The World and Everything in It - December 6, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Great to hear from our friend Stefan!

Legal Docket today: The U.S. Supreme Court considers a direct challenge to a state law that bans abortions before viability.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat. We will analyze the November jobs report just out.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, what happened after a man got to read his own obituary.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, December 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Now the news. Here’s Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Warning of sanctions against Russia » President Biden will hold a virtual meeting with his Russian counterpart on Tuesday.

Top of the agenda: Russia’s troop buildup on the border with Ukraine. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin downplayed concern over possible military action.

AUSTIN: I think he knows President Putin very well. Again, I think there’s a lot of space here for diplomacy and leadership to work.

Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, told Fox News Sunday President Biden needed to send a clear and strong message.

ERNST: It’s hard to know what Vladimir Putin is thinking and what his true intentions are. But we do see a very aggressive action on his part, amassing his troops on the Ukrainian border. So, we must prepare for the worst, not knowing what those intentions are.

Last week, President Biden said his administration had developed a “comprehensive and meaningful” set of initiatives to make it difficult for Putin. Those likely include sanctions.

Washington already enforces financial penalties on Russian entities and individuals over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. But it has yet to block international banking transactions, a move that could cripple Russia’s economy.

Omicron spreads to one-third of U.S. states » The omicron variant of the coronavirus is spreading rapidly across the country. Health officials have so far detected it in about one-third of U.S. states.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told ABC News those numbers will continue to grow.

WALENSKY: You know we have several dozen cases, and we’re following them closely. And we are every day hearing about more and more probable cases. So that number is likely to rise.

So far the omicron variant does not appear to be causing an increase in hospitalizations. But Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told Fox News Sunday doctors don’t yet know enough about it.

MURTHY: I certainly am concerned about the possibility that this is going to spread more easily than other variants that we’ve seen to date. And we’ve got to get more data, like I said, to understand the exact extent of that. But I do think it’s a reason for us, not necessarily to panic, but just to be more vigilant.

Delta remains the dominant variant in the United States. It makes up more than 99 percent of recorded cases. And it’s driving a surge of hospitalizations in the north.

Parents of MI school shooter arrested » The parents of a teenager accused of killing four classmates at a Michigan high school last week are also behind bars.

James and Jennifer Crumbley disappeared Friday after prosecutors charged them with involuntary manslaughter. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said a fugitive task force found them early Saturday hiding in a commercial art studio in Detroit.

BOUCHARD: So they are in our jail, all three of them, the son and both parents. They are segregated, each individually, in isolation.

Prosecutors say the Crumbleys ignored warning signs that could have prevented their son’s attack. School officials called them just hours before the shooting after a teacher found a disturbing drawing at the teen’s desk. They told the Crumbleys to get counseling for the boy but his parents resisted taking him out of school.

District officials have asked the Michigan attorney general’s office to investigate the events that led up to the shooting at Oxford High School.

The Crumbleys have pleaded not guilty and insisted they intended to turn themselves in after meeting with their lawyers on Saturday morning.

Former Sen. Bob Dole dies at 98 » Flags are flying at half-mast today in honor of former Republican senator and war hero Bob Dole.

Dole fought in World War II and suffered injuries that left his right arm paralyzed. But he went on to have a long career in politics, representing his home state of Kansas on Capitol Hill for nearly 36 years.

He was known as a shrewd and pragmatic negotiator who played key roles in developing tax policy, farm and nutrition programs, and protections for the disabled.

But his political success did not extend to the national stage. He made three unsuccessful attempts at the presidency, losing the last time to Bill Clinton in 1996.

Once out of office, Dole dedicated his time to helping veterans. He pushed for the construction of the World War II Memorial. And he regularly met with veterans there well into his 90s.

