The World and Everything in It: February 17, 2023

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Something’s happening on the campus of Asbury University in Kentucky and today on Culture Friday I’ll ask John Stonestreet what he thinks about it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today: Phase five of the longrunning Avengers franchise: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters. And WORLD’s Collin Garbarino has a review.

And Word Play for February. WORLD’s George Grant laments the way words are overused, abused, and stripped of meaning.

BROWN: It’s Friday, February 17th. 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: Biden on aerial objects » President Biden says that three aerial objects US fighter jets recently shot down over the U.S. and Canada were likely harmless.

BIDEN: Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.

But he said he’s planning sharper rules to track and monitor unknown aerial objects and if any pose a threat, he won’t hesitate to give the order to shoot it down.

GA grand jury » A special grand jury in Georgia investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies’ actions surrounding the 2020 election say “one or more witnesses” lied under oath.

And a partially unsealed report reveals that jury has urged local prosecutors to bring charges. But we do not know whom those charges might target.

American University History Professor Allan Lichtman:

LICHTMAN: The big question, of course, about which this excerpt gave no indication, is whether or not the D.A. is intending to indict Donald Trump himself.

If the DA does charge Trump, it won’t be for perjury because the former president never testified before the special grand jury.

Democratic Fulton Country prosecutor Fanni Willis launched an investigation into possible election interference in Georgia two years ago.

Earthquake » In earthquake-ravaged regions of Turkey and Syria, hope is fading for finding any more survivors in the rubble.

With that in mind, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance is shifting its relief efforts from search and rescue to recovery.

STOLTENBERG: The focus going forward will be on reconstruction and supporting the displaced. That is why NATO is now setting up temporary housing for thousands of displaced people. In addition, NATO will also use our strategic airlift capabilities to transport tens of thousands of tents to Turkey in the coming days and weeks.

Meanwhile, The UN is asking its member countries for hundreds of millions in earthquake relief funds. It says the money would go to providing food, education, water, and shelter.

SC pro-life bill, KY law ruling » A pro-life Kentucky law will remain in place for now after a court ruling Thursday. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The state’s Supreme Court lifted an injunction on a law protecting babies after six weeks gestation.

Two Kentucky abortion centers had sued, arguing that the law violates the state constitution. But the court ruled the facilities did not have standing to bring the case and sent it back to the lower courts for review.

Meantime, in South Carolina, state House representatives have advanced a bill that would ban abortion from conception except in cases of rape, incest, or potentially fatal complications.

The bill will now go before the state Senate for consideration. A Senate bill passed last week that would ban abortion after six weeks.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Wholesale prices surge again » Wholesale inflation in the United States sped up from December to January.

The Department of Labor’s Producer Price Index jumped 0.7 percent in January as compared to December. That came after a decline of 0.2 percent a month earlier.

A separate measure that leaves out volatile categories like energy and food also climbed last month by 0.6%. That was the sharpest increase in almost a year.

Chat GPT bias » The artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT is all the rage right now online. But its answers may reveal the political biases of its programmers. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: WORLD asked Chat GPT to write an essay praising President Joe Biden. The bot obeyed, describing how Biden’s presidency has been—quote— “marked by a commitment to bringing the country together, tackling systemic racism, the pandemic, and taking steps to rebuild the economy.”

We then asked it to praise former President Donald Trump. The bot responded that it could not generate content that it says is—quote—biased or based on false information.

WORLD also asked the bot to define a woman. It started out saying that a woman is an adult human female, before continuing on to say that one’s gender identity and one’s biological sex need not be the same.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead on Culture Friday: a whistleblower calls out a transgender clinic.

Plus, Word Play with George Grant.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s the 17th day of February 2023.

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

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s Culture Friday!

Joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: John, I know you are pretty active in Christian worldview work on campuses, so I’m sure you’ve heard about what’s happening on the Asbury campus in Kentucky. A regularly scheduled chapel service did not end. Ten days later students are still there praying, worshiping. Other students have joined.

