The World and Everything in It — February 22, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Covid vaccines for adults may soon be required if you want to work or travel. We’ll explain the history and future of vaccine mandates.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket. 

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: we’ll talk about the economics of energy after the winter blackouts in Texas.

Plus the WORLD History Book. Today, a legal pioneer.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, February 22nd. 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: It’s time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Water woes persist in wake of winter storm » Pots full of water are still boiling on many stovetops in Texas and elsewhere in the South as tap water remains unsafe to drink in some areas. That is, if they have tap water at all. 

Houston Mayor Syvester Turner told CBS’ Face the Nation … 

TURNER: With so many homes across the city having pipes that burst because of the frigid weather, we need a lot of plumbing materials and supplies like right now. We have a number of licensed plumbers but could use even more. 

Texas is bringing in plumbers from around the country to help.  And Gov. Greg Abbott says the state is making progress. 

ABBOTT: We continue to get updates showing that water is being restored to communities across the entire state. 

President Biden on Saturday declared a major disaster in Texas. That cleared the way for more federal resources to help. 

And in Memphis, Tennessee, more than 250,000 homes were still under a boil-water advisory on Sunday. Memphis saw 10 inches of snow last week. 

Vaccine supplies catching up after winter storm delays » And White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said winter weather kept many people from getting coronavirus vaccine shots last week. She said the storm delayed shipment of about 6 million doses, but… 

PSAKI: We’ve been able to get about 2 million of those 6 million doses out. We expect to rapidly catch up this week, fill that backlog, make sure they’re out to communities, and also meet our deadlines and our timelines of the doses that are due to go out this coming week. 

Overall, the country is on the verge of a vaccine supply breakthrough. The FDA will likely approve a third coronavirus vaccine in the weeks ahead. And manufacturers are ramping up production. Pfizer is set to double its pace of vaccine deliveries in the coming weeks.

That’s good news, especially when coupled with tumbling rates of new infections. 

President Biden’s chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press… 

FAUCI: The slope that’s coming down is really terrific. It’s very steep and it’s coming down very quickly, but we are still at a level that’s very high.

Fauci cautioned Americans not to let their guard down. 

Fauci said we’re likely seeing a somewhat natural falloff from what had been a dramatic spike in coronavirus infections, along with some early benefits from vaccinations. But he said if we relax precautions too quickly, we could slam the brakes on that progress. 

Russian court rejects Navalny appeal » A Moscow court has rejected the appeal of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. 

Earlier this month, Russian courts sentenced Navalny to nearly three years in prison for violating terms of his probation.  

The supposed violation was receiving treatment in Germany after being poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent. 

Navalny argued he was unable to report to the authorities in line with his probation requirements while he was convalescing in Germany. And he noted that he returned to Russia as soon as he was well enough to do so. 

His lawyer Olga Mikhailova vowed to continue the legal fight. 

MIKHAILOVA: [Speaking in Russian]

The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction, which most Western governments have rejected as false and politically motivated. 

The United States and the European Union have called for Navalny’s release.

Thousands demonstrate in Myanmar calling on U.S. to intervene » AUDIO: [Protests]

In Myanmar, thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators packed the streets outside the U.S. Embassy in the city of Yangon. 

Many held up signs asking the United States and the global community to intervene and force military commanders to end the coup and return power to the civilian government. 

One sign read “US/The Beacon of Democracy! Help Myanmar!”

Over the weekend, riot police in Mandalay shot and killed two protesters and wounded many others. And the ruling military has made thinly veiled threats to use more lethal force against demonstrators. 

That as a group helping to organize protests called for more civil disobedience and a—quote—“Spring Revolution.”

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: the legal debate over vaccine mandates.

Plus, a thwarted assassination attempt.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday morning and a brand new work week for The World and Everything in It. Today is the 22nd of February, 2021. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Well, it’s time for Legal Docket. Mary, you have unpacked each and every oral argument for us this Supreme Court term. And — you are caught up.