In 1997, Congress awarded him the National Medal of Honor. During his acceptance speech, Dole recalled moments when politics was at its best, citing the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

DOLE: The moral challenges of our time can seem less clear. But they still demand conviction and courage and character. They still require young men and women with faith in our process. They still demand idealists captured by the honor and adventure of service. They still demand citizens who accept responsibility and who defy cynicism, affirming the American faith and renewing her hope. They still demand the president and congress to find real unity in the public good. If we remember this, then America will always be the country of tomorrow, where every day is a new beginning, and every life is an instrument of God’s justice.

Bob Dole died Sunday at his home in Kansas. He was 98 years old.

I’m Kristen Flavin. Straight ahead: Mississippi’s challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Plus, the obituary responsible for the Nobel Prizes.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday, December 6th, 2021. You’re listening to The World and Everything in It and we thank you for listening in. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. We are kicking off today our December Giving Drive with a goal to repeat what we did last year and it’s ambitious. We will need your help and God’s blessing on our efforts.

Let me begin with a word of encouragement from last month. As we told you before November ended, we did hit our goal with all-new donors, using all the match, and the bonus, and then some

REICHARD: I remember saying that and asking on that last day of the new donor drive, hey don’t be discouraged from giving if you hear we hit the goal and then decide not to, please give anyway and put an exclamation point on the November campaign. And I’m so happy to say it was a thundering exclamation point—our biggest day ever.

EICHER: Truly a vote of confidence from you and if you were a first-time giver this year—thank you. I think you’ll be happy to know that we exceeded the number of first-time donors over last year. We had slightly fewer than 700 new donors last year and the number grew by more than 20 percent this year, so again, thank you and welcome aboard. We couldn’t do this work without your support.

That is a great jolt of encouragement as we begin our December Giving Drive this year. I’ll invite you to track the progress online at WNG.org/donate and pray for the success.

REICHARD: Right, we’re excited and a little nervous at the same time. We do need your help in keeping this mission going, but also expanding it, and we’ll talk during the month about the work we’ve been doing with news reporting and opinion for adults and families with students to help more and more people navigate this world with Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires. We want to carry that on and we can only do it as you help us do it. So please if you can support us, visit WNG.org/donate and make as generous a gift as you can in support of our work.

EICHER: Well, let’s do that work. It’s time for Legal Docket.

REICHARD: Let’s.

AUDIO: Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Roe v Wade has got to go...Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho Roe v Wade has got to go…

WOMAN: I’m here today because I think abortion hurts both the unborn and it hurts women.

WOMAN: I’m here today because I believe a woman’s right to choose her future, her destiny, her reproductive healthcare, is a fundamental right.

EICHER: Emotions high outside the Supreme Court last Wednesday, the day the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a direct challenge to the court’s abortion precedents.

Inside the courtroom, the usual procedure and call to order:

ROBERTS: We will hear argument this morning in Case 19-1392, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization.

The case confronts what the Supreme Court did in 1973 when it decided Roe v Wade. The court held that states cannot ban abortion before viability. That’s considered the time when a child is capable of living outside the womb.

Later in Planned Parenthood v Casey the court affirmed Roe and added a new standard for courts to determine whether a state abortion law “unduly burdens” a woman who seeks to abort prior to viability.

REICHARD: A law from Mississippi passed in 2018 now challenges Roe and Casey. It bans abortions after 15 weeks gestation, before viability, which is considered to be around 24 weeks. The law has exceptions for the mother’s life or fetal abnormality. But it’s in direct conflict with court precedent.

EICHER: So Mississippi’s only licensed abortion business and one doctor sued to challenge the law.

The only legal question here is whether that law is unconstitutional.

REICHARD: Three lawyers argued the case. We’ll hear from all three, but begin first with Scott Stewart. Stewart argued on behalf of Mississippi in defense of its law and against abortion:

STEWART: Roe versus Wade and Planned Parenthood versus Casey haunt our country. They have no basis in the Constitution. They have no home in our history or traditions. They've damaged the democratic process. They've poisoned the law. They've choked off compromise. For 50 years, they've kept this Court at the center of a political battle that it can never resolve.

