The World and Everything in It — February 26, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Cancel culture keeps spreading. This time,  Big Tech censors author Ryan T. Anderson.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday.

Plus I’ll review Flora & Ulysses, a newly released superhero movie for the younger set.

And your listener feedback!

REICHARD: It’s Friday, February 26th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BASHAM: And I’m Megan Basham. Good morning!

REICHARD: Here’s Kent Covington now with the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: House panel holds hearing on Capitol breach » Lawmakers on Capitol Hill once again grilled law enforcement officials Thursday about the Jan. 6th siege at the U.S. Capitol. 

CLARK: Yet still we come down to this failure to be ready when we are at a significant likelihood of attacks.

Democratic Congresswoman Katherine Clark of Massachusetts heard there. She’s among the lawmakers wary of arguments by former top Capitol law enforcement officers that the FBI and other agencies failed to fully warn them about the threat to the Capitol. 

The Democratic chairman of the House panel holding the hearing, Congressman Tim Ryan, was also skeptical.

RYAN: To me it’s—you took the intelligence and I feel like you didn’t put it all together and synthesize it in a way and go ‘holy cow, I mean something really bad can happen here.’

But Acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman pushed back. 

PITTMAN: The department was not ignorant of intelligence indicating an attack of the size and scale we encountered on the 6th. There was no such intelligence. 

And Acting House Sergeant at Arms Timothy Blodgett also insisted that intelligence provided to Capitol law enforcement did not predict a coordinated siege.

BLODGETT: Bad information, conflicting information or missing information leads to poor decisions. 

Many lawmakers agreed that Capitol law enforcement should not shoulder all of the blame. But members maintained that police should have been more prepared than they were. 

###

2. House passes controversial LGBT rights bill (KC✓) (TL✓)

Hours later on the House floor, the Democrat-led chamber passed a sweeping LGBT rights bill down party lines.  

SOUND (LGBT vote NATS): On this vote, the yeas are 211, the nays are 195. The motion is adopted. 

The legislation, dubbed the “Equality Act,” would write protections into civil rights statutes … prioritizing LGBT protections over religious liberties. 

Last year, the Supreme Court extended sexual orientation and gender identity protections to cover secular employment decisions. The new House bill would extend protections to many other areas without adding religious freedom protections.

A virtually identical bill passed the House in 2019 but never got a vote in the then-GOP-controlled Senate. While Democrats now have a slim majority in the upper chamber, once again … The bill is likely to die in the Senate.

Ten republicans would have to back the bill to avoid a filibuster. 

Senate confirms Granholm as energy secretary (KC✓) (TL✓)

Lawmakers in the Senate have approved Jennifer Granholm as energy secretary. 

SOUND (Vote NATS): The yeas are 64, the nays are 35. The nomination is confirmed. 

The 62-year-old Granholm served two terms as the Gov. of Michigan.  She’ll play a pivotal role in what President Biden describes as his plan to build a green economy and fight climate change. 

During her confirmation hearing last month, Granholm, pushed her plans to embrace new wind and solar technologies. 

GRANHOLM: We can install wind turbines from Denmark or we can make ‘em in America!

Many GOP lawmakers fear that the Energy Dept. under Granholm will be hostile toward the oil and gas industry. But 14 Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted to confirm her nomination.

Khashoggi declassified assessment » President Biden on Thursday spoke with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud for the first time since taking office. 

The two leaders spoke ahead of the release of a declassified U.S. report on the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. 

The report is said to further implicate Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the killing. 

The White House held off on releasing it until after Biden spoke with the king. But President Biden is fulfilling a campaign promise to take a tougher stance toward Saudi Arabia. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more. 

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: As a candidate for president, Biden pledged to end US support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. He has done that. He has also halted some weapons sales to the country. 

He also said of Saudi Arabia that he would—quote—“make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” 

Biden denounced the country’s leadership after Saudi assassins killed Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. 

The White House says the president is working to “recalibrate” the U.S. relationship with the Saudis. Biden is expected to communicate with the king rather than with the country’s de facto ruler, Prince Salman. 

