The World and Everything in It: February 16, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hi. My name is Isabella Ridgway. I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I work at my local YMCA as a fitness instructor. I love to listen to The World and Everything in It as I walk my dog and commute to work. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Super Bowl commercials about Jesus, what the church offers desperate people, and can you love your pets too much?

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Also, fighting the fight of faith with poetry. Plus, contenders for the Oscars’ best animated film of 2023.

NIMONA: Our chariot awaits.

BRAVEHEART: What the heck was that? And you never said you could turn into me!

And this month’s Word Play with George Grant.

BROWN: It’s Friday, February 16th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: National security threat » The Biden administration has confirmed reports that the serious national security threat intelligence officials are warning about is indeed a Russian anti-satellite weapon.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken:

BLINKEN: This is not an active capability. But it is a potential one that we’re taking very, very seriously.

At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby echoed those remarks. But he also sought to downplay the threat.

KIRBY: We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on Earth.

He added that an anti-satellite weapon could have …

KIRBY: Some impact on services here on Earth across the world.

But analysts say Kirby’s suggestion that the threat is merely some impact on services  dances around the fact that Russia is building a weapon of war.

John Hardie with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies said Russia’s goal is not to knock out your Google Maps navigation.

HARDIE: Satellites are integral to U.S. military operations, and the Russians know that. In the event of a potential conflict, they want to be able to render us deaf and blind, crippling our ability to respond to Russian aggression.

And that technology, if deployed, has the potential to significantly neutralize America’s military might.

SOUND: [Gaza war]

Israeli raid - Gaza hospital » In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces continue to battle Hamas militants.

SOUND: [Gaza war]

Israeli special forces raided Gaza’s largest functioning hospital on Thursday.

Chief military spokesman Daniel Hagari:

HAGARI: We have credible intelligence from a number of sources, including from released hostages, indicating that Hamas held hostages at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and that there may be bodies of our hostages in the Nasser Hospital facility.

Hagari called Israel’s operation inside the hospital precise and limited and said Israel would not forcibly evacuate patients or staff.

Inside the hospital video appears to show dismal conditions – with patients in beds lining the corridors.

Hagari said Israel has helped deliver medical supplies and equipment to the facility.

But The Associated Press is reporting that one patient was killed and six others wounded by Israeli fire hours before the raid.

Fani Willis » Inside a courthouse in Atlanta on Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis denied she’s done anything wrong.

WILLIS: You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.

Willis is currently prosecuting Donald Trump and numerous co-defendants. And lawyers for Trump and others say Willis hired her romantic partner Nathan Wade to work on the prosecution, and that, among other things, the couple may have taken vacations with the money paid to him.

Willis insists that while Wade booked trips for the couple, she always paid him back in cash.

WILLIS: I’ve only given him cash, as I mentioned, three or four times. There’s no ledger. This is friends handing money off to each other.

Willis and Wade testified that they became romantically involved after Willis hired him to work on the case. But a former coworker refuted that testimony.

Defense attorneys are asking the judge to remove Willis from the case.

Trump hush money case » Meantime, in New York a criminal case against Trump will go to trial on March 25th. The case surrounds accusations that Trump violated campaign laws by allegedly paying hush money related to an extramarital affair.

The judge in that case denied the former president’s request to delay the trial.

TRUMP: I’m running for election. How can you run for election and be sitting in a courthouse in Manhattan all day long?

Trump maintains he’s done nothing wrong and that the case is politically motivated.

Trump NATO / France » While speaking outside the New York courtroom, Trump also doubled down on a controversial comment he made last weekend. He told reporters yesterday that other NATO member nations are not paying their fair share into the alliance’s defense budget.

TRUMP: And it’s much more important to them because we have an ocean in between. So NATO countries have to pay up.

Last weekend Trump suggested that if he’s reelected, the United States would not defend any NATO nation that doesn’t spend the required 2 percent of their GDP on defense. He added, in fact, I would encourage Russia to do whatever they want.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg reacted strongly to that remark.

STOLTENBERG: Any suggestion that we are not standing up for each other, that we’re not going to protect each other, that does undermine the security of all of us.

France this week announced it will meet its 2% target this year.