REICHARD: We are caught up. So this week my co-host on the Legal Docket podcast, Jenny Rough, is here with me for a Special Report. I’d say the topic is a timely one: vaccine mandates. Hi, Jenny!

JENNY ROUGH, CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Mary! Great to be here. 

With the new COVID-19 vaccine making the rounds, you and I are going to dive into mandates. Those legal requirements of the government for us citizens to do something.

REICHARD: Timely, indeed. And just so you know, today’s conversation is taken from a special episode of the Legal Docket podcast that you can hear this weekend.

ROUGH: OK. Let’s begin by listening to how vaccines mandates are already starting to come down:

PAPENFUSE: We believe the vaccine is safe, effective, the best means of fighting the virus.

That’s Eric Papenfuse. Mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

REICHARD: In January, he signed an executive order mandating all city employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

PAPENFUSE: It’s required and it’s a condition of employment so it could potentially lead to termination.

It’s one thing to encourage people to get vaccinated; it’s quite another to mandate it. 

We should point out that a constitutional analysis in general does not apply to private actors. So our focus is on state and local laws.

ROUGH: To dig into this, let’s take a trip back to the early 1900s. The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, had a problem on its hands.

REICHARD: A problem on its hands and arms and legs and face and torso.

ROUGH: A smallpox outbreak. 1,596 confirmed cases around Boston in a three-year period. 270 people died.

REICHARD: In response, the health board of Cambridge decided to invoke a state law that required everyone in the town to get a smallpox vaccine. 

Not everyone was happy with that. A man named Henning Jacobson challenged the law.

ROUGH: Jacobson was a pastor. He’d received a smallpox vaccination as a child in Sweden. And he had a bad reaction. So he didn’t want to get another one.

Barry McDonald is a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University. He fills in the story.

MCDONALD: Now years later as an adult in Cambridge he was saying, “You know, look. I shouldn’t have to be vaccinated. I had all these problems. And it violates my constitutional rights for the state of Massachusetts to require me to be vaccinated.”

REICHARD: In particular, his individual liberty right guaranteed by the due process clause.

MCDONALD: He said this liberty interest in my bodily integrity—

ROUGH: Let me interrupt here for a moment. Bodily integrity means to have autonomy over one’s own body. To be free from action against their body to which they don’t consent.

MCDONALD: He said this liberty interest in my bodily integrity and controlling what goes in my body, especially if it may be harmful to me, I have a constitutional right to refuse to be vaccinated.

REICHARD: The due process clause says, “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” 

That prohibition is in the U.S. Constitution twice. 

In the Fifth Amendment, where the prohibition applies to the federal government.

ROUGH: And then very similar language in the Fourteenth Amendment, where it applies to state governments.

REICHARD: That’s what we’re talking about here.

ROUGH: Massachusetts law allowed a person to pay a $5 penalty instead of getting a vaccine.

REICHARD: But Jacobson did not want the vaccine or to pay the penalty.

So what happened? Once again, Barry McDonald.

MCDONALD: It went all the way up to the Supreme Court of the United States who in a 7-2 decision rejected Jacobson’s claim and essentially said that in situations like this the police power of the state to protect the public health, safety, and welfare of its people has to predominate.

ROUGH: Here’s a quote from the opinion.

AUDIO: “The liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.”

REICHARD: Think of seat belt laws. Seat belts restrain your body. They protect people from injury and protect the public from excessive medical costs. Or mask mandates. Designed to protect both you and others. For the common good.

ROUGH: Of course, vaccines do not go across your body or face. Vaccines go inside the physical body and induce an immune response.

REICHARD: Fast forward to 1922. Roughly 17 years after the Jacobson case, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of another vaccine law.

ROUGH: This one originated in San Antonio, Texas. The law said if parents wanted to send their kid to school, the child had to receive the smallpox vaccine. Rosalyn Zucht, an unvaccinated student, challenged the law.

MCDONALD: The court almost summarily rejected her claims, essentially saying, “Look, we’ve already been through all this in Jacobson.”