As a matter of fact, we have a WORLD reporter there on the ground who is putting together a report for us. Our Zoe Schimke is there. She shared with us one of her early interviews and I’ll just play a few seconds. She’s talking with student Ashton Montgomery, who’ll describe an email from Asbury President Kevin Brown that went out to students:

MONTGOMERY: I opened up my email and President Brown had sent an email saying that, like, worship was still going on and anybody who felt called to join could do so. And I was there for 12 hours that day. And so I'm looking forward to— I'm not looking forward to this being over. I'm looking forward to seeing the fruit of it once it's over.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. Are you ready to call it a revival?

STONESTREET: I think the question is, are the people that are there and experiencing it ready to call it a revival of their own hearts? And it seems to be there's an awful lot of people there that are ready to use that language for what God is doing in their own hearts. And you know, that's the thing is we want a corporate revival that sweeps the nation. But that is the result of the revival of individuals. This is one of the things that's so interesting about American history is that revivals have been so instrumental in our history and to our history. And from massive revivals to what we call awakenings, which are really the sum total of a bunch of revivals kind of added together. And there's this sense that they come and go, that it's a work of the Spirit, that they're not without accesses. It's kind of what Jesus said that the wheat and the tares would grow together and we see at the end what happens. But we've prayed for this. Many people have prayed for this. In fact, the last time I was on the campus of Asbury to speak in that chapel there, there were a number of people who remembered that this had happened in 1970. And there was a number of people that said that they knew people that had been praying ever since that it would happen again. So here we are 50 years later and it's happened again. It's an answer to their prayers. It's such a part of that institutional memory of that place. Anybody that's been on Asbury's campus, my guess, has heard that story from 1970. And now anybody over the next several decades will hear the story of 2023. So I'm just praying. I'm praying against the enemy, who's particularly good at twisting things that are good and praying that this would continue. There are early reports of that Lee University and Cedarville University kind of catching the wind. And I mean, there's so so much interesting here for me, Myrna, in terms of the history of revivals, the unique history of revivals in the United States and the unique history of revivals among college students. For example, one of the centers of the Second Great Awakening was a revival that came out of Yale under the leadership of Timothy Dwight who was a descendant of Jonathan Edwards. It's just an amazing connection. And part of that history and Yale students went over and evangelized Harvard students as a result, and what did we see? We look at Yale today and it's certainly no bastion of Christian conviction. And so we need both the stability of institution building around what is true and good in the Gospel. And we also pray and beg God to move in our hearts and to change them. And I think that's happening in a lot of hearts right now at Asbury.

EICHER: I have zero transition to this next story, and I feel a little sorry bringing it up, but it seems so important: we now have a highly credible whistleblower from a transgender clinic right here in my town, St. Louis. Jamie Reed is her name. She describes herself, and this is not my word, it is her word. She describes herself as queer and to the left of Bernie Sanders politically. Jamie Reed is blowing the whistle on the practices of the transgender clinic where she worked up until November of last year.

Writing on Bari Weiss’s site “The Free Press,” Reed said, and I’m quoting here: “Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.”

Going on some more:

“Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.”

This is a massive scandal. Reed appeared on a podcast conversation with Bari Weiss and she described how the transgender clinic operated. Here’s about 90 seconds of really candid commentary. Have a listen:

REED: You're putting these parents in a non-winning situation. You're putting their seriously distressed child in front of them, the child who believes that if they could have just had this medication, these hormones last week, that their entire world would now be rainbows and glitter. And you're putting that kid in front of the parent and the parent is then put on the spot. And the parent is who's going to have to go home with the kid at the end of the day. So none of the way that the system worked, was actually looking out for how do we, how do we build this family up and keep them intact and whole? How do we empower the parents to be parents? And to be able to say no. And the thing that really irritated me often is when the parents would say no—to me, parent says, "No," you back off, you're done. We're not talking about this anymore. And that was not what happened. The parents said, no, these doctors would push and push and push and push, and every single visit, it would be push some more. And they would talk in the team meetings about how Oh, we just like they were just convinced, like if we could just convince them if we could just make it happen. And there were also plenty of parents who straight up said to us when they were giving consent, they would say things like you're going to do this anyway. I don't really have a choice. I feel like I've been bullied. They would straight up tell us this. I feel like I've been bullied into saying yes. And somehow the doctors thought that that was a true, good consent.