NATO expects 18 out of 31 allies to meet the commitment this year, up from only 11 in 2023.

FBI informant charged with lying about Hunter B. » The Justice Department has charged an FBI informant with lying to authorities about President Biden’s son, Hunter. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports:

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Alexander Smirnov reported in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million dollars each in 2015 or 2016. But prosecutors say that wasn’t true.

They also say Smirnov lied about the timing and significance of his own communications with Burisma.

Authorities indicted the 43-year-old on charges of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Kansas City shooting update » Police in Kansas City have released one of the three people detained in connection with Wednesday’s shooting at the Chiefs Super Bowl victory parade. They said the man was not involved in the shooting. Two juveniles, though, remained in custody.

Authorities said a gun battle appeared to stem from an argument between several people. The shootout killed one person and wounded more than 20.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, two-faced words on this month’s Word Play.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Friday the 16th of February, 2024. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

BROWN: John, the details are still coming in on Sunday’s shooting at Lakewood Church in Houston. The shooter was shot and killed by two off-duty officers providing security at the church.

Two people, one of them a child, was injured, the shooter’s son. Court records identify Genesse Moreno as female, despite multiple aliases including the name Jeffery. Of course, that led to questions about whether or not she identified as transgender. At the very least, she was troubled.

As we reported on WORLD Radio, Moreno attended Lakewood Church, and even donated to it.

A couple of observations John: Lakewood is a prosperity-teaching megachurch. Obviously Moreno needed more than that kind of teaching in her life.

Generally speaking, what role should the church play in meeting the physical, mental and spiritual needs of people?

STONESTREET: Well, it’s a great question. And it’s a tragedy, and you can’t actually blame this or any lack of on the church or the pastor, anyone who did anything like that. I have had my own criticisms of megachurches, particularly this one in the past. And I remember just about to speak at an event and a woman who had found Jesus out of a lesbian lifestyle. And one of the things that led her to Christ was the billboard of Lakewood Church, because it was so positive. That it was and you know, of course, that has way more to do with what God does to reach out to people than the excellencies of our strategies or the lack thereof.

But you know, I think what’s really important here is that there is a series obviously, of comorbidities in terms of mental illnesses. That’s something that we see associated with people who struggle with gender. That’s not a very popular thing to say, and I’m not trying to use this as kind of my wedge, in order to say this about this. This is something that’s not being said, that needs to be said. But beyond that, it’s an example of a culture of mental illness, a culture where people are not okay, at a degree that we’ve not yet seen. And, you know, so many people talk about being harmed and hurt by their background in the church. We need more people talking about being harmed and hurt by this expressive, individualistic secular culture that gives them no strong resources of a stable family, a stable sense of identity or anything else. And it’s expressing itself, I think, in two main forms.

One is the popularized phrase, so-called deaths of despair - addiction and suicidality - and we’re seeing such, you know, skyrocketing rates of things that would fit into that category. This falls into the category of acts of desperation, both a nonstop search to try to achieve an identity, to putting your own child at risk and acting out like this. And you can kind of see, too, that on the stock of the barrel, there was a, you know, a Palestine sticker. She had these other issues. You know, you have somebody just grasping for a cause, grasping for hope, grasping for anything. And the church has, I think, the ability right now, when everybody else is out of ideas, in grounding people with a sense of meaning, purpose, and value, and dignity.

So this is where the rubber hits the road, because we’ve talked about these issues. Like, well, Christianity grounds dignity and value and purpose, and atheism does not or secularism does not, and we’ve done it primarily in a theoretical way. In other words, let’s compare worldviews, and let’s compare what logically follows from this set of assumptions and that set of assumptions, which is exactly right. No one was wrong to do that. But I think now we’ve moved into the time where the theoretical has become existential. And we see example after example, where no, really people are struggling with meaninglessness. And when that happens, it takes these various forms of deaths of despair and acts of desperation. And who else has the ground of meaning other than the church. So this is a mission moment, I think.

MAST: Switching gears. Lots of talk this week about the Super Bowl, and its ads of course. I want to talk for a minute about one campaign in particular.