REICHARD: Even though the Zucht case is 100 years old and Jacobson is even older, they are still considered binding precedent for lower courts to follow.

ROUGH: For the common good. On one hand, the common good is — well, good! Love your neighbor as yourself. On the other hand, the common good can be used to justify troubling policy. Who decides the common good?

REICHARD: Nine men and women in black robes? Doctors in white coats? The individual who has to get the shot?

ROUGH: Jonathan Emord is an attorney who specializes in health law claims. Listen to what he has to say about the Jacobson decision.

EMORD: This created a very dangerous precedent that we later came to discover…

Why is it a dangerous precedent when the law protects the public from a transmissible disease, smallpox?

Five years after Zucht, the Supreme Court heard another case about bodily integrity. A case with sad and alarming facts.

EMORD: We have the Buck versus Bell decision. Based on Jacobson.

REICHARD: Carrie Buck lived in Virginia. She was in foster care when a relative of her foster parents raped her. She was 17 and got pregnant. Embarrassed at the pregnancy, her foster parents committed Buck to a mental institution. They claimed she was feeble-minded and promiscuous.

ROUGH: It gets worse. Virginia had recently passed a new law. Forced sterilization for the feeble-minded. The state wanted to cut her fallopian tubes.

REICHARD: For the common good—determined by the state. The state viewed her as unfit to bear children.

ROUGH: Yes, that was the rationale. Buck fought the law on constitutional grounds. Like Jacobson, she wanted autonomy over her body. She sued, saying cutting my fallopian tubes is a deprivation of my liberty. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. 

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote the opinion.

EMORD: Using Jacobson as the basis, he then justified eugenics for sterilization of Carrie Buck. And then he said notoriously at the end of the decision, “The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles is enough.”

Terrible.

REICHARD: Awful.

ROUGH: Let’s back up. Why is the Supreme Court applying a reasonableness test to these laws? After all, a liberty violation is at stake.

EMORD: Ordinarily, we ask the state before it takes away liberty to prove that it has a compelling state interest, and that the means chosen are narrowly tailored to attain that interest.

REICHARD: Compelling state interest, narrowly tailored. Otherwise known as the strict security test. The highest standard of judicial review.

EMORD: But in this context, that test is not applied at all.

There are a couple reasons the court did not apply strict scrutiny in the 1905 Jacobson case. First and most obviously, the court hadn’t developed the test yet.

ROUGH: Right. That came from a case in 1942. And it only applies when a law violates a person’s fundamental rights. 

So that raises a question: Is the refusal to get a vaccine a fundamental right if it’s based on a bodily integrity argument? The answer is a bit fuzzy. The court hasn’t addressed that question under modern liberty due process rules.

REICHARD: But what about a person who claims the mandate conflicts with his or her religious beliefs and practices? A challenge under the First Amendment? Would strict scrutiny apply there?

ROUGH: That is complicated too, of course! McDonald explains:

MCDONALD: If you were to raise that claim back in the 1980s, for example, you would have a pretty strong claim. Then the court would say, well that’s a serious issue and we’re going to apply strict scrutiny.

But in 1990, along came a case called Employment Division versus Smith.

MCDONALD: You had some individuals that were seeking a religious exemption to smoke peyote, seeking a religious exemption from Oregon drug laws.

REICHARD: In the Smith case, the court changed course. In a 5-4 decision, the court held—

MCONDALD: To allow a person to have a religious exemption to a secular law that is designed to promote the public good essentially makes that person a law unto themselves, and it has the potential to create chaos. We’re going to overrule all these earlier decisions and we’re no longer going to sort of scrutinize denials of religious exemptions as a free exercise of religion matter.

ROUGH: The court went on to say for a religious exemption, Congress is the place to go for a federal issue. Or the state legislature if it’s a state issue.

REICHARD: A case pending before the court right now may overturn Smith. We’ll cover that case in Season 2 of the Legal Docket podcast.

ROUGH: For now, federal and state statutes determine religious exemptions to state or local vaccine laws.