As I say, I hate to juxtapose this against such a hopeful story in Wilmore, Kentucky, but, again, this seems like it warrants an investigation by people with subpoena power.

STONESTREET: Well, I felt the juxtaposition to your question here, Nick, I felt the juxtaposition this week of all kinds of things as I was continuing to look at this revival, awakening, whatever juxtaposed to this whistleblower story. And I think it's also important to note that something profound has happened in this whistleblower story. And I would say it is a work of God, not because this person identifies to be in Christ or anything like that, but when evil is allowed to remain hidden, evil flourishes. And one of the marks of what God is doing is exposing evil. We've been told for a long time this isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening. And it was almost as if this whistleblower, a former caseworker at this gender clinic at a children's hospital there in St. Louis, went down the line and said, Yep, this is happening. This part is happening. That part is happening. For example, usurping parental rights. For example, the contagion, particularly among teenage girls. This caseworker mentions that up until 2015, the vast majority of the cases that they saw were boys. And then after 2015 something happened, and it was a bunch of girls. Something else exposed by the whistleblower there at that clinic is that so-called reversible treatments actually have long term effects and damage, and talking specifically about just additional levels of testosterone for young girls. Another thing that we saw come out of this whistleblower report is that other mental health issues that were present, and where we know a lot more about them than we know anything about gender dysphoria, that these things were being ignored, and these kids were being essentially fast tracked into what Abigail Shrier has rightly called irreversible damage. And I'm talking about mental issues like autism. I mean things that have a much longer medical history and are significant. The sheer number of girls struggling with gender dysphoria who are on the spectrum of autism. I mean, another thing that was revealed by the whistleblower is that this has exploded recently, that at the beginning of her career, she was seeing maybe 10 cases a month. Now there are well over 50 cases a month, and 70% of those are young women who have been told that they were born into the wrong body and have feelings of hating themselves. So again, this is stuff that has been sneaking out here, there, and everywhere. And yet we've been told it's not happening. It's not happening. It's not happening. Well, look, there's a lot to be said here. I'd love to come to one week either on Breakpoint or Culture Friday and not have to talk about the issue because I'm really tired of talking about it. But these are really important developments right now. And the whistleblower story in particular, I think is very, very important.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce and his younger brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce were both in the Super Bowl last Sunday. Their mom was at the game with a specially made denim jacket—one half red, the other half green.

MOM: One side for the Chiefs, the other side for the Eagles...

I think we all know how the game turned out. But afterwards, the two brothers found each other mid-field. Audio here from the Philadelphia Eagles YouTube channel.

AUDIO: I love you. Thank you man. No, you’re good. You're my life! I love you big guy. I love you too. Go celebrate.

A few days ago the brothers spoke about the experience—and their parents—on their podcast: “New Heights.”

So from brotherly love to honoring mother and father.

AUDIO: JASON: (WHEW) Just so happy for her. And just so happy that, you know, she got her moment. Dad got his so yeah, I was the only, ironically, you know, you lose the Super Bowl (WHEW) and you're you're crying after the game and they're not tears of sadness. Yeah, they're tears of joy.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, February 17th.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the first blockbuster of 2023.

BROWN: That’s right. Here’s Collin Garbarino to talk about the new superhero movie arriving in theaters this weekend.

MUSIC: [“Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John]

COLLIN GARBARINO: Marvel Studios launches phase five of its longrunning Avengers franchise this weekend with a new Ant-Man sequel—Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Marvel is setting up a massive multiversal war, and this movie gives us a good look at the big baddie, Kang the Conqueror.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania begins with Scott Lang, the Ant-Man, settling into his new life after helping save half the universe in Avengers: Endgame. The littlest Avenger has become a minor celebrity in his neighborhood, but he struggles to make up for lost time with his daughter Cassie, who’s become something of an activist.

SCOTT: You know, I promised your mom that you’d only use this stuff when one of us was around. It’s really dangerous tech.

