The World and Everything in It: February 26, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Proposed rent rules in New York City may bite both renters and landlords.

LULGJURAJ: I think many owners these days would be happy to be making zero, breaking even, instead of digging in their pocket and running in the red.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, today, clarifying the religious rights of teachers in public schools.

And later: A ministry that helps vulnerable girls in Africa remain in school.

WINKLER: By their graduation, you’d still have like 22, 23 boys, but one or two girls. Why can’t they be educated?

And WORLD Opinions commentator Seth Troutt on so-called "looksmaxxing."

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

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time now for the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine latest » Officials from Ukraine and the United States are expected to meet today, ahead of high-stakes peace talks with Russia in Geneva early next month.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters that Ukrainian land currently held by Russia remains a major sticking point.

ZELENSKYY: We understand that Americans want to stop this war as quick as possible...The problem is with the political will to stop this war and the question of territories...this question I repeat again and again, this question I think to my mind has to go to the level of leaders.

As for today's meeting, Zelenskyy says U.S. and Ukrainian officials plan to discuss possible postwar recovery plans for Ukraine.

Iran update » Iran is pushing back in response to President Trump’s remarks in his Tuesday night speech.

Ahead of critical talks in Geneva over Tehran’s nuclear program, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman dismissed Trump's remarks as “big lies.”

Meanwhile, Iran's parliament speaker said on Wednesday that the U.S. could either engage in diplomacy or face the wrath of Iran if it attacks.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he believes there is widespread support for Trump’s stand.

THUNE: I mean, we cannot abide, we cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran. He made that clear in his speech last night. I think that's something I hope at least that uh, big majority of Americans agree with.

America has assembled its biggest deployment of aircraft and warships into the Middle East in decades.

Trump’s message to Teeran is clear: Strike a deal to voluntarily curb your nuclear program: or else.

Congress Midterms » With an eye on this year’s midterms, members of Congress are working on President Trump’s legislative priorities laid out in his State of the Union Address.

WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more from Washington.

HARRISON WATTERS: Top of the list for lawmakers is passing the SAVE Act, a bill aimed at verifying voter eligibility ahead of federal elections.

Alabama Congressman Barry Moore:

MOORE: We've done our job in the house. We've passed it. We need to pass it in the Senate.

WATTERS: Majority Leader John Thune promised to put the bill on the floor for a vote, once the partial government shutdown is resolved.

GOP lawmakers are also working on President Trump’s proposal last month to restructure healthcare with a focus on health savings accounts. Florida Congressman Byron Donalds:

DONALDS: Stop sending subsidies to health insurance companies so their stock prices go up, their profits go up, as opposed to giving that money to the American people and giving them more purchasing power in health care.

WATTERS: Other priorities include bills to stop insider trading in Congress and making a ban on investor home purchases permanent.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters, in Washington.

War on fraud » Also on Tuesday night, President Trump announced that Vice President JD Vance would be leading what Trump called his administration’s—quote—“war on fraud.”

And the next day, Vance, speaking alongside Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz had this announcement:

VANCE:  We have decided to temporarily, temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money.

That will affect almost $260 million dollars in Medicaid payments.

That follows scandals in Minnesota, with allegations of some education and daycare centers fraudulently enrolling students to funnel money to themselves.

Mehmet Oz told reporters:

OZ:  We believe, listen carefully. We are spending $300 billion a year in healthcare in this country for fraudulent, abusive, or wasteful purposes.

The vice president says the generosity of American taxpayers is being taken advantage of.

More snow falls in Northeast » More snow and cold weather.

Parts of the Northeast got another 1 to 3 inches of snow on Wednesday, even as cities were digging out from massive snow storm.

Bob Orevec with the National Weather Service says there was no major accumulation, but it added insult to injury on the heels of the earlier historic winter blast. And now:

ORAVEC:  There is a, a pretty cold air mass that's gonna sink, southward, uh, across the northern part of the country this weekend. And that'll be, uh, pushing eastward into the east coast by late in the weekend. T

And he said that sets the stage for another potential storm into early next week … from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

Warner Bros. / Paramount » The bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is heating up once again. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Warner Bros. says Paramount has raised the price of its takeover offer to $31 per share, potentially reopening a bidding war with Netflix over the future of the Hollywood giant.