REICHARD: When it comes to health and medical treatment, informed consent is important. Here’s Emord’s take—

EMORD: The role of the state becomes simple. It educates. It provides information, it helps in disseminating information. And that’s the answer.

ROUGH: It’s been about a year since the pandemic began. Along with the mask mandates and mandates shuttering businesses. That meant lawsuits. A challenge to a mask mandate in Wisconsin made its way to the state supreme court, for example. And the Michigan supreme court shut down the governor’s restrictions. Add vaccine mandates in the mix, and we’ve likely only just begun to see these constitutional challenges.

And that’s it for this week’s Legal Docket. I’m Jenny Rough.

REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Jenny, thanks for doing the heavy lifting this week!

ROUGH: Anytime — my pleasure.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well last week was a miserable week for many Texans, but a Houston man decided to make the best of the situation.

AUDIO: [SKIING]

That is the sound of Travis McGullam snow skiing…

On Interstate-10. 

A video posted to his Facebook page shows McGullam holding onto one end of a tow strap, as a friend pulled him along in his truck.

MCGULLAM: Getting kind of cold in the house, lost power ‘bout midnight the morning before and decided—like hey what should we do? And I was looking at these skis sittin’ in my room. Might as well put them to some use!

Snow skiing on a major highway is not the safest thing to do, no matter how light the traffic may be. 

But McGullam said highway skiing was no more dangerous than some of the ski slopes he’s tackled. And he said at least there was no danger of running into a tree. An oncoming car? That’s another thing.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen joins us now for our weekly conversation on the economy. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: Terribly difficult week, especially in Texas, with the unprecedented winter weather and of course making matters much worse, power outages. 

There’s probably an energy-market economics story in here, David, but it did break out in a partisan way with the governor, Greg Abbott, making the point—and it wasn’t his only point, but it got magnified—and it was that this is why you can’t go full-on with renewables. And he made the provocative point that the so-called Green New Deal would be a deadly deal. Here he is on Fox News with Sean Hannity.

ABBOTT: Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy, such as natural gas and oil, and nuclear as well as solar and wind. But you saw our wind and our solar got shut down and they were, collectively, more than 10 percent of our power grid. It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states.

Then the architect—or chief promoter—of the Green New Deal fired back. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Abbott was to blame for the power outages and that if the crisis proves anything, she said, power-grid failures “are quite literally what happens when you don’t pursue a Green New Deal.”

So is this an energy-markets story, a parable on green energy or lack thereof?

BAHNSEN: No. Here’s what it is: Just like every single thing in our society right now, it’s an opportunity for polarization and tribalization to rear its ugly head.

So, those on the green side of the energy debate will refuse to look at the inadequacy inherent in wind production and will point to frozen pipelines and inability to get natural gas and blame it on inadequate clean energy infrastructure and try to get a political talking point out of it.

And on the other side, although I think there’s more merit on the other side, but still it becomes politicized unnecessarily, they’ll point out the fact that if we had better natural gas infrastructure and we invested more into this that we could have avoided some of it.

There is a part of me that does believe it’s difficult for places to properly prepare for certain circumstances that are not normal. This isn’t like Florida dealing with a hurricane or California dealing with an earthquake. This is obviously something that’s pretty rare, the gravity of this winter storm in a region like Texas.

But the reality is that there is total inadequate infrastructure investment and there is also—at this point in time, indisputably—inadequacy for wind or solar to generate the power needs of our society. That isn’t really disputed.

But, no: To the extent that we want to try to derive an energy policy point out of this, Nick, I think it is that we already know that wind and solar are intermittent and that there is a need for something more reliable. And in this particular case, seeing energy prices skyrocket higher because of the production snafus in the Permian Basin is not an argument against what fossil’s happening. It’s a reality of supply and demand. And we have to have a more honest and comprehensive energy policy. 

I’m not one of the people on the right who’s against developing a renewable energy policy. And I’m certainly not one of the people who’s against continued investment and the necessity of fossil fuels. It’s an all of the above energy policy, but that only is for those that are willing to be coherent and rational.