CASSIE: I know it’s dangerous.

SCOTT: What if the cops took it from you? What if you lost it?

CASSIE: I didn’t lose the suit.

SCOTT: You have a suit? Wait. You have a suit?

CASSIE: I know how to take care of myself, OK? Trust me, I’m pretty good at it by now.

SCOTT: Ouch.

CASSIE: I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.

SCOTT: It’s OK. It’s alright. I get it. I just think you should get to have a normal life.

CASSIE: Dad, a man dressed like a bee tried to kill me in my room when I was six. I’ve never had a normal life.

Besides helping the downtrodden, Scott’s daughter has been studying the quantum realm—a timey-wimey place beneath our universe where members of her family tend to get stuck.

JANET: So you’re studying the quantum realm. Why didn’t you ask me about it?

HOPE: I tried, Mom. A lot. You never wanted to talk about it.

HANK: Cassie’s just been curious, and we gave her some pointers.

JANET: This isn’t exactly ant science, is it, Henry? You know how dangerous the quantum realm is.

HOPE: We all do, Mom. Nobody’s going to the quantum realm.

But of course they’re going to the quantum realm. Science is never safe in a Marvel movie. And what they find down there surprises them.

HANK: There are beings down here. Intelligent beings. I always theorized it was possible, but to be here. A subatomic universe.

The quantum realm feels like a cross between Star Wars and Avatar, and it’s ruled by Kang—an evil conqueror who needs Scott’s help to escape the subatomic universe so he can get back to wreaking havoc in the multiverse.

KANG: You’re an interesting man, Scott Lang.

SCOTT: Um, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve made a big mistake. OK? I’m an Avenger. I’ve called the other Avengers.

KANG: You’re an Avenger? Have I killed you before?

SCOTT: What?

KANG: They all blur together after a while. You’re not the one with the hammer?

SCOTT: That’s Thor. We get confused a lot. Similar body types. Who are you?

KANG: Just a man, who’s lost a lot of time, like you. But we can help each other with that.

Unless you’re a Marvel fanatic who’s seen all 30 movies, you’re probably asking yourself if this one’s worth it. And if it is, how many of those 30 movies do you need to watch for this one to make sense?

Let’s start with that second question. If you’ve seen the first two Ant-Man movies and the Loki series on Disney+, you’re good to go. If you haven’t seen those, it should only take you 10 hours to get caught up.

That other question of whether it’s worth it, is a little trickier. I enjoyed the movie, but I wasn’t wowed. Paul Rudd, Evangline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Michael Douglas are back with solid enough performances. But Jonathan Majors as Kang was the highlight.

But Quantumania abandons the heist genre that made the first Ant-Man films different from generic superhero movies. This one is more like a space-opera action comedy. It’s designed to push us further into the multiverse arc rather than offer us an Ant-Man movie. And I really felt the absence of Michael Peña who played a scene-stealing ex-con in the first two Ant-Mans.

But the movie has its moments.

SCOTT: Look. Momentum, right? Jump, tap. Right? One move. Jump, tap.

CASSIE: I know how to do it, Dad.

SCOTT: Do you? Really?

CASSIE: Yes!

SCOTT: It didn’t look like it from my end.

CASSIE: I messed up on the timing.

SCOTT: Jump—ah. [fighting] Like that. See what I did? See what I did?

CASSIE: No. You’re like this small!

SCOTT: I jumped, tapped.

The movie is PG-13 for sci-fi action and a little bad language. Quantumania is a movie about family members who love each other, but need to learn to trust each other. It doesn’t necessarily break any new ground—the plot feels a little formulaic—but I’m always interested in a superhero movie in which the villain has an interesting justification for his villainy. And so far, Kang is a very interesting villain.

KANG: So. What’s it going to be… Ant-Man?

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: Safe Delivery: Part 2!

Last week we brought you the first of our three-part special report. If you missed it, I say now is as good a time as any to go back, catch up, because part two is right around the corner

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Yes, and by “right around the corner,” you mean tomorrow. 

EICHER: Yes, I do!