The company previously offered $30 per share when it first went directly to Warner stakeholders with its all-cash, hostile bid in December — just days after Warner struck a deal to sell its studio and streaming business to Netflix for just under $28 per share.

Unlike Netflix, Paramount wants to acquire Warner Bros. in its entirety — including legacy cable networks like CNN and Discovery.

Beyond upping its proposed purchase price, Warner said Paramount had increased its regulatory termination fee to $7 billion.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: Tenants and landlords struggle to make rent restrictions work in New York City. Plus, a teacher says “no” to reading LGBT books to kids.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 26th of February.

This is WORLD Radio. Thanks for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It: New York’s rent fight.

Tonight, city officials open what New York City Mayor Zohran Momdani calls “Rental Ripoff Hearings”—inviting tenants to air their complaints.

REICHARD: But with more than 50,000 apartments sitting empty, landlords say they’re the ones being squeezed.

WORLD’s Lauren Smyth has the story.

LAUREN SMYTH: Hop into any taxicab in New York City, and the ads playing inside will be a quick reminder that life here is expensive.

TAXI RENTAL AD: If you’re looking to rent the same one-bedroom, the price will be $3,500 to $10,000 per month.

New Yorkers have a median household income of just over $80,000. Many would struggle to live here if it weren’t for the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, which sets rules to hold rents down.

The board regulates more than a million apartments—a lot, but not enough to meet demand. For renter Val Fleming, the shortage meant she had to wait more than a year just to hear back on her rental application.

VAL FLEMING: And then they called me and said, according to your statements, you make over the income for this particular housing development. And that really made me so upset, because I had waited for that one maybe a year before they even reached out to me. And then they turned me down.

Less than 1% of New York apartments are actually rent controlled, meaning the sticker price of the rent is held below a certain dollar amount. More commonly, they’re rent stabilized—a relic of nationwide World War 2 price control laws. Instead of capping the sticker price, the city caps annual increases. A decade ago, the maximum allowable increase was 0%—and since then, even when the increase was positive, it never exceeded inflation.

For the renters who can find an apartment and afford a long wait, those caps are good news. But they make it tough for landlords to cover rising maintenance and upgrade costs.

Pashko Lulgjuraj and his brother are Albanian immigrants who own six New York apartment buildings.

PASHKO LULGJURAJ: I think many owners these days would be happy to be making zero, breaking even, instead of digging in their pocket and running in the red. And the politicians know this, but they don’t care.

One of their rental units has been empty for seven years because the rent is capped at $700 per month—while repair costs have topped $100,000. They’ve joined a suit against the city, arguing that a 2019 law prohibiting rent increases after vacancy is an unconstitutional government taking.

LULGJURAJ: It’s not like we’re sitting back and delegating everything—‘Well, you know, you go collect the rents and fix that faucet and whatever’—and we’re sitting back under a palm tree with a pina colada. My brother rolls up his sleeves, and he’s out there six, sometimes seven days a week, making repairs.

Bringing vacant apartments like Pashko’s to market wouldn’t solve the city’s housing shortage. But it could more than double the number of new units added to the NYC market annually.

So far, though, New York officials don’t seem interested in hearing from landlords.

ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We need to take on the indignities from those landlords who demand more than their fair share.

That’s Mayor Mamdani, gearing up for his Rental Ripoff hearings, where local tenants are invited to air their landlord horror stories on national television. Not pictured are landlords who can’t evict destructive tenants. Louis Calemine is a local real estate broker who says he experienced the difficult legal process firsthand:

LOUIS CALEMINE: On Staten Island, it took us 13 months to evict somebody who didn’t make any other claim other than he doesn’t want to pay anymore, wrecking the house, flooding the house. Only in crazy, whacked-out New York City does very little leash to a non-paying tenant—destructive tenant—equal 13 months of free cheese.

A raw deal for landlords, that may not help tenants either. If landlords can’t bring their units to market, it’s one less apartment available. Other price-reduction efforts, like Mamdani’s plan to freeze rents with no increases for four years, could leave even less cash for landlords to cover regular maintenance and upgrades. And renter Val Fleming says she’s already seeing grocery prices go up, as stores are starting to close in rent-stabilized neighborhoods:

FLEMING: New York City is very expensive already, and even though you’re freezing the rent, that’s great—but then, what is it going to cost us in other areas of our life?

