The World and Everything in It: February 24, 2025

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Retirement security for university employees, or job security for lawyers?

AUDIO: You know, you file all these lawsuits, and maybe the universities are going to say: Look, … we're just going to settle. And so there's a payday for the law firm …

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat: speaking of pay days, I’ll talk with economist David Bahnsen about the DOGE dividend. He’ll have a lot to say about that.

And the WORLD History Book. One hundred years ago, a dog sled relay delivered life saving medicine and inspired an annual sporting event.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, February 24th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

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

SOUND: [Air raid sirens]

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine: Drone attack »  Air raid sirens sounding last night in Kyiv … amid a massive Russian drone attack.

It’s an all too familiar sound in Ukraine … exactly three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Officials say Russia launched the largest number of attack drones since the start of the war … almost 270, damaging cars and buildings.

Ukraine: Allies summit » The attacks come as both sides look for bargaining power … with U.S. officials launching peace talks.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says that today … Kyiv will host a high-level meeting with dozens of leaders from allied nations. The U.S., though, was not expected to participate.

Zelenskyy is leaning heavily into support from European leaders … amid a heavily strained relationship with President Trump.

ZELENSKYY: [Speaking Ukrainian]

He says he believes today’s meeting could be a “possible turning point” … with regard to strengthening Ukraine’s hand.

Ukraine: U.S. ties, mineral rights » But support from Washington is still crucial, and one key to that … could be a partnership on rare earth minerals in Ukraine.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

BESSENT:  It is a win win. We make money if the Ukrainian people make money, and I believe that with the United States of America, our know how, our, our businesses willing to come in and provide capital, that we can accelerate the Ukrainian growth trajectory.

And Zelenskyy says a U.S. proposal that would have seen a half-trillion dollars … worth of profits from Ukrainian minerals given to the U.S. as compensation for its wartime aid to Kyiv … has been taken off the table.

Ukraine objected to the proposal … largely because it did not include security guarantees.

Zelenskyy’s remarks on Sunday led many to believe the two sides may be drawing closer to a rare earth minerals deal … that will give the U.S. a greater vested interest in Ukraine.

Reaction to CQ Brown replacement / DOD layoffs » Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is defending President Trump’s firing of the nation’s top general amid a major shakeup at the Pentagon.

HEGSETH:  The president deserves to pick his key national security and military advisory team. There are lots of presidents who've made changes, from FDR to Eisenhower to H.W. Bush to Barack Obama.

President Trump on Friday night dismissed Air Force Gen. CQ Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hegseth said, “Nothing about this is unprecedented.”

But Democratic Congressman Adam Smith had a very different take.

SMITH:  Well, it's deeply concerning. I know CQ brown quite well. He's an incredibly capable, intelligent person. Um, and to, there seems to be no particular reason to remove him and it's disruptive. 

The Trump administration did not publicly state a reason for General Brown’s removal. But it came amid a broader purge of senior military officials linked to Biden-era DEI efforts.

Reconciliation bill reaction  » On Capitol Hill … the House Budget Committee has advanced a budget resolution for a full vote.

That is one huge bill that would address the president’s priorities on national and border security and tax cuts.

The Senate has advanced its own legislation … opting for an alternative strategy of splitting those priorities up into multiple bills. GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn:

BLACKBURN:  We in the Senate think that we can reduce more and remove outdated agencies, doge more, if we do three bills.

Some Republicans say separate bills would be the fastest way to pass President Trump's agenda. But others argue that the single-bill strategy is the surest path to success.

Germany election » A government shakeup in Germany …

SOUND: [German election celebration]

Supporters of opposition leader Friedrich Merz celebrated last night … after projections showed that his center-right party ousted Chancellor Olaf Sholz and his left-of-center Social Democratic Party from power.

MERZ: [Speaking German]

Merz thanked supporters, but acknowledged a tough task ahead to form a governing coalition.

Sholz, for his part, took responsibility for the defeat, and he added …

SCHOLZ: It is first and foremost important to congratulate CGU Chairman Friedrich Merz from here on the mandate to form the next government.

The election was dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of Europe’s biggest economy and pressure to curb migration.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: protecting retirement funds on Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday, February 24th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Time now for Legal Docket.

