The World and Everything in It: February 19, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Smarter AI tools and new questions about who really owns your information.

JACOBS: It is accessible, and barring their data center being hit by a meteor, largely forever.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, new research finds a father’s role may shape his child’s long-term heart health.

Later: How family farms showcase the value of hard work over generations.

RHEINGANS: It's about passing on these things that I think are important in terms of character development.

And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on the complicated legacy of Jesse Jackson.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, February 19th. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: DHS shutdown, Jeffries remarks » Democrats and Republicans remain far apart as the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security rolls into day six. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

JEFFRIES: We’ve not seen a high-level effort coming from the President, or from the House or Senate Republican leaders. We have no idea where they’re at.

Congressional Democrats continue to demand changes to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before they’ll support funding for DHS.

The list includes requiring agents to get warrants in more situations, wear body cameras, and identify themselves.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters:

LEAVITT: Last night they sent over a counter proposal that frankly was very unserious and we hope they get serious very soon because Americans are going to be impacted by this.

Homeland Security employees have one more week before pay day, when essential workers like TSA agents and Coast Guard personnel will be asked to work without receiving their normal paychecks for the time being.

Ukraine-Russia latest » Leavitt also weighed in on U.S.-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

She said ending that war is a top priority of President Trump.

LEAVITT: …but I think the president views this entire situation as very unfair, not just for Russians and Ukrainians who have lost their lives, but also for the American people and the American taxpayer who were footing the bill for this war effort before President Trump put a stop to it.

Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine wrapped up the second-round of talks in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday.

Ukraine's lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, told reporters the two sides are making progress:

UMEROV: The next step is to achieve the necessary level of consensus to submit the developed decisions for consideration by the presidents. Our task is to prepare a practical, not merely formal foundation for this.

The head of Russia's delegation also said the talks in Geneva were difficult but businesslike.

The White House also says both sides plan to schedule more talks in the near future.

Avalanche update » California officials say the search and rescue mission to find a missing skier is now a recovery operation. And eight people were already confirmed dead after they were buried by an avalanche in the Sierra Nevada mountains Tuesday.

Officials were able to rescue six of the skiers.

Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon says two of them were taken to an area hospital after being carried two miles to a search party’s snowmobile.

MOON: Of the two that were injured, one individual was stabilized last night and released. One is still being treated at the hospital. I've been told both subjects are life, non life threatening injuries.

Moon said that the 15-person group comprised of nine women and six men and included several contracted ski guides.

It has been described as one of the deadliest avalanches ever in California.

U.S. to deploy more missile launchers to the Philippines » The United States is sending more high-tech missile systems to the Philippines in response to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more:

BENJAMIN EICHER: U.S. and Philippines have announced joint security plans this year that include more deployments of “U.S. cutting-edge missile and unmanned systems.”

The U.S. has already deployed a mid-range missile system called the Typhon and it sent an anti-ship missile launcher to the northern Philippines last year.

And Beijing is not happy about it., China has called on the Philippines to withdraw the missile launchers but officials led by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. have rejected the demand.

The latest deployment plans come as the two allies again condemned what they called China’s “illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive” actions in the region.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Zuckerberg testimony » Outside of a Los Angeles courthouse Wednesday:

REPORTER:  Mr. Zuckerberg, did Meta purposely design the platform to harm children?

Reporters fired questions at Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Instagram. He did not respond.

Inside the courtroom, Zuckerberg sparred with opposing lawyers, who allege that his company knowingly sacrificed the mental health and safety of underage users in pursuit of profit.

Julianna Arnold, founding member of the group “Parents RISE!”, is also a plaintiff suing social media companies after the death of her daughter Coco.

She accused Zuckerberg of not telling the truth.

ARNOLD: It does not match any of the internal documents that we are now seeing, and he's not able to answer those questions now either. And so he's fumbling over them and we just see that as a sign of, you know, he knew perfectly well what was going on.

Meta and YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snapchat settled.

Meta and YouTube insist their platforms weren't designed to addict or harm kids, highlighting under-13 bans and safety features.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: more powerful AI tools bring increased data privacy concerns. Plus, the health benefits of having an involved father.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 19th of February.