Later, abortion facility lawyer Julie Rikelman argued against Mississippi:

RIKELMAN: Mississippi's ban on abortion two months before viability is flatly unconstitutional under decades of precedent. Mississippi asks the Court to dismantle this precedent and allow states to force women to remain pregnant and give birth against their will.

Rikelman gave three reasons why the court shouldn’t overturn Roe and Casey. One, stare decisis, meaning, stand by things already decided. Two: those decisions prevent the state from commandeering a woman’s body to carry a child to term, and three:

RIKELMAN: ...eliminating or reducing the right to abortion will propel women backwards. Two generations have now relied on this right, and one out of every four women makes the decision to end a pregnancy.

Rikelman said this pre-viability abortion ban hurts the poor and the ignorant. Those who can’t afford contraception or don’t even recognize they’re pregnant.

A third lawyer who also argued against the abortion law: US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, on behalf of the federal government. She warned of severe consequences should the court overrule Roe and Casey:

PRELOGAR: Nearly half of the states already have or are expected to enact bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, many without exceptions for rape or incest. 

Women who are unable to travel hundreds of miles to gain access to legal abortion will be required to continue with their pregnancies and give birth, with profound effects on their bodies, their health, and the course of their lives. The Court has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society.

In a nutshell, on the pro-life side: abortion isn’t in the Constitution. Roe and Casey made bad law and they’ve kept the court in a political battle it should not have entered into in the first place. Therefore, the court ought to overturn.

On the pro-choice side: precedent matters. The court must stand by it. A woman has a right to her own body and a fundamental interest to participate in society, free from pregnancy.

Some debate centered around what is or isn’t in the Constitution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor waved aside Mississippi’s argument that abortion isn’t in there. She references a case from 1803, Marbury v Madison.

SOTOMAYOR: Counsel, there's so much that's not in the Constitution, including the fact that we have the last word. Marbury versus Madison. There is not anything in the Constitution that says that the Court, the Supreme Court, is the last word on what the Constitution means. It was totally novel at that time. And yet, what the Court did was reason from the structure of the Constitution that that's what was intended.

Justice Stephen Breyer wondered about harm to the Court itself if it overturns precedent:

BREYER: To overrule under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason, to reexamine a watershed decision, would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question.

Yet as other justices pointed out, the court has overturned many other bad decisions.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh listed several of them, including Plessy v Ferguson in 1896. That decision said separate but equal education for black and white students didn’t violate the Constitution.

Then 58 years later in Brown v Board of Education, the court said it did.

Listen to his exchange with Rikelman, lawyer for the abortion facility:

KAVANAUGH: ...why then doesn't the history of this Court's practice with respect to those cases tell us that the right answer is actually a return to the position of neutrality and not stick with those precedents in the same way that all those other cases didn't?

RIKELMAN: Because the view that a previous precedent is wrong, Your Honor, has never been enough for this Court to overrule...

Rikelman went on to say a special justification is needed to overturn precedent. Just being wrong isn’t enough. Here, Mississippi hasn’t mentioned any special justification.

Justice Kavanaugh clarified a point made by Stewart for Mississippi:

KAVANAUGH: The Constitution’s neither pro-life nor pro-choice on the question of abortion, but leaves the issue to the people of the states or perhaps Congress to resolve in the democratic process.

To require the Supreme Court to pick sides in such a contentious social debate is the core problem, he said.

Justice Samuel Alito first brought up the unborn person’s interest in having a life, and that that interest doesn’t change from pre-viable to post-viable.

But Rikelman grounded her argument almost wholly in precedent.

Perhaps she understood she can’t convince certain justices that unborn life isn’t worthy of protection. So she emphasized how women have come to rely on Roe and Casey. That’s not changed over the past half century.

For Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one thing that has changed is who sits on the Supreme Court.