Democratic lawmakers could introduce a resolution today aimed at holding Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggi’s death and other human rights violations.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Manhattan prosecutor obtains Trump tax records » Former President Donald Trump’s tax records are now in the hands of a New York prosecutor. That after the Supreme Court on Monday declined to step in and stop the transfer of the records. 

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, had been fighting for more than a year for access to Trump’s tax records for a grand jury investigation into his business dealings. 

The documents are protected by grand jury secrecy rules and are not expected to be made public.

Former President Trump has called Vance’s investigation “a fishing expedition” and a continuation of “the greatest witch hunt in history.”

Trump to make first post-presidency speech at CPAC » And Trump may have more to say about it this weekend—when he makes his first speech since leaving office—at CPAC—the Conservative Political Action Conference. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has that story. 

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The former president will close out the conference as the final speaker on Sunday. Of course the big question on the minds of many: Will he tip his hand about another possible White House run in 2024? 

The annual CPAC conference generally features a who’s-who roster of Republican speakers. 

For the first time ever, the event will not take place in Washington D.C. It moved to Orlando, Florida this year due to COVID-19 restrictions. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will kick off the conference today. 

Several GOP lawmakers will follow, including Senators James Lankford, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton. 

Also speaking this weekend will be former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. 

Not speaking at CPAC this year—former Vice President Mike Pence. He declined an invitation to attend. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Amazon gets into the censorship business.

Plus, your Listener Feedback.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: It’s Friday, February 26th and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It. Good morning! I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Culture Friday. Today, censorship by Big Tech. 

It’s not exactly even handed. If you want to buy Adolph Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kampf on Amazon, you can do that. All it takes is a couple of clicks. The same goes if you’re interested in learning to make bombs. You can buy a book about that. 

Or an academic treatise that justifies pedophilia. You can also buy that on Amazon.

But one book you can’t buy from the retail giant or any of its subsidiaries is Ryan T. Anderson’s 2018 best-seller, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. That’s because Amazon has removed the book from its main retail site, as well as its audiobook platform, Audible, and its used book company, Abe Books. You can’t even buy it from third party sellers on the site.

BASHAM: Amazon’s move comes as Anderson has been urging Congress to vote no on the Equality Act. That’s a bill that would make gender identity a protected class under Civil Rights legislation. 

But this isn’t the first time the mega-retailer has started removing books that fall afoul of LGBT orthodoxy. 

In July 2019, it began removing books that offer advice on dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction, as well as books from ex-gay authors. Last June, it blocked publisher Regnery from purchasing ads for Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage. And in August, after 3½ years with no incident, it stopped selling the book Health Hazards of Homosexuality.

Joining us now to talk about this is the author of When Harry Became Sally and President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Ryan Anderson.

So, Ryan, you’re one of the most prominent critics of the Equality Act. Do you feel like Amazon’s timing was strategic?

RYAN ANDERSON, GUEST: So we’ve heard nothing in response from Amazon. So we really don’t know what prompted this. It happened, you know, a day after the third year anniversary. It’s disappeared from Amazon, and from the Kindle Store, from the audible store, from ABE Books. So it seems that this was not a technical glitch, because it disappeared, you know, everywhere within like the Amazon conglomerate. You can’t get the book, you can’t get the audiobook. So people are like, well, maybe it’s just out of stock, like they ran out of physical, you can’t get used copies, you can’t get the hardback, you can’t get the paperback.

And we have no idea why. They didn’t reach out to me, they didn’t reach out to the publisher or the distributor, the publisher has reached out to Amazon asking, you know what’s going on, and they haven’t heard back. And obviously, this is a concern, not just you know, for my book, my book is three years old, and it’s already sold well. And now it’s selling, it’s selling great again, because everyone else is going to get it at Barnes and Noble and Walmart and directly from the publisher. 

But Amazon has, I think, an 83% market share of book sales in the United States. And if they can now pressure publishers into not publishing controversial books, right? This has a stifling effect on the entire market of book writing, and book publishing, and then book buying. So it impacts authors, it impacts readers. And think about this, this was after, you know, Amazon has put out of business, lots of mom and pop bookstores and independent booksellers. 