The “He Gets Us” ads ran for a total of 75 seconds over the course of the game. They cost an estimated 17.5 million dollars– that’s according to AdWeek.com.

I’ll paint the picture here: The longer of the two featured a slowed-down cover of a song called “Never Tear Us Apart” and images of one person washing the feet of someone they might seemingly be at ideological odds with.

They included a police officer, a pro-life advocate, a priest for a transgender individual, the list goes on.

The end of the ad featured the words: “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us.”

Opinions on this are all over the place. Some say they stopped short of telling the whole truth about what it means to experience Jesus. British pastor and content creator Jamie Bambrick made a response video called “He Saves Us.” It showed a number of prominent people who have experienced radical life changes after coming to Christ.

John, why did these ads strike such a nerve? And what is the right response in trying to make sense of them?

STONESTREET: Yeah, it’s a great question. When I first saw the “He Gets Us” campaign, and from the very beginning, I thought it was absolutely brilliant and genius, because it’s introducing Jesus to a group of people in a particular missional moment. And our missional moment is one where people don’t have that familiarity. Jesus gets mistaken for a Far East guru, Jesus gets mistaken for, you know, this kind of esoteric God sort of figure from a religion that’s not really true. Jesus, you know, gets considered a myth or, you know, just kind of whatever, and to actually introduce, you know, the humanity of Jesus in this way, I thought was an incredibly important campaign.

Some of the ads I thought were great, some of the ads I thought weren't. It was kind of a hit and miss thing. This Superbowl ad, I thought was a real miss. And it was a real miss because what it ended up saying I think was, you know, Jesus gets, you know, all of you who think Christians are the problem with the world. Jesus gets all of you who think that Christian morality is stifling of your radical individualism. Jesus, you know, gets all of you unless, you know, you’re on the right, whether theologically or politically. And so I think it undermined the message.

I think you can tell the wonderful story of how Jesus condescended to humanity, which was one of the most unique aspects of Christian theology, and its compelling nature to us that the God of the universe doesn’t just exist and has moral laws that we have to follow and we’ve broken, but that he has lived our life. And this is a point of emphasis in Scripture, something that Paul talks about, something that he's felt, all of the author of Hebrews, he’s been tempted in the same way. There’s a lot there that will bring people you know, potentially to Christ without having to go after Christians.

You asked specifically about the amazing turnaround on the “He Saves Us” commercial, which was like 24 hours later. And I thought, “Wow, that really is something,” and it, because I think it actually did some of the things that the better ads in the “He Gets Us” campaign does, first of all. 

And then secondly, I think, I think we’re in a moment where there’s probably more exhaustion from having kind of run into an unfettered life of rebellion against God that our culture allows, right? You don’t even have the cultural structures of family and kind of religious norms, or old fashioned cultural norms to keep you from making bad, you know, basically anything goes. And so there’s probably a lot more regret from the communities that we often consider our ideological enemies. And to actually just offer, you know what, this is a former lesbian activist, and look here, this is a former KKK member, and look here, this is a former, you know, fill in the blank. That’s compelling, because I think people know that the sin that they’ve entered has taken them away from their humanness, not to it, and that’s what restoration and redemption promises us.

So I was blown away by how quickly that was, was brought to the table and how great it was. It’s been shared on my social media feed about 8 million times. So I don’t know, you know, what the views are on that, but I’m excited. And you know, in a way you could just say that “He Saves Us” was a response to the “He Gets Us” so, you know, God is bringing out his truth in his own way. And, you know, I’m grateful that all the results belong to Him.

BROWN: For sure. John, I want to preface this last question with a question. Do you have a family pet?

STONESTREET: Not at the moment. Okay. I mean, not ones we plan on, we’ve got you know, bugs and some rabbits in the backyard, but you know, nothing we feed intentionally.

BROWN: Lindsay, what about you?

MAST: We currently have, we have one fish right now.

STONESTREET: You have one fish?

BROWN: One fish, okay. Okay. And we and I have a dog who belongs to my daughter who lives in our basement. So there we go. I asked that question because, John, you have some strong words in response to an article written in The Atlantic. Specifically, this assertion, and I’m gonna quote here from the article.