Still, those costs haven’t deterred everyone. The city’s most recent data shows an annual growth of 87,000 people —making New York a growth leader among major U.S. cities.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Smyth in New York City.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The religious rights of teachers.

When the Supreme Court ruled last year in the Mahmoud vs. Taylor case, it gave parents the right to opt their children out of LGBT-related curriculum in schools. But what about the teacher who objects? What protections are in place?

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Eric Rivera declined to read two books to first graders that feature a same-sex couple the book claims are married to each other. Rivera says he asked for a religious accommodation. Instead, he was removed from his classroom at KIPP Antioch College Prep Elementary School in Nashville.

Rivera explains his objection:

RIVERA: Well, my beliefs are that marriage and family are God-given institutions. And because I'm a Bible-believing Christian and because it's between a man and a woman, seeing that marriage in the book has two dads and a daughter, it does not coincide with my religious beliefs.

BROWN: Rivera tried resolving the issue with the school while standing by his own beliefs. He set up a meeting with an assistant principal.

RIVERA: We discussed a solution and the solution was to have the co-teacher read the book when the lesson was going to be taught and that was executed the following day. Everyone was in agreement that that was going to happen and it worked out smoothly but then the following day I was brought to the principal's office with a final warning and my job was threatened …

Even though Rivera’s job performance to that point had been good, with no prior discipline.

Rivera explained that the principal of the school told him he had to “maintain fidelity” to the school’s worldview. If he couldn’t, then his job was at risk.

REICHARD: So he contacted lawyers at First Liberty Institute for help. They sent a demand letter to the school. Senior Counsel Cliff Martin explains that Rivera’s requests are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights act:

MARTIN: Which is a federal law prohibiting discrimination based on religion and also requiring employers to provide accommodation for religious beliefs and practices, unless doing so would cause an undue hardship. Here, it is obvious that, you know, an accommodation could have easily been provided and actually was arranged for, and yet the principal retaliated against Mr. Rivera and clearly discriminated against him based on his religious belief in threatening to terminate him if he did not practice in line with the school's values and beliefs rather than his own. And given that an accommodation should have been easily reached, there was no justification for the school district discriminating against him for his religious faith.

I did contact the school for its response but heard nothing back in time for this story. (If someone from the school agrees to talk, I’ll share that with you.)

Meantime, the Supreme Court recently clarified that employers have to show a substantial increase in cost to accommodate in order to claim undue hardship. But here, Martin says there’s no evidence of that. So he’s asking the school to think again:

MARTIN: We're asking for a commitment that the district will not discriminate further against religious employees. also asking for the district to remove that final warning letter that, you know, under the specific language of the warning letter, it was placed in his personnel file. So we're demanding that that be removed and that his name be cleared. And we also added that the district should review its policies with respect to notification of parents regarding the materials that are in their curriculum because under Tennessee law, there may be parental rights implicated in their decision.

BROWN: Lawyers for Rivera have asked for a response from the school by tomorrow. At the moment, Rivera is still employed by the school, but is being shuttled to different departments. He hopes the case sends a message to other teachers that they have rights under federal law.

RIVERA: Well, I hope other educators may take this as a wake up call. And also just to embolden them to step up against any coercion against them … the Civil RIghts Act of 1964 gives them religious freedoms, religious freedoms. But God is powerful and He tells us to live day by day and trust in Him so that’s what I’m leaning on for my strength.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The war in Ukraine lurches into year five this week. People in Great Britain, Germany, Serbia and elsewhere came out to mark the anniversary of the start of the conflict.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: In Ukraine itself, the anniversary means keeping a commitment to fight. Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, who works for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and who we turn to occasionally for insight into military matters, is in Ukraine this week and joins us now from Kyiv.

REICHARD: Admiral Montgomery, good morning.

MARK MONTGOMERY, GUEST: Good morning. Mary. Thank you very much for having me.

REICHARD: Glad you're here. This week marks four years since Russia invaded Ukraine back in 2022. Tell us where do things stand on a military level while talks are still going on to end the war?