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

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

First up: artificial intelligence and its long memory.

The power and popularity of AI has skyrocketed in recent months. And as these tools become more a part of daily life, the information you share may last longer than you think.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: This month, Amazon’s home security service Ring expanded its ability to search for lost dogs to most users in the U.S. The feature, called, Search Party uses AI to track lost dogs. The company announced it in a Super Bowl ad.

RING COMMERCIAL: Pets are family, but every year, 10 million go missing, and the way we look for them hasn’t changed in years. Until now, one post of a dog’s photo in the Ring App starts outdoor cameras looking for a match.

The backlash on social media was swift and full of references to George Orwell’s 1984, questioning whether the feature would really only be used to track dogs.

INSTAGRAM REEL: I know what you’re thinking, no, it’s not the same thing as the book. This one’s only for dogs. Because we said it was.

WYZE COMMERCIAL: But what if we could make finding one lost dog require the computational power of a small, dictator-led, nation-state?

The company also had plans to streamline a feature that allows police to request video footage from Ring users by partnering with Flock, a company that makes license plate readers. This week, the companies canceled that partnership. While Ring still has a limited ability to share video with law enforcement and the dog search feature is still active, both can be disabled.

ChatGPT has also faced recent criticism over data privacy. This month, the model’s owner, OpenAI, began testing targeted ads. The company says in free and go accounts, ads for items or services related to a user’s conversation with ChatGPT will start appearing at the bottom of an answer.

Competitor Anthropic parodied that in an ad that begins with a man asking for a workout plan for a six-pack.

ANTHROPIC AD, CHATGPT: Perfect, let me personalize this for you. Let’s start with your age weight and height. Whenever you’re ready.

GUY: 5’7” 23-years-old, 140 pounds.

CHATGPT: Got it, I’ll create a plan that focuses on aesthetic strength training. But confidence isn’t just built in the gym. Try Step Boost Maxx. The insoles that add one vertical inch of height and help short kings stand tall.

OpenAI’s chief ad officer Asad Awan says they have some safeguards to prevent that sort of scenario.

OPENAI: Number one, the answers need to be independent of the ads both visually and in how the models are trained so that you can always trust the answer.

Awan says OpenAI tailors the ad to the conversation, and that advertisers themselves have no access to users' conversations.

So just what can AI companies do with data that you give them and how can you protect yourself as new technologies emerge?

Todd Jacobs is the executive director of the Theia Institute. A think tank studying AI. He says the small piece of information that you give one website here or ask ChatGPT about there are likely harmless individually.

JACOBS: It's the ability to tie these seemingly unconnected pieces of information together across the whole spectrum of your life that is invasive of your privacy.

For example, say you bought a book on starting a business, and then you bought an all-in-one kit for carpentry online, then you start seeing ads about small business loans.

That means the book and carpentry website likely sold your data to another company and that company sold it to their partners and so on.

JACOBS: On some level, that is something that could be good for people, but it's done in a way that ensures that you actually have almost no control over your data.

The same goes for large language models like ChatGPT. Once you put information in there, that company owns it—whether that’s your phone number and address at the top of your resume, or the family photo that you want to clean up.

That may not pose a meaningful problem now, but…

STAN MATWIN: Today it's owned by Amazon, but maybe in five years, Amazon is bought by Nvidia.

Stan Matwin is a professor emeritus of computer science at Dalhousie University.

MATWIN: The ownership of the data may change, and it may go from an organization that I like, Amazon, I believe, uses it responsibly, to somebody who's much less responsible and will exploit every aspect of it.

There are settings on just about every platform that tell a company how to use your data. But generally, the default settings give the most information and freedom to the company, and that information generally doesn’t go away without a request to delete it.

You can check what information is out there about you using a tool like the Wayback Machine, which stores internet pages in a static form even if its been deleted elsewhere.

JACOBS: It is ultimately accessible and barring their data center being hit by a meteor, largely forever.

But ultimately, Jacobs says most people need to be cautious, not paranoid.