You know, Amazon created a wonderful company, right? It’s really convenient to use, but in the process, they put out of business a lot of brick and mortar stores. And now they might be using their market dominance to actually, you know, distort the market here.

BASHAM: I’ve heard some prominent Christians argue that, as much as we may not like it, Big Tech is made up of private companies that can do what they like. For example, a recent paper from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention took this position. What are your thoughts on that?

ANDERSON: That it’s not true. And it’s never been true. We’ve never said that, you know, private businesses can do anything that they liked, right? And the most obvious examples, and they’re not, obviously morally equivalent, but if Amazon said, you know, we’re not gonna be selling books by authors of a certain race, or we’re not going to be selling books to, you know, buyers of a certain religion, we would all say no, private businesses can’t do that, right? 

In the same way that if the electric company said, you know, we don’t provide electricity to conservative homes any longer. So we all realize that economic liberties have limits. And now historically, when we had robust competition, if you know, one local bookstore said, Look, we’re not going to sell this conservative book. But we had a lot of other independent bookstores that were carrying the book, we could say, leave it to the market. When you have companies that grow so large, and that exercise so much power, I think it’s a little naive for people to say, just leave it to private businesses. Big government can be a threat to our liberty and to our flourishing so too can big business, particularly big tech. And I think more and more conservatives are now realizing that.

BASHAM: Okay, but to play the role of the prosecution a bit further, one specific challenge I’ve heard is that if Christian baker Jack Phillips can’t be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding, Amazon can’t be forced to sell Ryan Anderson’s book…

ANDERSON: One of the books that they’re still selling is something that I’ve written, you know, precisely on this, which is, you know, how do we think about the tension between non discrimination laws and then free exercise of religion or freedom of speech. All right, and so is Amazon, you know, asserting a religious claim that it violates their religious beliefs to sell my book, right. And if that’s the case, let’s hear it right. And part of religious liberty too is that it has limits and we want to see, you know, what’s Amazon’s argument. 

Now maybe they’re saying it’s a free speech claim, like we only sell books that we agree with. But again, when you’re looking at all the other books that Amazon sells, it’s hard to see that. You know, in Jack Phillip’s case, he says, look, I only make custom order cakes that support messages and events that I do agree with, right? So he wouldn’t do anti-American cakes. He wouldn’t do a happy divorce cake, someone wanted a cake that was cut in half to celebrate a divorce, he wouldn’t do cakes with lewd images, he wouldn’t do cakes with alcohol because he was a non-drinking Christian. So he ran his entire business in keeping with a certain moral vision.

If Amazon wants to say that’s the type of business they are, and let us know about it, because it doesn’t seem like that’s what they’ve been doing. So that’s one set of arguments that distinguishes these two cases. Another set of arguments is that if Jack Phillips had a policy of we don’t serve gay people, or we just you know, we won’t even sell cupcakes and brownies, if you identify as gay, I don’t think you would have seen any conservative defending him. Right? The argument wasn’t that it’s a private business, he can do what he wants. The argument was that there’s an important distinction between saying I don’t serve gay people, and I don’t celebrate weddings that I don’t believe are actually marital. Okay. And and, you know, a lot of people on the left refused to acknowledge that distinction. 

But it’s a really important distinction between saying, you know, because of who you are, I won’t serve you. And then saying, because of who I am and what I believe about marriage, I can’t celebrate an event that I believe isn’t really a marriage, maybe for the same reason that people, you know, might not be comfortable celebrating polygamous marriages or something like that. It’s not because of the identity of the, you know, prospective spouse, it’s because of the beliefs of the business owner. 

And so again, like if Amazon wants to say, look, we have sincerely held beliefs about transgender issues, and we don’t sell books that violate our sincerely held beliefs like, okay, just let us know, because the way that they’ve marketed themselves to customers is that look, we sell all books. Like we don’t only sell books that we agree with, we want to be the place where you can read anything that’s worth reading.