SOUND: [Library of Congress] 

About a week and a half ago I went up to the Library of Congress. The Supreme Court Fellows Program hosts an annual lecture that typically features a Supreme Court justice. This year, it was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Her lecture began with a reading from her memoir.

JACKSON: “Are you prepared to take the oath?,” he said, his tone more formal than it had been a moment before. I am!, I said in a voice that sounded firmer than I felt.

As she continued, one part caught my attention. It was about the Bibles she used when she took her Supreme Court oaths. Two Bibles. On top, a cherished family Bible.

Underneath, a Bible known as the Harlan Bible.

In speaking with the court’s public information office, I found out it’s a King James Version. It’s printed by Oxford University Press ,and it’s bound in black leather.

JACKSON: Donated to the court in 1906 by Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan. This tome had been used for the oath-taking by every Supreme Court appointee since then. Each new justice had also signed one of the book’s fly leaves after being sworn in.

As a footnote here, Justice Harlan was a Presbyterian and a Calvinist. One legal scholar said the argument that Harlan’s “Calvinism contributed to his distinctiveness as a judge … [is grounded in] the unusual intensity of Harlan’s beliefs.”

That unusual intensity shows itself in the nickname Harlan earned: The Great Dissenter—for his lone dissent in the case Plessy versus Ferguson. That landmark 1896 decision approved the principle of separate but equal. Harlan objected, writing the famous line that the Constitution ought to be color blind.

SOUND: [Cornell Alma Mater played by the Cornell chimesmasters]

EICHER: Those are the famous Cornell Chimes—a 21-bell chorus in McGraw Tower on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, New York. When the university opened its doors in 1868, there were just nine bells. But like a good investment, they’ve more than doubled over time—filling the air with even richer music.

Today on Legal Docket, a case involving Cornell’s management of investments of a different sort: its employee retirement plans.

A group of current and former employees is suing Cornell. Those employees say the University let outside companies nibble at their nest eggs.

ROUGH: They claim the university violated a federal law that protects people who invest in employer-based plans. That law is known by the acronym ERISA. You'll hear it quite a bit today as we listen to the arguments. ERISA stands for Employee Retirement Income Security Act. Under ERISA, Cornell is a “fiduciary.” That just means the school is responsible for using care and skill in managing employees’ funds.

EICHER: And that’s why employees sued. They say Cornell didn’t exercise proper care and skill. Instead, it allowed investment companies Fidelity and TIAA to charge excessive fees on their retirement accounts. And that eroded their savings over time.

ERISA contains a list of “prohibited transactions.” Generally, employers are not allowed to outsource certain plan services, like recordkeeping. There is an exception: If the service is necessary and the fees reasonable, then it’s okay. But the employees say Cornell failed that test and ought to be held liable.

ROUGH: Let me add here, I spoke with an ERISA lawyer who has served as an expert witness in cases just like this. She said as a practical matter, all plans have some sort of service provider. You can’t maintain a plan without one.

But the way the provisions work has been the subject of many lawsuits.

They’re not easy to judge. Different appeals courts have ruled differently, and the resulting circuit split is a virtual guarantee that the Supreme Court is going to have to get involved.

CORNELL: We’ll hear argument next in case 23-1007, Cunningham versus Cornell University.

EICHER: The legal issue centers on the pleading standard. Meaning, what must a plaintiff allege in the complaint to make the lawsuit valid?

Some circuits say all you have to allege is “Hey, Cornell hired an outside provider for the plan,” and that’s enough. You simply point to the prohibited transaction. The employer then has to prove it’s covered by the exception—namely, that fees were fair and the services were needed. But the burden is on the employer.

Other circuits say, “Not so fast, you can’t sue just because a plan uses an outside provider—everyone does that. You also have to claim something was truly off about the arrangement, like unreasonably high fees.”

ROUGH: And that’s the question before the Supreme Court: How much detail must plaintiffs include in their lawsuit to survive an early dismissal?

This is no small issue: Plaintiffs have to get the allegations right. Because if a complaint doesn’t state a valid claim, the court will dismiss it.

