He who was eternal, was yet born of a woman; He who was almighty, was yet nursing at His mother’s breast; He who was upholding the universe, was yet carried in His mother’s arms. Thus, Chesterton exclaimed, “Outrushing the depth of the fall of man is the height of the fall of God. Glory to God in the Lowest.”

During this Yuletide season, may we all exult in the wondrous paradox of the incarnation.

I’m George Grant.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, December 20th. 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. This Sunday marks the fourth, and last, week of Advent as Christians around the world remember—and prepare for—the coming of Christ.

WORLD correspondent Bonnie Pritchett has been our guide through the Music of Advent. We hope these pieces have enriched your own reflections this season.

BROWN: Bonnie will be back on Christmas Day with one more musical offering…celebrating the birth of Christ.

We’ve added today’s songs in our Spotify Playlist for you to enjoy. We’ve included the link to that in today’s transcript at wng.org/podcasts.

MUSIC: O RADIANT DAWN

LYRIC: O Radiant dawn, o radiant dawn…

BONNIE PRITCHETT: The tension between waiting for Christ to come while pleading for him to do so reverberates in this antiphonal piece called “O Radiant Dawn.”

LYRIC: Sun of Justice. Sun of Justice. Sun of Justice. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Come. Shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death…

British composer Sir James MacMillan drew from Isaiah’s prophecy for the brief 10 lines of text sung here by Apollo 5. Those few words are powerfully conveyed along dissonant chords that resolve in one final, hopeful word.

LYRIC: Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

MUSIC: WE WAIT

Have we learned from those who first heard his promise? Do we wait on God faithfully? Expectantly? Impatiently?

LYRIC: We for a break in the weather, the traffic, a line. We wait for the light of the morning, a truce in the fight. We wait for you. This month of endless night. Prepare you room for making all things right. We wait…

Songwriter Sara Groves recorded “We Wait” in 2019. The rhythm drives a lyrical list of what tests our impatience. But that changes when she sings about what we long for and what only God can provide in his time.

LYRIC: We wait for you this month of endless night. Prepare you room cathedrals made in time. We wait for peace and goodwill to all men. We wait to see the waiting is not vain. We wait… [FADE]

MUSIC: COME THOU LONG EXPECTED JESUS

In the opening line of “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” prolific hymn writer Charles Wesley basically says, “We’ve been waiting for so long.”

Waiting to be set free: Free from fear. Free from sin. We need rest.

LYRIC: Come thou long-expected Jesus, born to set they people free…

The band The Future of Forestry created this version of Wesley’s hymn in 2019 – again making the music as much a part of the story telling as the lyrics.

Wesley’s hymn continues its hopeful plea in the second verse by addressing the one who made – and will keep – his promises.

LYRIC: Israel’s strength and consolation, hope of all the Earth thou art. Dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart…

For WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Caleb Welde, Josh Schumacher, Kim Henderson, Andrew Belz, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Oduah, Mary Muncy, Ray Hacke, Lindsay Mast, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, George Grant, and Bonnie Pritchett.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Mark Mellinger, Lynde Langdon, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, and Christina Grube.

Thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producers are Paul Butler, Kristen Flavin, and Harrison Watters with assistance from Lauren Dunn and Benj Eicher.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” —Proverbs 9:10

Be sure and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s Day! And, Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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