MONTGOMERY: So Mary, things are very much, you know, kind of consistent across the front. They actually just gained a little bit back over the last two weeks, but it's a fairly static front in the sense of overall size, although there's a lot of fighting in there. You know, I think the Ukrainians have maintained their military resilience, which is hard. They're outnumbered by a much smaller country than Russia. They have a much smaller budget, a much smaller military, and they have managed to hold their own. So military resilience is high. I would also mention that equally, civilian resilience is high. They are hit every night, or maybe every other night, with cruise, ballistic, hypersonic missiles and drones. I've been here the last couple weeks, and you know, it's two out of every three nights there's a pretty heavy attack. And look, a lot of damage is done to electrical power grid, to water systems, to schools, to apartment complexes, but the people move forward. Thus resilience, I think, is high. They're stubborn and patriotic people who are not going to concede any more of Ukraine to an authoritarian, rapacious thug like Putin who's conducting an illegal and merciless war.

REICHARD: What are the Ukrainian military casualties at this point?

MONTGOMERY: That's hard to put a number on. It's well over 100,000. It's a lot less than the Russians, but they are a lot smaller population base. But they have worked really hard over the last year to preserve their most precious resource, their people, and so they are reducing their casualty rates. They're increasing the casualty rates on the Russians. At the same time, most reporting is that 80% of Russian casualties come from Ukrainian drones, either air or ground drones, which are effectively mines. So, you know, this is an, you know, it's a very unique kind of warfare set going on here, but one that the Ukrainians act more now are more and more acting like a Western Power than a former Soviet state.

REICHARD: You spoke of the Ukrainian people as being dug in and committed to not ceding anymore to Russia. How would you describe the morale of the troops?

MONTGOMERY: I mean, there's a big gap there. If you're infantry on the very front line, it's a tough slog. They're on the front for three to maybe six months of unremitting attacks by the Russians, dug in hard, with a lot of camouflage, supported by aerial drops, by drones, not by contact with humans, and, you know, having to deal with their own wounds and things like that.

And then it's unit by unit. Some of their units are fantastic units led by officers that would may be in the same rank they're in in the U.S. military, had they joined the U.S. military. And the morale tends to be better in those ones, because people know they have good leadership. So it varies, but at no point do I come across like, Why are we fighting this war? People know why they're fighting this war.

You know, I hear Steve Witkoff say, hey, it's this is a silly war. Can't people have some dignity and get out of it? Shows an egregious lack of understanding of what happened here. It's Steve Witkoff being the lead American negotiator, so it matters that he's so ill informed. But this is not a silly war for Ukraine. They were attacked with the intention of their country being dismembered and the government overthrown by an autocratic Russian regime that has executed a four year war crime against the people of Ukraine. So this is not silly. Dignity for them is defeating Russia and not acceding to it.

REICHARD: All right, I want you to take us out on the street there in Kyiv, where you are at the moment, describe what you see that strikes winter, going on, power outages. What's happening?

MONTGOMERY: It's cold. This is one of the coldest winters they've had in a long time. It has a weird effect. It's tough on the civilian people, and that makes the strikes on the power grid even more problematic. But for the military, it actually kind of freezes things a little better, literally and figuratively. So it's harder for the Russians to advance, and the Russians have had a rough couple months with casualty rates that actually exceed their incoming, arrival of replacements. So but it's a tough winter, and I think the Russians thought it might break the Ukrainians. They're probably a little they're, once again, disappointed in their underestimation of the Ukrainian will to resist

REICHARD: Mark Montgomery is a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mark, thanks so much.

MONTGOMERY: Thank you for having me, Mary.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Mary, I appreciate you and the gang standing in for me last week. My husband Stanley and I got to go on a marriage-renewal cruise.

And we didn’t just attend.

We helped break a world record.

I take you to be my wedded wife….

I take you to be my wedded husband…

We went after the largest vow-renewal ceremony in history, and brought along the people from Guinness World Records to make it all official.

Marriage certificates were checked. Stewards verified the count. The vows had to be spoken at the same time. And then the announcement.

AUDIO: I can confirm that you all achieved a total of 1,593 couples [applause]

That was more than 300 better than the previous record set back in 2016.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Then it was belly up to the buffet line.

BROWN: Like I needed that!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 26th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: helping girls stay in school.

In some parts of the world, young girls drop out of school because they lack access to a necessary hygiene product. The domino effect is devastating, but one woman decided to address the problem head on.

WORLD’s Jenny Rough brings us the story.

JENNY ROUGH: Vickie Winkler had been visiting a remote village in Kenya for decades before she thought to ask why so many bright, motivated girls dropped out of school. The primary grades had just as many little girls as boys, roughly 25 each.