If you want to be only political and tribal, then we can continue doing this and that’s the problem with the discussion on news channels and so forth is there’s just no honesty whatsoever, not even an attempt at honesty.

EICHER: We had some January economic reports released last week and surely you’ve reviewed them—what jumped out?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, it was a really encouraging week for me and some of my watchers. The industrial production up 0.9 percent month-over-month. 

Those types of data points don’t get all the attention that the retail number did, and the retail number was up over five percent. And so a lot of people focused on that. The retail number in particular was real strong around furniture, around electronics, obviously around online retailing, auto sales. But, again, the area that continues to lag are in our demand for services and that’s primarily around food, hospitality, travel, etcetera. As we’re recording, I’m getting ready to jump on a flight and my flight is completely sold out. As I went to go pick the seat, I noticed every other seat in the part of the plane I’m sitting in was selected and I have flown back and forth from California to New York 15 times since COVID and this is the first time I’ve seen it. That’s only anecdotal, but my point is the TSA’s announcing they’re going to be hiring 6,000 new security people in the months ahead. I think that travel stuff is going to come back online and that’s because I think we’re about to look at COVID in the rearview mirror.

EICHER: Let me wrap up here by congratulating you, your firm, on picking up economist Larry Kudlow. Kudlow most recently director of the National Economic Council for President Trump, worked at the White House, now he’s with The Bahnsen Group. So, congratulations and what exactly is he going to be doing?

BAHNSEN: Well, yeah, thank you. I mean, it’s something I’m utterly thrilled about. Larry and I are talking basically on a daily basis. He is serving as an economic and policy advisor and consultant to me as the Chief Investment Officer at my business. He’ll be regularly consulting with our whole investment committee, macroeconomics and public policy. 

But let me give you an example of something that I want to share with the WORLD listeners right now that I probably would not have detected if it were not for Larry’s perspective as we were speaking privately this week about the Biden stimulus plan and its desire to add $150 billion to public schools, $140 billion to public schools that have not reopened. And they are still sitting on unspent $50 billion from the last stimulus bill. So you can look at it as it being wasteful and being politically driven or a handout to unions. 

You can have all that discussion. I think anyone can formulate suspicions and opinions and thoughts on that, but what Larry pointed out to me that I would not have thought about apart from his perspective—because there really isn’t any economic rationale to have in the bill, additional funding to places that simply don’t need it, aren’t going to spend it, and we’re on the backside of where COVID’s going. 

But he pointed out that this becomes a really, really good rationale to justify not opening schools. That they can now say they haven’t spent the money they’ve gotten, so we can’t let them reopen because they haven’t taken the precautions or haven’t gotten all the vaccinations or done all the PPE or what have you. So, in other words, it isn’t about getting the money and it isn’t even about them spending the money. It’s about giving cover to why the schools are not getting reopened. 

Now, that may not happen. There may be ways to kind of drive through this. The number one thing that’s going to get schools opened is that the parents are mad as you know what and demanding the schools reopen. And the political public sentiment is moving against school closures at an unbelievable pace. 

But I thought Larry’s perspective on that was interesting and useful and those are the types of things that I need from someone with a Washington skill set that he has.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, financial analyst and advisor. Great to talk with you and we’ll catch you next time. Safe travels.

BAHNSEN: Good to be with you, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: the WORLD History Book. This week: a first attempt on Abraham Lincoln’s life, the first black female lawyer, and the first cheap way to isolate aluminum. Here’s WORLD senior correspondent Katie Gaultney.

AUDIO: [TRAIN WHISTLE]

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: We begin today with a polarizing president-elect. On February 23, 1861, Abraham Lincoln dodged would-be assassins in Baltimore and arrived under cloak of darkness in Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. 

Lincoln began a goodwill tour before his inauguration, beginning at his home in Springfield, Illinois. The Smithsonian explains Lincoln intended the publicity to soften the public’s perception of him.

SMITHSONIAN: And he said, “It’s my hope that when we see more of each other, we shall like each other the more.”