Xiao Wang represented the plan participants at oral argument. He said the statute’s plain text and structure supports his client’s position.

CORNELL; Congress frequently writes laws where it puts liability in one part of the statute and exceptions to liability in another. And when it does so, this Court has time and again held that plaintiffs plead and prove liability and defendants plead and prove exceptions to liability.

Your theory means, I think, or at least the other side says that
it's a prohibited transaction just to have recordkeeping services.

WANG: Correct, Justice Kavanaugh. I think our theory—

KAVANAUGH: And that seems nuts, right? That's what they say. And it does to me seem nuts too.

The whole game for plaintiffs here is to get the case to discovery. That costs time and money, and lots of both. If the plaintiffs can escape a motion to dismiss and move the case to discovery, well, that may motivate the university to settle. That may be the cheaper route even if, down the road, it might be able to show the fees were not excessive or unreasonable.

KAVANAUGH: You’re not alleging excessive or unreasonable amounts paid for these recordkeeping services; you're just alleging that we had them. Well, of course, we have them, right? Everyone has them. You have to have them. So it's an automatic ticket, pass go, go immediately to discovery, summary judgment, huge expense. These universities, other defendants are saying that's just completely absurd and ridiculous…

EICHER: It’s worth noting the same law firm who represents the retirement plan participants here has filed similar cases across the country. Cases against schools like Duke, Vanderbilt, and Penn.

Justice Samuel Alito wanted to hear more about that.

ALITO: And then, you know, how many lawsuits just like this one did the Schlichter Bogard law firm in St. Louis file against universities? … How many lawsuits just like this did that law firm file against different universities?

WANG: I think it's filed a significant number. I don't have the specific number off the top of my head, but I would say
that — 12, excuse me, and — but I would
say, in the complaint itself –

ALITO: I thought it was 20, but it doesn't matter.
So, you know, you file all these lawsuits, and maybe the universities are going to say: Look, it's going to cost us a lot of money to go through the discovery, we're just
going to settle. And so there's a payday for the law firm.

Nicole Saharsky argued for Cornell. She called the plaintiffs’ lawsuit too thin. Her point is that the ERISA section on “prohibited transactions” leads directly to the exception that allows outsourcing if the fees are fair. In Saharsky’s view, that means the plaintiffs have to claim something was actually wrong before they can sue. The burden’s on the plaintiffs to show the fees are unreasonable or the services unnecessary. Justice Clarence Thomas pressed Saharsky to explain exactly what a valid lawsuit ought to say.

THOMAS: What should be pled?

NICOLE SAHARSKY: So, here, it's that the fiduciary caused the plan to enter into a transaction with a party in interest, which a service provider is, and either that the services were unnecessary or that the fees are unreasonable. So, you know, it's just a question of can they just come to court and say service provider transaction with nothing wrong with it, as opposed to service provider transaction with some kind of wrongdoing… If you come to court, you've got to have done some investigation and have done some, you know, have some plausible allegation of wrongdoing.

ROUGH: We’ve got a retirement crisis in this country. People are living longer, but they’re not saving enough. And it’s harder for many people to keep working as they age. That’s why it’s so important to protect their retirement accounts from mismanagement.

On the other hand, if the courts allow every ERISA lawsuit to go forward, even ones with weak claims; that’s a different kind of mismanagement. It could be a waste of time and money that could’ve helped those same plan participants.

So there’s a balance to strike, and I’m curious to see how the justices handle it.

EICHER: Along with hearing this Cornell case, the Supreme Court handed down three opinions on Friday: First, the court held that Hungarian Holocaust survivors did not meet the exception allowing them to sue Hungary in U.S. courts.

Second case involves a whistleblower: The court agreed that a telecom fraud case under the False Claims Act can proceed.

And third, a 5–4 ruling says unemployed workers can sue Alabama for long wait times on benefits.

ROUGH: And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. David, good morning.

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

EICHER: It’s Monday morning … and that means full offices, at least for now, at the Small Business Administration …

Here’s the new head of the SBA … former Senator Kelly Loeffler.

KELLY LOEFFLER: Hi, everyone. It’s Kelly Loeffler. It’s my second day here at the SBA. I could not be more excited to be here.