JACOBS: We think about this in terms of trade offs, right? What? What are you willing to give up in exchange for additional privacy?

The answer may be using a more secure browser that doesn’t run your favorite video game. Or not downloading the latest app because it asks for permission to things it has no business being in… like a photo app asking for access to your music library.

Jacobs says the best way to protect your privacy is by not putting sensitive information on the internet, anywhere—especially in a large language model.

The Federal Trade Commission considers quietly changing a privacy policy to be a deceptive trade practice. So generally companies will notify you… so, Jacobs says make sure you check the right boxes and skim privacy permissions the first time…. And every time you’re prompted to.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the science behind dads and healthy children.

For decades studies have shown that children who are raised by married, biological parents have a number of advantages. They tend to do better in school, are less likely to live in poverty and are less likely to drink or do drugs.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A new study suggests, a father’s involvement may influence more than behavior or school performance. Researchers say it could shape a child’s physical health years later.

A team of researchers at Penn State published the findings in the journal Health Psychology.

REICHARD: Joining us now to explain it all is Mark Feinberg, one of those researchers at Penn State.

Welcome and thank you for being here.

MARK FEINBERG: Good morning, thank you for having me.

REICHARD: Let’s start with the research itself. Close to 300 families were part of this long-term study. Generally speaking, tell us about the families who participated in the study, where they live, socioeconomic details, etc.?

FEINBERG: Sure. These were almost, as you said, 300 families primarily recruited in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas. And they were two parent families, mostly married, but not all. When we recruited them, they were expecting their first child during mid-pregnancy. And they were recruited for a randomized trial of an innovative new prevention program focused on helping parents get on the same page and co-parent together to coordinate the way that they support each other and raise their child.

REICHARD: What family dynamics did you observe and how did you go about it? Were they recorded? Did they fill out a form?

FEINBERG: We did ask them to fill out questionnaires, but for the study that we published, we looked at the data that we collected videotaping family interactions. We went into their home. We asked them to play with their child for a total of 18 minutes. Were they warm? Were they inclusive? Were the parents competing with each other, were they withdrawing from each other? And then we're able to put together a picture of how that family is operating. We did that twice when the children were about one year old, and then again when the children were two years old.

REICHARD: Tell us about the significance of observing these children over various stages of development.

FEINBERG: The family is changing very rapidly. When we're observing them with the children at one year of age, they're barely speaking. They're not so mobile. Parents are playing a very large guiding role in the play interactions. Parents are still getting their feet under them as parents. And then when we videotape them again later, at two years old in this case, the children, as you know, are much more active participants. So the kinds of patterns and family interactions change a lot over that period.

REICHARD: So, let’s get to the meat of it. Tell us about the findings.

FEINBERG: The really fascinating piece that we found was that those co-parenting interactions, when fathers in particular, were conflictual or withdrawn from the mother, we found that those children, seven years later, showed higher biological risk for poor outcomes, for poor cardiovascular outcomes, for prediabetes and diabetes. So something, we think, something about those stressful family interactions at age two predicted a child's health several years later.

REICHARD: And what about the mothers? Did they have that same impact on the children? Did that surprise you?

FEINBERG: These are triadic interactions, mothers, fathers, and children. So the mothers were involved in the play interactions, but we did not find that mothers who were more conflictual had children who later showed greater health risks. We did not find a link there. We found the link for fathers only. This could be a random finding. It could be that mothers actually do have such an influence. So we don't want to make too much of this yet. So, fathers have a bigger influence on the way that children relate to others, their social adjustment, how they get along in the outside world, outside the family. And some researchers have connected that to higher levels of rough and tumble play that fathers engage in, in exciting children, that fathers bring children to a state of more excitement where they are excited but they still feel safe, and then they learn how to calm down in social interactions.

REICHARD: What else surprised you about the findings?

FEINBERG: What surprised us is that we now know that early family interaction predicts long-term health outcomes or risk for health outcomes, and that stress in the family can have a long-term biological impact on children, and that's one really important reason to support families in having healthy supportive relationships, and especially between mothers and fathers.