BASHAM: And I have to tell you, I did try to reach out to Amazon and ask some of these questions. They didn’t respond. In fact, they don’t seem to be responding to anyone. Not even Florida Senator Marco Rubio who said he asked Amazon for an explanation and so far they haven’t responded.

But I did see one story where the reporter said Amazon replied only with a link to its guidelines on hate speech. So let’s talk about the content of your book because that seems to suggest that they’re classifying it as hate speech.

ANDERSON: I mean, so if they are what took three years to discover this, right? I mean, the book has been available. It’s been a bestseller, at Amazon. And at the Washington Post. It’s been three years now. It’s sold tens of thousands of copies through Amazon. And so the timing of this suspicious, right, the timing of it being the very week when the House of Representatives is going to ram through the Equality Act. 

But I so that’s just one is that you know, what took so long if it really is hate speech, but then to anyone who has read the book will tell you that even if they disagree with the book, that this is like a model of what someone of my perspective on the issues should write, right? It has, I don’t know 30 or 40 pages of footnotes, at the end of the book. It cites all the relevant scholarly sources. It was endorsed by the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital by a professor of neuroscience at Boston University by a professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah by a former professor of psychology at NYU, by a medical ethicist at Columbia’s med school. I mean, this isn’t some like fringe bomb throwing, red meat, name calling book. This is about as mainstream as you can come from someone who holds the positions that I hold, right and so it seems like what really is happening here is that it doesn’t matter you know, how charitably you say it, or how rigorously, you argue it. That it’s simply if you have the opinion that I have, and that, you know, I would imagine that, you know, most of our readers, most of our listeners, it wouldn’t matter how charitably and how rigorously you presented it, Amazon, if that is the case, that they’re now classifying it as a form of hate speech, it’s about the position that Orthodox Christianity holds on this issue, not about the way that we say it.

BASHAM: Well, you know, let’s talk about do you feel like they are testing the waters here, we’re just gonna do this, see what the response is, and see how long we can hold out?

ANDERSON: You know, that’s a possibility that, you know, the the the thought here is, we no longer have to worry about Trump, or Attorney General Barr, or Senator Josh Hawley, you know, doing something in response, because, you know, all throughout the Trump years, there were various hearings on Capitol Hill, and the DOJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. And so you know, there were there, there were real fears from big tech, that if they, you know, engaged in too much blatant censorship, there might be legal ramifications. You know, maybe now they’re saying, look, there’s a new sheriff in town, let’s see what we can get away with. Again, I don’t know because no one from Amazon has said a word about this to me or to the publisher.

BASHAM: Well, as far as tactics, in the last two days, Target has also removed two other scholarly books critical of the transgender movement from its shelves. Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage and Debra Soh’s The End of Gender. So we seem to be watching an intellectual purge happening in real time.

Right now, it doesn’t seem like Christians have many options for pushing back besides exercising the power of the purse and the press. Is that enough?

ANDERSON: I do think that in the short run, it’s going to have to be enough consumers complain about this, and, you know, perhaps cancel Amazon Prime accounts, you know, start shopping at Barnes and Noble, and at Target and Netbooks pavilion at Walmart, and that you end direct from the publisher, and you can get directly at encounter books that calm right. It may very well be that economic pressure in the short run is what forces Amazon to change its policy here. 

But in the long run, I think conservatives are going to have to think about what are the limits of economic liberties? When it comes to big tech, that, you know, we have various limits for mom and pop stores, right? They have all sorts of rules and regulations that they have to comply with to be on Main Street, we also are going to have to think about what are the rules and regulations that cyber, big business is gonna have to comply with to be on kind of the cyber streets. And just saying it’s a private business, they can do whatever they want, really doesn’t address those questions at all.

BASHAM: Well, last question, then, for you and the publisher, what’s your next move?

ANDERSON: Right now. We’re just doing as much as we can, talking to the press, you know, getting the word out so that people can know what’s going on. I mean, the rest of the day goes on. Right. And, you know, I don’t want the delisting of the book and Amazon to distract me from all the other important issues that we have to be working on because the Biden people aren’t slowing down. And they’re going to be particularly bad on issues of the right to life, of issues of religious liberty issues, of our embodiments as male and female. And, you know, part of my mission, you know, as President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center is to hold them accountable. Okay, and to defend, you know, the good where and when we can.