The writer says, “Pet owners deserve the same support systems that help people care for any loved ones. After all, psychologically, scientifically, the bonds humans forge with animals can feel as strong as the ones we make with each other, even those with family, even with our kids.”

As Americans, we are a huge culture of pet lovers, and they are amazing companions. So what’s the problem, John?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I got in a lot of trouble for a commentary on Breakpoint. So thank you so much for asking it so that the listeners to this podcast can also write in hate mail. But thankfully, those emails go to you and not to me.

Look, I don’t think that a relationship between humans and animals is the problem. I don’t think actually feeling affection and finding companionship in those relationships are in and of themselves a problem at all. In fact, in Christian history, it is Christians, most notably William Wilberforce. Here’s someone who stood for human dignity and also stood for the dignity of animals, and the treatment of animals and that it should be well. And that’s basically it has to come from the first three chapters of Genesis where you have a specific intent and purpose for living things that God put into the creation. He calls his creation good, even very good. And you have this relationship of care and so on.

The problem is, is we live in a culture that devalues humans. The problem is, is that we’re using pets as replacements. We actually use language where, you know, this article was actually calling for paw-ternity leave. In other words, when you get a new pet, you should get the same amount of time off work as someone who just had a baby. You know, we should have health insurance that is provided by employers at the same level. We have people that call their pets “fur babies.” Now, for some people that don’t mean anything by it. But you need to understand there’s a whole rising generation of young adults who actually don’t believe in family. Family is not a norm for them. It’s an abnormal thing. It’s something that’s a source of pain, not a source of good. And in their minds, pets actually are replacements for people and for children, they’ve made that choice.

But even listen to the line that you read: “Psychologically, scientifically, the bonds human forge with animals can feel as strong as the ones we make with each other.” So now we have that the substance of a relationship is based on feelings. What could go wrong with that picture? Well, what goes wrong is what we already know, which is when our feelings change, we walk away from relational commitments with other humans. So really, I think the problem with the Atlantic article, and their proposal in particular, is not that we’re even valuing pets too much, although some of the money we spend on them is pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, I think it is happening in a context in which we’re not valuing people, specifically the young and the elderly. And we’re not maintaining our commitments that we’ve made to each other relationally.

So, you know, I always go back to a story of a friend who said, you know, “Hey, last week, I walked up to the gate at the airport, and I saw a kid on a leash and a dog in a stroller,” and I thought that says it all right there. Look, I get why you put little dogs in strollers in airports, because they’re gonna get run over. And trust me, I have a six year old boy–if I didn’t mention that. I get why you put leashes on kids sometimes, you know, but the point is, is that we’ve got this got this backwards as a culture. And that’s not to say if you have a pet and he’s great that you don’t love them. Of course you do. And that’s okay.

MAST: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, February 16th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The good, the bad, and the animated.

Animated films used to be a staple of family viewing, but fewer of them are family friendly these days. Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino with a rundown on the Oscar nominees for best animated feature.

MUSIC: [“Life’s Incredible Again” from The Incredibles]

COLLIN GARBARINO: The Oscars have been around for almost a 100 years, but the category of Best Animated Feature only began in 2001. Of the 22 Oscars given out in this category, I think the Academy has a pretty good track record at picking the winner. Classics like The Incredibles, WALL-E, and Big Hero 6 definitely deserved the honor.

But here’s the thing. Just because the Academy usually figures out which animated film is the best of the year, doesn’t mean you can trust them when it comes to their nominees. Let’s take a look at this year’s slate to separate the dross from the gold.

MUSIC: [Boy and the Heron soundtrack]

First up, we have The Boy and the Heron from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. The movie’s rated PG-13 for cigarette smoking and some bloody scenes, but otherwise it’s family friendly, though perhaps a bit eerie at times. It’s a story about a boy’s journey into a magical world to save his mother. Young kids might get a bit impatient with the pacing. But older kids and adults can appreciate the thoughtfulness of a movie about longing and the impossibility of creating a perfect world for ourselves. The movie has beautiful animation and a haunting soundtrack. I give this one a thumbs up.