REICHARD: How does this research challenge long-held assumptions about moms and dads and their involvement with their kids?

FEINBERG: Our basic perspective is that our fields of psychology, family research, intervention, providing services, has focused on mothers and only mothers for too long, trying to help mothers be better mothers, which ends up increasing the burden on mothers. Really, we need to take a whole family approach and try to support the family as a whole and have mothers and fathers work together.

REICHARD: Pennsylvania State University’s Mark Feinberg. He’s one of those researchers at Penn State who made that discovery and published the findings in the journal Health Psychology. Mark, thanks so much, so interesting.

FEINBERG: Thanks for having me.

NICK EICHER, HOST: At the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games, athletes aren’t the only ones pushing the limits.

AP reporters covering the games found something you don’t find every day in Italy …

… in the Olympic hub of Livigno, they discovered what can only be called freestyle pizza.

Prosciutto and pineapple on the same pie!

“This shouldn’t happen.”

Heresy!

AUDIO: A big no.

Now, pizza in Italy is not the casual food it is here. It’s cultural identity there. Regional. Protected. Practically constitutional. Pizza standards are written law. Besides: Pineapple doesn’t grow there.

AUDIO: It’s like you have something that you could tell in its simple form is delicious, and then you just ruin it.

So in Italy, there are medals for speed …

Medals for style.

But no podium for pineapple.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 19th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: hard work and what it’s worth. This is the second and final part of our larger feature on the agricultural workforce.

REICHARD: As American ag relies more on migrant labor and aging farmers, some are asking whether the problem is economic or cultural.

WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: Phil Rheingans points to a herd of round-bellied red and black angus. They’re standing in thick mud, looking back at him with soft brown eyes.

PHIL RHEINGANS: I won't have wild cattle on the place where I'm worried about the grandkids getting hurt …

It’s important that his livestock are gentle, as his grandkids spend a lot of time around them. On the ground are a few small grain buckets for them to feed the cattle.

RHEINGANS: My goal is that this is something they long for.

Rheingans is a life-long farmer. He sowed acres of wheat in California, then made his way here to Moscow, Idaho. He raised his four daughters here. Four grandkids live just down the road.

Farming is a lifestyle he wants to pass down.

RHEINGANS: My grandson, he's two, you know, and he'll ask his mom to call me because he wants to come feed cattle. And then after that, we'll go in and we'll read books.

In the summertime they pick fruit together, and dehydrate it for the winter.

His grandkids understand springtime planting, autumn harvest, and the needs of the livestock. Rheingans says what used to be common knowledge is becoming rare.

RHEINGANS: These tie into all kinds of things in terms of them caring for their own family, because they're used to these things that were just an inherent part of life, until, say, two or three generations ago. We're getting more and more disconnected from that.

As American farmers face a shortage of domestic employees, many are turning to seasonal migrant workers, or to the family, relying on sons and daughters to continue the daily grind.

Growing up in California, Rheingans remembers a different time.

RHEINGANS: A lot of the workers were white guys that had come back from World War II, and working on a farm was a good fit for their level of education and capabilities.

As those men aged out of the business, there was no one to replace them. It became impossible for Rheingans to find local workers. Instead, he relied on immigrants eager for the job.

RHEINGANS: Their standard of comfort having grown up in Mexico was much lower. And so they came up here for opportunity, and, you know, just some really wonderful, fine people that were willing to live a life with some level of discomfort. But it's not something I was ever able to find white kids that were willing to do those things, because it's uncomfortable.

Rheingans says the widespread rejection of hard labor shows a cultural failure.

RHEINGANS: If you've escaped suffering your whole life, there's certain aspects of your character that are unlikely to come to full bloom.

When his grandchildren carry buckets of grain to the trough, Rheingans sees developing character traits like discipline. Most family farms span generations, and they follow a similar pattern: parents teach their children the value of the work as it’s handed down.

DAVID BENTREM: My grandfather bought this farm in 1963, and then my dad purchased it from my grandfather.