BASHAM: Ryan Anderson is President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and author of the book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.

Thanks so much, Ryan.

ANDERSON: Alright, thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: A Virginia man just broke a world record in a YMCA swimming pool. 

Ben Katzman swam more than 5 miles without resting. 

Not too big a deal by itself. But there’s a twist. 

Ben described his record attempt just before diving in.

KATZMAN: We’re going for the Guinness World Record for the farthest swim wearing handcuffs.

The Navy sailor swam 344 laps for a total of nearly 5.4 miles. That easily shattered the previous record, two miles less than that. 

His father Joseph Katzman looked on. He said “I’m just so happy and praise God I can be here to witness it.”

KATZMAN: And I guess all the swimming lessons I gave him as a kid growing up has finally paid off!

After the record-breaking swim, Ben said he was starving and his back was a bit stiff. But otherwise he felt fantastic!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, February 26th.This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad you’ve tuned in today. 

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: And I’m Megan Basham. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A new Disney+ movie about an unlikely superhero.

Perhaps the most common set up in children’s movies is for a young protagonist with true-blue belief in magical possibilities to eventually win over cynical adults. Flora, one of the title characters in Disney+’s latest original movie, Flora & Ulysses, is different. She begins as a cynic.

CLIP: Some would still believe life is a comic book, filled with wonder, where miraculous things happen. Where families stay together. But I am a cynic. And a cynic knows that superheroes are only in your head. Looks like fun. Not for me. I have more serious matters to attend to. Oh right, me too. The righteous never rest. The danger is what’s real. Not that it’s easy to let go of hope. Remember our contract. Cynics live in defiance of contracts. What? Cynics invented contracts.

True to life, 11-year-old Flora, played by excellent newcomer Matilda Lawler, has absorbed the lessons her parents have modeled for her.  Her father, played by Parks and Recreation’s Ben Schwartz, has allowed a series of professional setbacks to convince him to stop trying to publish his comic books. Instead, he’s settled for the bitter grind of stocking shelves at a big box retailer. Her romance novelist mother, played by How I Met Your Mother’s Alysson Hannigan, is a victim of success. She’s so petrified by fear of her critics, she can no longer bring herself to risk writing something bad. Focused on their individual failures, they’ve both given up on their marriage.

CLIP: Our lives used to be full of magic. Are you getting divorced? No, we’re just trying to figure things out.

What has Flora taken away from all this? That life is a series of defeats. That it’s better to live without hope than to experience disappointment.

CLIP: Flora, I used to think that life was a comic book too. Full of magic and wonder, but it’s not. There is no magic. You just want there to be so the world doesn’t feel so hopeless. But Incandesto says. Incandesto is a drawing honey. All superheroes are.  

Clearly, Flora is in need of rescue. Or at least a profound attitude adjustment.

Enter Ulysses, a pint-sized superhero disguised by an alter-ego so unassuming, even Clark Kent would envy it: a red squirrel.

Whether it’s leaping treehouses in a single bound or writing odes to cheeseballs, little by little, Ulysses reveals his supernatural abilities. And he convinces Flora and her next door neighbor, William, to start seeing wonder in the world again. And hope, as always, is infectious. Once they see it, others begin to as well.

CLIP: He’s not just a squirrel, dad. He’s got powers. He’s been transformed like Alfred T. Slipper. Okay. That’s it? That’s what. This squirrel is a superhero. The universe sent him for a reason. Stop it. Stop it. He’s just exploring his powers. All superheroes do.

At times, the movie takes a slapstick-y, Looney Tunes direction. Instead of Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits, we get an overly enthusiastic animal control officer hunting for rabies-infested forest rodents. The maniacal CGI cat that attacks him at regular intervals may be a bit tiresome for adults, but it’s just the thing to keep kids engaged with the movie’s deeper themes.