She aimed this observation at her fellow justices:

SOTOMAYOR: The newest ban that Mississippi has put in place, the six-week ban, the Senate sponsors said we're doing it because we have new justices on the Supreme Court. Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

Stewart for Mississippi answered that if the court doesn’t want to look political, it should stay Constitutional in its decisions. Stare decisis analysis can’t honestly apply here, because one of the analytical factors is that the case law is “workable.”

But Roe and Casey haven’t worked. Nobody even knows what “undue burden” means.

Stewart also brought up medical knowledge and advancements in understanding the lives of the unborn.

Justice Sotomayor:

SOTOMAYOR: What are the advancements in medicine?

STEWART: I think it's an advancement in knowledge and concern about such things as fetal pain, what we know the child is doing and looks like and is fully human from a very early --

SOTOMAYOR: You know --

STEWART: I'm sorry.

SOTOMAYOR: -- a gross minority of doctors who believe fetal pain exists before 24, 25 weeks, it's a huge minority and one not well founded in science at all. So I don't see how that really adds anything to the discussion.

Side note here: in an online discussion, law professor Sherif Girgis pointed out that reducing fetal pain isn’t the strongest argument, because states can easily require the unborn be anesthetized prior to causing death.

Justice Sotomayor said this is really just a religious debate. Then she compared the unborn to brain dead people:

SOTOMAYOR: There's about 40 percent of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil. There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So I don't think that a response by a fetus necessarily proves that there's a sensation of pain or that there's consciousness.

Surmising about fetal sensation or the court’s legitimacy didn’t appear to sway the other justices.

Legal doctrine captured their interest. Such as whether viability is a legitimate legal line to draw.

Chief Justice John Roberts:

ROBERTS: Because viability, it seems to me, doesn't have anything to do with choice. But, if it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?

Another side note about gestational time: Washington Post fact checkers concluded in 2017 that the United States is one of “only seven countries that allow elective abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.”

Those countries include North Korea, China, Vietnam, Canada, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

Chief Justice Roberts cast about for a way to uphold both Roe and Mississippi’s 15 week ban. But that didn’t seem to attract a majority of justices, and to do so would gut Roe’s viability line anyway.

To my mind, Justice Amy Coney Barrett had the most novel take.

She acknowledged that an unwanted pregnancy infringes on a woman’s bodily autonomy. But that’s of limited duration: nine months of pregnancy, versus the decades long obligations of parenting.

Barrett points to Safe Haven laws in every state that prevent parents from landing into legal trouble for voluntarily giving up a newborn. What are these laws? Basically they’re drop boxes for babies. Parents who can’t handle the burden of parenthood can abandon their responsibility legally, so long as they place the child into one of these safe havens.

BARRETT: So it seems to me, seen in that light, both Roe and Casey emphasize the burdens of parenting, insofar as you and many of your amici focus on the ways in which forced parenting, forced motherhood, would hinder women's access to the workplace and to equal opportunities. It's also focused on the consequences of parenting and the obligations of motherhood that flow from pregnancy. Why don't the Safe Haven laws take care of that problem?

Because, Rikelman answered, pregnancy makes unique demands on women and their ability to work. Then her legal counterpart Prelogar went further as to what women don’t want:

PRELOGAR: ...not being forced to endure childbirth and to have a child out in the world...

That’s a new one for me: that a woman may not want to “have a child out in the world.”

Prelogar for the government warned that if the court throws out these precedents, other rights could be undone, like contraceptive use and same-sex marriage. Those decisions also came about under the analysis under the “right to privacy”—words you will not find in the text of the Constitution.

But Stewart for Mississippi assured the court that those decisions aren’t the same.

National Review noted that progressives have changed their arguments over time. Under Roe, it was the right to privacy; under Casey, it was personal autonomy; now in Dobbs, it’s equality under the law, for women to be able to participate in the workplace on equal footing with men. But this idea that we “force” women to remain pregnant is odd; it’s the nature of a biological process at work, much like digestion. You eat, you digest. No coercion involved in it. Doing what bodies are designed to do.