But Maryland was a slave state, and many were dissatisfied over the country’s new anti-slavery leadership. Railroad officials tapped Allan Pinkerton to run security for the 70-city tour. He got wind of a plot to ambush Lincoln’s carriage in Baltimore. Knife-wielding assassins hoped to stab Lincoln at the train station when he changed trains. 

Pinkerton devised a series of decoys, bluffs, blinds, and even a disguise of sorts—a shawl Lincoln would use to obscure his distinctive features—to enable safe passage for Lincoln. He even cut telegraph communication in the area to keep conspirators from corresponding. A 2016 episode of “American Lawmen” explained that Pinkerton’s tactics were novel for their time. 

AMERICAN LAWMEN: Allan Pinkerton believed that criminals had a deep desire to unburden themselves so his whole approach to law enforcement was founded on the notion of surveillance. “We will watch them until they give themselves up.”

When Lincoln’s train carriage arrived in Baltimore in the middle of the night—earlier than expected, by Pinkerton’s design—rail workers unhitched it, and horses pulled it to his transfer station. 

Lincoln’s train arrived safely in the nation’s capital at 6 a.m. on February 23. Throngs of disappointed onlookers at the Baltimore train station learned Lincoln had already passed through their city. 

MUSIC: ARTHUR FOOTE, “SUITE NO. 1 IN D MINOR, OP. 15: III. ROMANCE”

Only 11 years after that close call, a step forward: On February 27, 1872, Charlotte E. Ray became the United States’ first black woman lawyer at the age of 22.

The Minority Corporate Counsel Association annually presents an award in Ray’s name. Its 2018 Charlotte E. Ray Award honoree, Michele Colman Mayes, read from an 1872 Women’s Journal article about Ray. 

MAYES: In the city of Washington, where a few years ago colored women were bought and sold under sanction of law, a woman of African descent has been admitted to practice at the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. She doubtless has a fine mind and deserves success. 

Ray used only her initials on her Howard University law school application, not letting on that she was a woman. Women in other states used Ray’s bar admission as precedent for admission to their state bars. 

We’ll end on something light—the production of a lightweight metal. On February 23, 1886, Charles Martin Hall completed several years of intensive work, producing the first samples of aluminium from the electrolysis of aluminium oxide. His sister Julia assisted him, as recreated in this 1940s ALCOA promotional film. 

ALCOA: Julia, look!/ Charles! Is that it?/ Yes! At last I’ve finally got it… aluminum! 

Even though aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, scientists hadn’t found a cost-effective way to isolate it. The 1940s radio show “A Matter of Luck” imagined Hall’s time as a student at Oberlin College. 

RADIO: Uh, Professor, could I have a word with you?/ Why certainly, Hall. What is it?/ It’s about this lecture you’ve just given us on aluminium. It seems a pity there isn’t a process for extracting it in commercial quantities./ Why do you say that?/ Well, sir, in the first place, it’s so plentiful… it’s a pity that it has to cost so much to get a hold of a scrap! 

Advancements in the century before Hall’s work had brought the price of aluminum down from about $500 a pound to closer to $12. Hall thought he could do even better. But he graduated without realizing his dream of discovering an inexpensive way to isolate aluminum. Still, his work didn’t end when he received his diploma. 

ALCOA: He rigged up a laboratory in his father’s woodshed. Gasoline stove and homemade batteries, using fruit jars and jelly tumblers, most any sort of container he could find around the house. 

Hall later brought in investors, founding the company that would become the Aluminum Company of America, or ALCOA.

ALCOA: I think that sums it up. I believe there’s a great future in aluminum with this Hall process… 

SONG: “ALUMINUM” BY BNL

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accord, and a host of international engagements. President Trump had gotten us out and now President Biden is getting us back in. We’ll tell you about how that’s likely to work.

And, Jack Phillips. The Colorado baker is headed back to court again next month. We’ll explain why.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

There is neither Jew nor Greek,  neither slave nor free,  nor male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

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.