Next up, Pixar’s latest movie, Elemental. Pixar used to be a shoo-in to win best animated feature, but not so much anymore. Its recent movies haven’t had the same narrative punch as the classics. Elemental is another miss in my opinion. The movie follows the story of a water elemental who falls in love with a fire elemental. Naturally, they’ve got some obstacles to overcome.

EMBER: No, Wade. We can’t touch.

WADE: Maybe we can.

EMBER: No.

The animation is graceful, but the story was cliched. It’s a metaphor for the immigrant experience with the fire elementals representing Asian immigrants and the water elementals, white folks. I felt like I was watching a colorful ripoff of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, just not as good. Pixar also indulges in some annoying virtue signaling by including gay and non-binary supporting characters. I don’t know if it was Pixar’s past reputation or the virtue signaling that secured Elemental’s nomination, but the film certainly doesn’t deserve it.

NIMONA: Our chariot awaits.

BOLDHEART: What the heck was that? And you never said you could change into me.

And speaking of movies that don’t deserve it, our next movie might be the least deserving of a nomination. Nimona is a Netflix Original movie with a cool techno-medieval setting, but nothing else to commend it. The story follows a shapeshifting demon who teams up with a disgraced knight to wreak havoc in the name of diversity.

NIMONA: I feel worse when I don’t do it, but then I shape shift and I’m free.

Don’t be fooled by the PG rating. The film is essentially gay and transgender propaganda. The LGBT agenda is the driving force behind this movie that portrays political conservatives as murderous villains.

One of the more obscure movies to be nominated this year is Robot Dreams which indulges in some nostalgia for New York City in the 1980s. Except everyone in the city is an animal.

The hero of the story is a lonely dog who buys a robot for companionship. But the path to friendship is a rocky one. This is a Spanish-French animated film, but you won’t need to read subtitles. The movie doesn’t have any dialogue, and honestly, it strikes me as a little gimmicky. Yes, it manages to tell its 100-minute-long story without words, but the project felt like it should have been a short film rather than a feature length movie. Also, the movie seems to blur the line between friendship and romance, and really. What kind of message are we getting when we see someone buy a friend at the store? Also, be aware that even though there’s no bad language—because there’s no language at all—Robot Dreams does contain some rude hand gestures.

And that leaves the last of our nominees, which also happens to be the only box-office hit: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

MILES MORALES: There’s an elite society with all the best spider-people in it?

This is the follow up to 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which won the Academy Award that year. This sequel, which is only the second installment of a trilogy, might not be better than the first one, but it’s still really good. The plot twist at the end really surprised me, and I’m not easily surprised. A word of caution though: one scene contains a blink-and-you-miss-it transgender flag in the background that shows one of the heroes supports the LGBT agenda. That and some mild swearing are sad blemishes on this otherwise clever and heartfelt PG movie.

In my opinion, three out of these five nominees don’t deserve the honor, but there was a movie that didn’t make the cut that your family might want to check out. 

BOWSER: I will ask their princess to marry me in a fairytale wedding!

KOOPA: Doesn’t she hate you?

The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the second biggest movie of 2023, but the Academy ignored it. It’s not edgy and it’s not breaking new narrative ground, but The Super Mario Bros. Movie is solid family-friendly entertainment. If you have any inkling of Nintendo nostalgia, and you still haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth checking out. If for no other reason than to hear Jack Black sing “Peaches.”

BOWSER (Singing): Peach, understand, I’m gonna love you ‘til the very end.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: reviewer Chelsea Boes tells us how one Christian author used poetry to “fight the good fight of faith.”

CHELSEA BOES: When we get cancer, we need poetry. Katy Bowser Hutson convinces us of this with the poems she composed during her own staredown with death. In her book Now I Lay Me Down To Fight, one poem leads to just one more and then another until suddenly you find yourself reading the final poem in the book.

Hutson notes in one of the small essays punctuating her poems, “If you’ve had cancer, you know you’re never free of it.” But Now I Lay Me Down To Fight is not just for people with cancer, or even for those in remission. The book is for anybody living in a mortal body and “for whom the bell tolls.”

When Hutson gets her cancer diagnosis as a young mom, reality hits hard, but her Christian theology stays intact. Hutson wrangles the fallenness of the world in her own body. She trusts in the love of God through her suffering. But she doesn’t preach at the reader. She writes, “My days were measured before / Everybody’s always are.”