One brief attached images of unborn children. The doctors who filed that brief pointed out that medical science moves viability to earlier and earlier in pregnancy. Just last year, a boy was born in Alabama at just 21 weeks gestation and today is 17 months old. So a viability “line” is arbitrary.

Mississippi needs 5 votes to win. Even if it does, abortion won’t necessarily end across the nation. The matter is more likely to return to the individual states. Some states will protect abortion up to the moment of birth. Other states will protect the unborn down to the moment of conception.

The nine justices are only human, too. They’ll be under enormous pressure over the next several months.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A man in New Zealand was out hoeing his garden when he struck something big and tough buried in the soil. At first, he thought it might be some kind of weird gigantic fungus.

So Colin Craig-Brown and his wife Donna persisted. The audio here from a New Zealand news site called “Stuff.”

COLIN: We were just pokin’ around over there pullin’ out weeds. And once I dug it up, it was just a massive potato. I just couldn't believe it. We both couldn't believe it. Had a taste and it was the real deal.

The real deal—the big, heavy, real deal: 17 pounds! That beat the standing record at the time, up to that point, of 11 pounds. So this spud beat that spud by 6 pounds.

So big the couple even named it!

COLIN: Yeah, he's named Doug. Yeah, we well, we dug up the potato. So yeah. 

DONNA: That's a good name for it. Isn't it? 

COLIN: Yeah, potato has been dug. (laughs)

Colin built a little trolley to tote Doug around town as the minor celebrity spud he became.

But that’s soon to end. Doug’s losing weight.

COLIN: Yeah, but he shrunk. 

DONNA: As he's dried out, he's got a bit lighter. Yeah, Yeah. (both laugh)

All in good fun. Colin and Donna’s only advice to grow a big tater? Get some straw and cow manure. Wait long enough, see what happens.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now for our weekly conversation and commentary on business, markets, and the economy. Financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen joins us. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: How about we begin with the November jobs report—just out from the Labor Department on Friday, a little bit over 200,000 jobs added back into the economy, but the number was not in line with expectations and a far cry from the averages this year. How do you read it?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I was actually encouraged by one part, which is the part I probably care most about, which was to see the labor participation force grow. And yet, you know, the discouraging part besides the headline number of expecting 550,000 and getting less than half of that in terms of new jobs created. You know, obviously, that's the focus is that there were a lot less jobs created last month. But I think that seeing, you know, several 100,000 people come back into the workforce is encouraging. So it was more of a mixed result than the headline may appear. There was some good news, but there was certainly some bad news. And I think objectively, we have to take both together. But that mismatch of people coming back into the workforce, yet not finding new work, that really just has to be attributed to that skills mismatch that continues to exist. The jobs that were having the hardest time filling, are because we simply don't have the labor force with the requisite skills to fill them.

EICHER: Could you help, David, I think it’s important to define terms. We’ve been hearing a lot about the Federal Reserve and its policy of “tapering” and the speculation whether the Fed will taper more quickly or more slowly. Help us understand what’s meant by “tapering.”

BAHNSEN: Okay, so you can't define ‘taper’, a verb, unless you define what the verb is referring to. And that is quantitative easing. And so quantitative easing is the process of the Federal Reserve buying bonds from banks with money that doesn't exist. So they're crediting the bank the cash for the bonds they buy, and they're taking the bonds onto their balance sheet. And it is a way of producing liquidity into the system, building up excess reserves at the banks, and it does have the effect, when they're buying, of theoretically putting downward pressure on bond yields. Now, the tapering just simply refers to slowing down the pace of those, but the end of the tapering, it means they've stopped doing it. And that's where we're headed at some point, I suspect in the spring of next year that they will stop altogether. So they began tapering the bond purchases of quantitative easing round three, which was the real big one post financial crisis, the end of 2013, and they stopped by 2014. And then they didn't do any quantitative easing from the end of 2014 all the way to COVID - that was over five years. And then at some point in the middle there, they were doing quantitative tightening - they were letting bonds mature, and not reinvesting them. And that's when President Trump got very irritated with Jay Powell because they were actually reducing the liquidity of the balance sheet. And it went really well for a couple years. And then you may recall in late 2018, the credit markets kind of responded negatively. And all of a sudden in 2019, Chairman Powell stopped and they started cutting rates again, and all those things. So all we're talking about right now, is this emergency quantitative easing that they began doing during COVID, that they're tapering off of that. They're not going to be doing quantitative tightening, meaning they're not going to be reducing the size of the balance sheet. But as long as they're tapering, they're still adding more liquidity in the system, just at a slower pace.