So I thought l’d take a walk. And what I found is that exactly what’s been said is true. About 90 percent of our employees are working from home.

Well, that ends Monday with President Trump’s order to return to work. …

David, with President Trump’s order for federal employees to return to the office … and seeing that many private businesses have already done so … do you view this mandate as a genuine effort to boost productivity and reduce waste in government spending, or is it mainly a political statement?

BAHNSEN: No, I think it’s meaningful. Of course, I think it’s meaningful in the private sector, too.

If we’re going to pay governmental employees to do some work, then they should go to work. One of the things that Kelly (Loeffler) did in that video is point out that her particular governmental agency is the Small Business Administration.

So I would like to know of all these small businesses they serve, how many of them have a bunch of people not working. See, the fact of the matter is most of these businesses have gone back to work a long, long time ago. That the governmental employees—DOGE’s estimate that 92% were not going back to work—that’s a completely unacceptable metric.

Again, if there’s certain government employees that want to take retirement, want to leave, if they’re going to be cut out because they aren’t producing, that’s a different story. But those that want to stay and have a job and get paid for a job, they need to go do their job.

EICHER: Some of our listeners have shared personal experiences where DOGE’s cost-cutting measures seem to have led to indiscriminate layoffs. How do you differentiate between necessary efficiency-driven terminations and unjust workforce reductions, and what should be the criteria for these decisions?

BAHNSEN: You know, Nick, this issue about DOGE and terminations and retirement offers, it’s very important that we look at things by different category because offering people eight months of pay to leave is very different from termination.

Some people are being let go for cause, and I’m sure that there are some government employees out there who have worked hard and are losing their job—and those are unfortunate circumstances.

You know, we know those things happen in the private sector from time to time. They don’t happen very often, but they can happen in the public sector, too. That includes what is essentially right now a RIF. Sometimes companies go in and have to do what’s called a RIF, where for financial reasons, they have to let 10% percent or 15% of workers go …

EICHER: RIF, reduction in force …

BAHNSEN: … yeah, a reduction in force, that’s right. It’s a very difficult thing on a human level, but we understand it is unfortunately part of what takes place at times—and people find new work. They find new opportunities, sometimes better opportunities.

So I don’t say it without compassion for those who are going through it, but that is not the majority of what’s happening. The majority of it is an offer being made of people that they can take eight months of pay to go away. In some cases, there is wast and push back.

Look, I’m very happy to criticize some of the things that have happened, okay? I think that what they did with, for example, the prosecutor who had conscience objections to the dropping of the Eric Adams case, I think that was very problematic.

But when you’re talking about the bulk of the work DOGE is doing—and none of us is privy to all of the specifics—I’m very confident that they’re mostly trying to eliminate waste. Those things, unfortunately, have to be done in a government that’s spending $2 trillion more than it brings in.

EICHER: David, what are your thoughts on the “DOGE dividend” proposal—where a portion of government savings is returned to taxpayers? Looks like you’re ready to jump on in …

BAHNSEN: Sometimes I wish our listeners could see the video so they could just get my answer from my facial expressions instead of instead of what I’m about to say. (Laughter.)

I’m always for the idea of taxpayers receiving money back, paying less taxes, things like that. That is not what we are talking about here.

I want to make this analogy that I presented on Fox the other day because it is a pretty good analogy: Say your credit-card company accidentally charges you $5,000 for something they weren’t supposed to and you uncover it later, and they send you a check for $5,000. You don’t say, “well, hey, I’m gonna leave the debt there and I’m gonna deposit the $5,000.” All that means is you basically took a cash advance on the credit card, okay?

If we uncover money with DOGE that was from inefficiency, that gives us the opportunity to reduce the money we’re leaving in debt for our children and our grandchildren. No entity with $36 trillion of national debt—when we’re talking about money raised from uncovering inefficiency that helped create the $36 trillion of debt, alright?—we’re not talking about our taxpayer money and it’s a refund owed.

It isn’t that we paid in more than we owed on an individual basis. This DOGE dividend is obviously a political idea to put cash in people’s pockets, to make them feel good. My critique is not that it’s inflationary. It isn’t creating new money supply. It would create more demand than there is new supply. And so you’ll live with higher prices, yes, but that’s not the inflationary critique.