David Bentrem owns Three D Ranch in western Pennsylvania. He and his brother raise cattle alongside their families. They’ve been here for four generations now.

BENTREM: We don't look at it as work, in a sense, you know? Maybe it's because that's the way I was born and raised.

Eventually Bentrem wants to pass the farm to his young sons, who are old enough to help their dad with chores.

BENTREM:They seem like they have the passion. They seem like they enjoy it … Hopefully they stick with it too and want to do it. …

SOUND: Wind, opening cattle gate

Bentrem leads me on a tour as a cold wind whips over the grassy hills. Ruby red North Devon cattle dot the landscape.

Like Rheingans, Bentrem raises calm, gentle cows, so his kids can play safely around them.

BENTREM: If I can't bring my kids out because I fear you might get run over this or that. You know, it's not worth it in a sense. I'm a big believer of you know, love the animals and you love the farm.

The cattle watch from a distance, but a friendly steer named Lincoln walks right up to Bentrem. Lincoln is the kids’ favorite.

SOUND: [Cow snuffles]

BENTREM: He will eventually be beef, yep.

EICHER: Oh, that's kind of sad.

BENTREM: It is, but it isn't. We are a working farm, so, it's one of those things that you love them, but eventually it becomes time.

The average age of the American farmer is 58 years old. Small farms are at risk of dying out, as time ticks on. Here’s Rheingans:

RHEINGANS: But really at the end of the day, it's about a family and about raising kids, and it's about passing on these things that I think are important in terms of character development.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Eicher in Moscow, Idaho.

NICK EICHER, HOST: 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. Finally: the legacy of Jesse Jackson, who died this week at age 84. He’s remembered as a gifted orator, a two-time presidential candidate, a figure both praised and polarizing.

Here’s WORLD commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS: President Trump called Reverend Jesse Jackson “a force of nature.” And so he was.

Jackson was one of the last great orators shaped by the civil rights era. Along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he could lift a crowd with rhythm and conviction.

Here he was at the 1984 Democratic National Convention:

JACKSON: Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. And faith will not disappoint. Our time has come.

He had that cadence — preacher and politician rolled into one.

I saw it up close once when I accompanied him to a public middle school in Washington. He told the young girls not to get pregnant before marriage. He told the boys to respect the girls and to wait. The students hung on every word.

Afterward I said to him, “That message might do more to lift people out of poverty than politics ever will.” But politics was a temptation he could not resist. It gave him a national stage.

Yet there were moments when that stage served something larger.

Earlier in 1984, after Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman was shot down and captured by Syria, Jackson traveled to Damascus on what he called a mission of mercy. The Reagan administration had misgivings. But Jackson secured the sailor’s release and won the president’s praise.

REAGAN: You did it, you brought it off…

Jackson returned with Goodman to the White House, where President Ronald Reagan said publicly:

REAGAN: Reverend Jackson’s mission was a personal mission of mercy, and he has earned our gratitude and our admiration.

It was one of Jackson’s finest hours.

He twice ran for president and startled the Democratic establishment, building what he called the Rainbow Coalition. He was frequently where the cameras were — sometimes, critics said, too frequently. Even some of Dr. King’s staff grew weary of what they saw as his instinct to insert himself into historic moments.

Jackson was ordained a Baptist minister, but his preaching often emphasized what is called the social gospel — justice and reform in this world more than preparation for the next.

Still, his most enduring line was not about power. It was about dignity.

JACKSON: I am black. Beautiful. Proud. I must be respected. I must be protected. I am somebody.

That refrain echoed in schools and churches across the country.

He never offered a theological explanation for why he was “somebody.” But the reason is older than politics and deeper than protest. Every human being is somebody — because every human being is made in the image of God.

Jesse Jackson was a gifted, ambitious, sometimes polarizing man. But he understood something essential: people long to be told they matter.

For WORLD, I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Politicians wrap progressive policies in Christian speech. John Stonestreet returns for Culture Friday. And an Oscar nominated director who emphasizes compassion and understanding. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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

The Bible says: “He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire. ‘Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!’ The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”—Psalm 46:9-11

Go now in grace and peace.

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