EICHER: And then, understanding that, I read lots of these stories, and suspect the WORLD listener may see these stories, too—how the financial press interprets economic data points like the jobs number we talked about at the top and its connection to the Fed’s tapering of bond purchases.

I want to read a few headlines and get your thoughts:

Declining Jobless Rate Keeps Fed on Track to Accelerate Taper

… Weak Jobs Data May Slow Fed Taper

… Fed [Governor] Not Fazed By Disappointing Job Headline, Still Wants Faster Taper

I could point to story after story. What do you make of it?

BAHNSEN: It makes me feel really bad for people that are dependent on getting their news from the mainstream press. Now, if all they were trying to say is that perhaps jobs numbers good or bad, give Chairman Powell an excuse or a spin for something he may do or not do, there can be some prima facie acceptability to that. But the notion that tapering has anything to do with the jobs picture, and that by accelerating quantitive easing we help the jobs market and by slowing it, we hurt the jobs market, it is just completely absurd. There is no economic benefit at all right now to quantitative easing. In the course of a financial freeze up that we were experiencing financial crisis, we were experiencing in the initial part of the COVID moment, people can debate it, but I obviously understand what their reasoning is to provide a lot of extra liquidity in the financial system when there was the freeze up of our entire credit markets, banking system, etc. The notion that jobs are connected right now to tapering is totally fallacious. And I think most of the media commentators now are focusing on whether or not Chairman Powell will begin raising interest rates next year, because even they know that the tapering issue is a foregone conclusion. Quantitative easing is done. Will they end it in June versus April? I don't know. I don't care if they end it tomorrow, it would have no impact on anything economic or even financial markets, in my opinion. But the Fed doesn't like to surprise markets, and they've told the market they're going to be doing it next spring or so. And so I think that they will. But the interest rate is the more important variable. And I don't believe that the Fed is really heavily leaning towards aggressively raising rates anytime soon. So I think that there's a couple different conversations that the media tends to kind of contaminate together that don't necessarily belong. But when we hear the news and listeners to WORLD hear this, it's very important to understand that there are things happening from the Fed that are not pertinent to the real economy. And in my opinion tapering is at the top of that list.

EICHER: All right! David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. He writes at dividendcafe.com. Sign up there for his daily email newsletter. Thank you David.

BAHNSEN: Nick, before we go, I know that the fundraising campaign is underway, and I just want to say I think it's fantastic. I hope people will really support this endeavor. It is just so important, and I love what WORLD’s doing. I know so many listeners do and I hope they'll get really behind this endeavor.

EICHER: Well, thanks for saying that, and again, appreciate your analysis each week here. See you next time!

BAHNSEN: Thanks for having me, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, December 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up, the WORLD History Book. Today, a holiday fish dish with historical origins, opening day for spycraft training, and a dynamite awards ceremony. Here’s senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: What do Mother Teresa, Albert Einstein, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have in common? It’s not the set-up for a bad joke. All three are Nobel Prize recipients. And the Nobel Committees selected the first Nobel laureates 120 years ago, on December 10th, 1901.

Alfred Nobel was something of a polymath, excelling at poetry and languages as well as chemistry and other sciences. He held 355 patents in his lifetime, among them, the patent for dynamite.