The critique is it belongs to the creditors.

Reduce the debt is the responsible thing to do, which is what they said they were creating Doge for.

EICHER: You know … I’m more of a voice inflections than facial expressions kind of guy … and I must congratulate you for matching the face with the voice. Perfect.

BAHNSEN: (Laughter) Well, thank you. (Laughter)

EICHER: Well, before we go, speaking of inflation and inflation expectations, David, could you elaborate on your discussion from Dividend Café on the differences between core inflation and headline inflation? … especially in light of oil price fluctuations and housing supply issues.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, you know, I think there’s been times in the past that we’ve discussed why there’s a difference between core inflation and headline inflation. Headline includes all components of the price level, and core strips out energy and food.

What I tried to lay out in Dividend Café is that there’s monetary inflation that raises the whole price level when the money supply goes up more than the supply of goods and services. But in the case of oil, oftentimes gas prices go up and it has nothing to do with monetary inflation—it often has to do with all kinds of geopolitical things and supply shocks.

(There’s various commodity complexities that can exist, you know, for example cocoa over the last, you know, eight months. People are aware of the bird flu ramifications with egg prices. So yes, the price of eggs inflated meaning went higher, but that wasn’t from inflation.)

With oil, I think it’s been incredibly stable for a little while. It’s gone up into the $80s; it’s come down to the mid-$60s. It stayed right around the $70 level since the big spike that had happened in 2022. But, you know, there are things that affect oil prices with Iran either getting taken off the global market, or being put back on the global market as under the Biden administration, unfortunately, that happened.

The Russia-Ukraine War had implications in 2022 and an end to the war maybe could end up having implications. But OPEC+, which Russia is a member of, they’re kind of holding their production down.

My point is that oil prices are really important to how people feel about prices. What you’re paying at the gas pump, especially people that have long commutes to work, is a big part of what they spend money on.

Middle-class people and lower-income people, it’s sometimes one of their biggest expenditures outside of their rent or their mortgage. But that’s really not the same as the inflation level, and we have to understand housing prices have a supply component. Oil is complicated. That’s the stuff we got to be thinking about here. It’s going to affect markets in a different way. It’s going to affect the economy in a different way.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David writes at dividendcafe.com and regularly for WORLD Opinions. David, thanks! Have a great week!

BAHNSEN: Well, thanks so much, Nick, great to be with you.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Today is Monday, February 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for the WORLD History Book.

Last month was the 100th anniversary of the Great Serum Run in Alaska.

It was a race against time to transport the antidote to a deadly disease from one side of the state to the other before an outbreak could wipe out an entire community.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy has the story.

MARY MUNCY: In January 1925, children in Nome, Alaska begin complaining of sore throats and a nasty cough:

SOUND: [CHILDREN COUGHING]

Sound from The Great Alaskan Race movie released in 2019.

At first, the town doctor thinks it’s just a normal cold going around. But soon:

NURSE: What killed that little girl?

DOCTOR: She died of Diptheria.

A bacterial infection that creates a grey mucus that clogs a person’s airways. It’s highly contagious… and kills about 30 percent of infected children.

NURSE: But don’t we have the antitoxin?

DOCTOR: Yes we do, but it’s expired.

And not just by a few days. It’s about five years old the doctor doesn’t know if administering it will cause an adverse reaction, and even if it does work, he doesn’t have enough for all the sick.

DOCTOR: We need help.

The doctor telegraphs health officials in D.C., shuts down the town, and waits.

Former Nome resident, Jean Summers-Wolf, told the BBC that big red cards were posted on quarantined people’s front doors.

SUMMERS-WOLF: We would hold our breath and walk real fast or run past that house.

About five days after the first diphtheria diagnosis, government officials find a small supply of the antidote at a hospital in Anchorage.

The problem? It’s over 1,000 miles away in the dead of winter, and if the serum freezes, it may no longer work. Historian Stephen Haycox:

HAYCOX: The challenge was can we get the serum over to Nome in time?

In 1925 there aren’t any roads or trains to the town. Ships only come to Nome in the summer, and aviation is in its infancy.