A warning: the slim book feels lightweight, but the content is justifiably heavy. Hutson doesn’t shy away from the physical aspects of serious illness. Some readers may struggle here.

But at the same time, Hutson may also make you laugh. She writes this line about the first encounter with her oncologist—“Hello, so thankful to meet you: Can you save my life?” She wonders: Should she wear unicorn socks to her mastectomy? Her truth telling is electric with detail. Somehow, it takes the teeth out of cancer. And so does her worldview. The reader feels ready to ask, “Cancer, where is thy sting?”

Cancer takes Hutson’s hair, eyelashes, and breasts, attempting to “flatten her” and make her “into a one-dimensional character.” But, she writes, “I have things to do / I’m a beauty bearer / where you, cancer, copy furiously, / I fumblingly create. / You cannot uncreate me.”

On the hard path God called her to, Hutson did a poet’s work well. She forces our eyes toward beauty. She writes, “Crazy as it sounds / A benefit of cancer / Is that people tell you they are glad you are alive.” After spending this little book with her, we’re gladder to be alive too.

I’m Chelsea Boes.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Friday, February 16th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s time now for our Word Play for February. Commentator George Grant introduces us to the wild world of contranyms.

GEORGE GRANT: Four friends were invited over by a couple to watch the Super Bowl—or rather, since none of them were fans of the Chiefs, the 49ers, or Taylor Swift, they gathered to watch the commercials, eat nachos and wings, and enjoy one another’s company. Two of the guests left at halftime. The other two left at the conclusion of the game. So, the hosts were the only ones left.

Now, that may sound like the set up for a joke or perhaps a math problem from an elementary school textbook. In fact, it is an illustration of an etymological peculiarity known as janusism, antagonym, or contronym. Named for the mythological Roman god Janus, who had two faces looking in opposite directions simultaneously, janusisms are two-faced expressions: words or phrases that can have two contradictory meanings. In my previous example, the word left means both to depart and to remain: the friends left, so the hosts were the only ones left.

We use myriads of janusisms in our everyday English parlance. For example: to sanction can be either to approve of something or to boycott something. To overlook might be to supervise or to neglect; just as oversight could be either to monitor or to fail to monitor. To strike can mean to hit or to miss. Refrain could mean to cease and desist or to echo and repeat. The verb dust can be used to mean sprinkling on or wiping off, adding or removing. To hold up someone could mean supporting them; or it could mean restraining them. Weather describes both a coming storm and damage the storm leaves behind. A bill might be either a receipt or an invoice. A custom refers to a longstanding practice as well as a special, one-of-a-kind treatment. To enjoin could be either to impose or to prohibit. Fast can describe something that is speedy and mobile or something that is stabilized and held firm. Trip could be either a journey or a stumble.

The janusism handicap might be an advantage provided to ensure equality or a disadvantage that inhibits equality. The janusism fine could be quite excellent or merely adequate. The janusism transparent may mean invisible or obvious.

Think of the opposite meanings of words like grade, rock, shop, temper, and trim. Or there’s splice, let, mean, rent, let, and screen.

We could go on and on. Indeed, there are so many more janusisms to check out. Alas, it is now time for me to check out.

I’m George Grant.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Well, now it’s time to thank the team who helped to put the program together this week …

Jenny Rough, Nick Eicher, David Bahnsen, Emma Perley, Mary Reichard, Leah Savas, Mary Muncy, Hunter Baker, Leo Briceno, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Ohikere, Emily Whitten, Bethel McGrew, Juliana Chan Erickson, Lillian Hamman, Steve West, Maria Baer, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, Chelsea Boes, and George Grant.

Special thanks to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Kent Covington, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

Thanks also to our breaking news interns:T obin Jacobson, Johanna Huebscher, and Alex Carmenaty.

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

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters. Our Senior producer is Kristen Flavin and Paul Butler is Executive producer. Additional production assistance from Benj Eicher and Bekah McCallum.

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 Psalmist writes: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” —Psalm 43 Verse 5

Worship with brothers and sisters in Christ in Church this weekend, and Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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