BROWN: It’s a good reminder, too, because catching part one is critical.

There are storylines that revolve around pro-lifers using Safe Haven Laws as well as other safe-haven tools to help mothers and babies in crisis.

You may have heard me mention this last week. That it was Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett who raised the issue and it was important that she did. Because she knocked out a pillar of the argument propping up Roe versus Wade.

So I found that part in the Oral Argument in the Dobbs case where Justice Barrett talked about it. And I want you to hear it:

CONEY BARRETT: It doesn’t seem to me to follow that pregnancy and then parenthood are all part of the same burden. And so, it seems to me that the choice more focused would be between say the ability to get an abortion at 23 weeks or the state requiring a woman to go 15, 16 weeks more and then terminate parental rights at the conclusion. Why didn’t you address the safe haven laws and why don’t they matter?

So with that, she set in motion what has become a year-long look into what some are calling the safe haven movement.

EICHER: Well, Myrna, congratulations on this series. It’s one of the things that sets WORLD apart—taking a deep dive into an important story.

Part 2 of WORLD’s three-part series, Safe Delivery, continues this weekend right here in your podcast feed for The World and Everything in It. We’ll include a link to that in today’s transcript.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, February 17th. 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. Time now for Word Play for this month. Here’s WORLD Commentator George Grant.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: According to the Victorian nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But the apocryphal book Ecclesiasticus reverses the idea asserting, “A blow of sticks and stones raises a welt, but a blow of the tongue crushes the bones.” Or as Don Henley more recently put it, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can break my heart.”

Recently, I read a story about a woman who was to undergo a risky brain surgery. Doctors prepared her for the worst, because in all likelihood, the invasive procedure would destroy her ability to speak. When asked how she was doing, she responded, “You know, since I can count the number of sentences I have left to say, I’ve become really picky with my words.” That is wisdom apt for all of us.

We live in a world flooded with information and words. On average, men speak 10,000 words a day, and women nearly double that number. Digital communication has exponentially increased the ease, avenues, and audience for our words. In some ways, that freedom should be celebrated—especially given that there are many around the world who cannot speak openly about what they think, feel, or believe. The ability to express ourselves can enrich our lives deeply. However, when our language is unrestrained and unmindful, we render our words meaningless at best—damaging at worst.

It happens all the time: a word or phrase is popularized, and almost overnight, it’s overused, abused, and stripped of its original meaning. We now have “artisan” fast food sandwiches, “handcrafted” cups of gas station coffee, and “vintage curated” garage sales. Something described as “unique” often just means it is “interesting” or “atypical,” rather than its true definition of “one-of-a-kind.” Quality, precision, and an appreciation for the true meaning of words have taken a backseat to a false virtue: speed. Getting information out quickly has become more valuable than accuracy or pertinence or graciousness. Prevailing logic says that you can always correct yourself later, so just say something—anything—but say it first and say it fast.

Mark Twain famously quipped, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Being thoughtful and restrained with what we say takes more time. But it’s worth the effort to be selective, because when you sacrifice speed and frequency, your words gain significance, sincerity, and authenticity.

“Words have a magical power,” Sigmund Freud once quipped. “They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; they enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions; they are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men’s actions.”

Language is not only a gift, but also a responsibility. And these days, it is radical to be careful and wise with our words—radical and Biblical. The Apostle Paul exhorts us, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6).

I’m George Grant.

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, Steve West, Emily Whitten, Janie B. Cheaney, Kent Covington, Onize Ohikere, Jeff Palomino, Ryan Bomberger, Mary Jackson, Jill Nelson, Amy Lewis, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, and George Grant.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Lauren Canterberry, Mary Muncy, Josh Schumacher, Elias Ferenczy, and Anna Mandin.

And I’ve always wanted to say this: our guys who stay up late to get the program to you early, Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

BROWN: Our producer is Kristen Flavin with production assistance from Lillian Hamman, Harrison Watters, and Benj Eicher.

Paul Butler is our Executive Producer.

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:

For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. (Psalm 44:6-8 ESV)

Be sure and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ on the Lord’s Day.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.