The only way to get goods to and from Nome between October and June is by dog sled.

HAYCOX: Transportation by dog team is reliable. But how long is it going to take?

Usually about 30 days, at least for a mail run. Normally, a train brings the mail north from Anchorage to Nenana, then a dog team takes it the rest of the way.

TOWNSPERSON: One musher could never make it there and back. It’s 700 miles.

MAYOR: Not one musher, a relay.

There are cabins about every 30 miles along the route from Nenana to Nome where the mail carriers usually stop and rest.

MAYOR: We station men at every roadhouse from here to Nenana.

The men agree to the plan and two days after officials find the serum in Anchorage, it arrives in Nenana. Musher “Wild Bill” Shannon meets the train, straps the serum to his dog sled, and takes off into negative 54-degree temperatures.

Wild Bill travels about 50 miles before stopping at a cabin, warming himself and the serum then passes it off to the next musher. Three of his dogs had died on the way.

As the serum is on its way from Nenana to Nome, Leonhard Seppala, or “Sepp,” takes off from Nome. He is an immigrant from Norway and a well-known sled dog racer. He heads for a town about halfway between Nome and Nenana to retrieve the serum and return: a 600-mile round-trip run.

MILLER When Leonhard Seppola left Nome, he thought he was doing this whole halfway distance and back on his own and he hears this shouting and he sees a man, you know waving his arms.

Historical author Debbie Miller telling the BBC that it is Henry Ivanoff with the serum, the 17th musher in the relay. They are about 150 miles from Nome and it is near blizzard conditions. They had passed each other, but Ivanoff hears Seppola’s bells and yells him down. Ivanoff gives Seppola the bundle and Seppola turns around and heads back towards Nome.

Just a few miles in, he comes to the shore of the Norton Sound. Resident Summers-Wolf.

SUMMERS-WOLF: They were given orders go on land, do not cross Norton Sound because it’s high risk.

And a storm is rolling in, meaning Seppola won’t be able to hear or see if the ice starts cracking. He would have to trust his lead dog Togo to get them to the other side, but he takes off across the ice, anyway.

A few hours later, they make it to the other side and make camp.

MILLER: When they woke up in the morning, all that ice that they had crossed was gone. It had all floated out to sea.

The storm continues getting worse, but Seppola breaks camp and mushes for another 13 hours until he meets Charlie Olsen and hands off the serum.

After about 25 miles, Olsen delivers it to Gunner Kaasen, who is supposed to be the second to last musher in the chain, but when Kaasen arrives at the last stop he doesn’t see lights in the cabin and thinks the other musher isn’t ready to leave. So Kaasan keeps going, and at 5:30 in the morning, he pounds on the doctor’s door, holding the serum.

DOCTOR: Incredible, they’re all intact. Not a single vial broken.

They are frozen, but they still work and are quickly thawed and injected.

DOCTOR: Let’s go to work.

The mushers had turned a 30-day journey into a six-day sprint. But the town isn’t out of the woods, yet. The shipment is enough to slow the spread of diphtheria but more mushers do another run the very next week to bring a second shipment to the town.

Six days after that shipment arrives, the doctor lifts the quarantine about a month after the first diagnosis. The media coverage of the serum run lifts Kaasan and his lead dog Balto to national fame.

We know from historical documents that at least five people died of diphtheria before the antidote arrived, though some historians believe there were likely more since Inuit deaths were usually under-reported, if reported at all.

Today, planes, trains, and automobiles have mostly replaced the sled dog in the Alaskan wilderness, but every year, the state holds a race called the Iditarod Sled Dog Race that follows a similar route as the Serum Run. The ceremonial start to the race begins Saturday. More than 30 mushers and their dogs will compete to see who has the stamina to make the 1,000-mile journey and join people like Seppola and Kaassan in musher history.

SOUND: [CHEERING]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: A firsthand report on the German election over the weekend.

And, some states are trying to make divorce more difficult, but that may come with unintended consequences. We’ll explain.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

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 records that the Pharisees grumbled about Jesus eating with sinners. Jesus said: “‘...I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.’” —Luke 15:7

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.