That invention paved the way for mining and infrastructure advancements, and made Nobel a wealthy man. He invested much of his wealth into weapons manufacturing. When his brother Ludwig died in 1888, newspapers erroneously announced Alfred’s death, calling him a war profiteer. Simon Whistler of Biographics on YouTube shares more.

WHISTLER: As a result, Novel had the rare experience of reading his own obituary. What he read, it shocked him to his core. Virtually every newspaper that he looked at seemed to glory in his supposed demise. One French headline announced, “The merchant of death is dead.”

Nobel—very much still alive—determined to change that legacy. He bequeathed his fortune to establish the Nobel Prize, honoring those who benefited humankind in the fields of physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature, and peace. Winners receive a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash award that in 2020 amounted to just over a million dollars.

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded five years after Nobel’s actual death of a stroke at age 63.

SOT: The Norwegian Nobel committee has decided...

To date, Nobel committees have handed out awards 609 times to 975 people and organizations.

Moving from awards to wars.

Eighty years ago, on December 6th, 1941, Camp X opened in Canada, on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario, to begin training Allied secret agents for World War II. Officially dubbed Special Training School Number 103, it’s the most important spy incubator you’ve never heard of. David Stafford is an author who has written on Camp X.

STAFFORD: The British needed the Americans to join in the secret war, and the hook was Camp X.

Britain and Canada jointly ran the camp. The work was so secret, even Canada’s prime minister didn’t know about the facility. Part of its purpose was to train U.S. spies—even though at the time it opened, the Neutrality Act prohibited the United States from direct involvement in the war.

The camp opened one day before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. In early 1942, American agents began training at the highly classified facility. They learned tricks of the trade, like fighting armed and unarmed, killing silently, and sowing chaos through espionage, sabotage, and subversion. Colonel Frank Gleason was among those early U.S. secret agents trained by British operatives.

GLEASON: I’m sure the British intelligence really looked down their noses at us in the beginning, and it was true!

But, they caught on. By war's end, Camp X personnel had trained between 500 and 2,000 Allied agents for overseas missions, behind enemy lines.

The camp closed at the end of the war, and the buildings came down in 1969. But, beyond its direct wartime impact, Camp X made an impact on culture… Children’s book author Roald Dahl was stationed at Camp X for a period. Screenwriter Paul Dehn, who wrote spy movies like Goldfinger and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold served as a British officer there. And, James Bond creator Ian Fleming allegedly trained at Camp X, later saying he modeled the character of Bond after Canadian Camp X director William Stephenson.

MUSIC: KLARA SOLEN PÅ HIMMELEN DEN LYSER

For our final entry, a brief look at an unusual Christmas tradition. December 9th is Anna’s Day in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. And since the most popular female name in Sweden is Anna, plenty of people are celebrating.

But, what does any of this have to do with Christmas? Well, Anna’s Day is also known as Lutefisk Day. It marks the start of the preparation process of the lutefisk—a whitefish, pickled in lye, traditionally eaten on Christmas Eve. It’s dehydrated, then rehydrated, and the result is a gelatinous, fishy dish full of Christmas cheer… ?

And Scandinavians have their Viking forebears to thank for it. Legend goes: Vikings burned down a fishing village—including shelves of drying cod. When the villagers returned, ash covered the fish. It rained, and the rainwater and ash resulted in a lye slurry. The surprised villagers saw that the dried fish looked like fresh fish. They rinsed the cod, boiled it, and were brave enough to eat it. Waste not, want not, I guess.

It’s fairly popular in Wisconsin and Minnesota, too. An old joke says about half the Norwegians who immigrated to America did so to flee the dreaded lutefisk, and the other half came to evangelize about how wonderful lutefisk is.

SONG: LUTEFISK

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: homeless students. We’ll tell you how schools are managing the growing problem of families without stable housing.

And, December’s Classic Book of the Month.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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