And these are well worth their time. In the last several decades, children’s movies from Mrs. Doubtfire to Night at the Museum have treated divorce more as an opportunity for kids to experience positive growth than the trauma it truly is. Based on Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery award-winning novel, Flora & Ulysses doesn’t pretend that divorce offers kids anything but heartbreak. The film refuses to impose the false, upbeat narrative that her parent’s individual, separate love for Flora is as good as their joined love for her as a married couple.

CLIP: It turns out, the hardest thing about having hope is watching the people who don’t. And the only thing harder than that is watching the people who once did.

The story leaves a few minor plot threads at loose ends, and some parents will wish that some of the PG jokes involving romance novel covers and comic book characters who don’t wear clothes had been left on the cutting room floor. But for all its pratfalls and fantasy, Flora & Ulysses tells kids some important truths.

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Today is Friday, February 26th. Good morning to you! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Megan Basham.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up, listener feedback.

BASHAM: Yes, ma’am, time to ‘fess up.

REICHARD: Indeed. We start with a date correction. Earlier this month in a conversation about Boko Haram’s kidnapping of Leah Sharibu, we said the wrong date. Sharibu was kidnapped on February 19th, 2018. We put it one week earlier. 

BASHAM: Moving on now to your letters and phone calls. We got a lot of feedback this month about WORLD founder Joel Belz’s commentary on wearing masks.

Listener Jane Brinkerhoff wrote to say she admired his thoughts about the spiritual damage masking does to us. She found the commentary bold and insightful. 

REICHARD: Tayna Evans also wrote in to say thanks for the commentary. But she added that she thinks the mask debate is often presented as a false dichotomy: strict mask wearing everywhere or giving them up all together. She wears a mask to church and even sings with it on. Inconvenient she says, but it’s how she chooses to love her neighbor.

BASHAM: Many of you wrote with similar comments about your churches meeting, singing, and wearing masks. We also got some more pointed critiques. Pastor Kevin Koslowsky called the commentary “callous and unhelpful.”

REICHARD: Alright, well, moving on now to lighter topics, next we have a fun email from listener Kristin Tanner. It just goes to show that listening to the program is a community affair. Kristin says she used to say “great minds think alike.” Now she says, “great minds think alike and listen to The World and Everything in It!”

BASHAM: Wow, thanks Kristin!  

REICHARD: Kristin came to that conclusion after three different people gave her a copy of Leland Rykens’ book on hymns for her birthday! That was the book Emily Whitten recommended for January’s Classic Book of the Month.

BASHAM: And finally, we end today with a call from our listener feedback line. We didn’t get very many this month, so I hope you’ll fill up our voicemail box next month! 

REICHARD: Yeah, this is radio, so we like to hear your voice! 

BASHAM: If you hear something you want to comment on, give us a call at 202-709-9595. 

REICHARD: Or you can also record your comments using the voice memo app on your smartphone. You’ll find all the instructions on how to do that at worldandeverything.org.

BASHAM: So here’s our final feedback for today from our listener feedback line:

EDMUNDSTON: Hi, this is Cathy Barlow Edmundston from Baton Rouge Louisiana. Our family listens faithfully to The World and Everything in It. I’d like to commend whomever on your staff makes the song selections that play between segments. Their attention to detail to match an appropriate song or melody to the segment is excellent. Thank you and The World and Everything in It team for a superior, trustworthy podcast.

REICHARD: Thanks, Cathy. Credit for the music goes to our audio engineers, Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz. A creative team!

MEGAN BASHAM, HOST: Well, it does take a team to get this program delivered to you each morning. We want to thank each one by name: 

Joel Belz, Ryan Bomberger, Anna Johansen Brown, Kent Covington, Nick Eicher, Kristen Flavin, Katie Gaultney, Kim Henderson, Leigh Jones, Onize Ohikere, Bonnie Pritchett, Jenny Rough, Sarah Schweinsberg, Cal Thomas, Steve West, and Emily Whitten.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Hats off to aforementioned engineers Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz, who stay up late to get the program to you early. Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer. And Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And you. No you? No program. You make it possible to bring Christian journalism to the marketplace of ideas. 

The Bible says: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 

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.