WINKLER: And by graduation, you’d still have 22 or 23 kid boys, but one or two girls. How is this happening? Why can’t they be educated?

Winkler initially traveled to Kenya for her husband’s work. But in February 2000, she founded the nonprofit HEART to help vulnerable women and children. On occasion, she continued to visit the remote village.

One day, Winkler asked the young females why so many of them dropped out—usually between fourth and eighth grade.

WINKLER: So they were all real quiet for a few minutes, and then one of them kind of raised her hand and said, “Mama, we don’t have anything for our monthly.”

Many of the girls had single mothers who earned a dollar a day. That dollar went to food. Sanitary towels, absorbent pads worn inside underwear, were hard to come by.

Winkler continued the discussion.

WINKLER: And I said, “Well, what do you use now?” And she said, “Leaves.”

Winkler immediately thought of her commute to the village that morning. It was winter in the desert, so leaves were scarce.

WINKLER: And on the way down there, I’d seen little goats that had been trying to get the leaves off the thorn bushes until they were being cut by the thorns. And their little mouths were all red from blood.

She looked at the arid and rocky land.

WINKLER: And so I looked outside, and there’s not many leaves. And I said, “What do you do when you don’t have leaves?” They said, “Then we use dried cow dung, and we have to sit on it, and we smell bad, and we can’t come to school like that.”

Winkler remembers silently praying: Why did I not know this, Lord? Why had I not thought to ask? Winkler got the idea to create gift packages to hand out every month. And asked her friends for help.

WINKLER: I said, “I need 12,000 pairs of girls underwear.” [laughs] I want to start this program called Freedom for Girls where we give them sanitary towels. But they don’t have any way to keep them on. They don’t have underwear. I want them white and cotton and nothing sexy that would cause more problems for them.

Her friends held a fundraiser in the United States, and Winkler shipped the 12,000 pairs in suitcases and boxes.

SALLY KAMAU: And then we have 12 packets. Ideally, one packet for each month.

Sally Kamau serves as the program coordinator for HEART’s Freedom for Girls. At its center in Nairobi, she gathers the packets together. Each one includes sanitary towels, four pairs of underwear, and a health education brochure.

KAMAU: That is to say, this girl can stay in school, go through her classes in confidence and dignity now that we’ve addressed this issue of lack of the product.

Once distributed, the packages stay locked in the school’s hygiene cabinet until needed.

KAMAU: And it is usually not for sale. Actually, for us it is kept in school just to make sure that the girls aren’t sharing it with their mother. Because once they share, definitely one month she will not go to school.

A one-month supply costs less than half a dollar. But for many, that’s unaffordable. Some girls feel so desperate, they go to heartbreaking extremes. Kamau says elderly men, who can afford the packets, often misuse and abuse the girls.

KAMAU: You can imagine a girl getting pregnant just because she did a transaction of sex to get one packet, which is half a dollar. And they end up getting infected.

The cost can be steep.

KAMAU: Maybe she has gotten an STD or maybe she has even gotten HIV and AIDS.

Kamau travels to the schools to teach sex education. Because the project is Bible-based, she teaches that God created sex for marriage.

KAMAU: We show them that this is doable, because this is the way of God.

She gives them a calendar to track their cycles and addresses an ongoing obstacle that continues even in today’s world:

KAMAU: There is the shame that comes with the periods that they are filthy.

She teaches that God created females this way to help them know they’ve come to womanhood.

KAMAU: He never meant us to be shamed. He never meant us to be stigmatized because of this. Also, the girls, after knowing the truth, they rise up with strength…

Kamau and Winkler have seen it again and again: An education allows the girls to earn enough money to pull them out of extreme poverty. It also results in marriages to another professional, instead of those with significant age gaps between young females and elderly men. When girls stay in school, they become teachers, business owners, doctors, landlords. Winkler again:

WINKLER: Honey, you give them a chance, and it’s just like these ladies don’t stop. [laughs]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough in Nairobi, Kenya. 

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 
And I’m Myrna Brown.

For years, we’ve talked about body image pressure on young women.

Now, a growing number of young men are turning that same scrutiny on themselves — in extreme, expensive, and, sometimes, dangerous ways.

WORLD Opinions writer Seth Troutt explains.

SETH TROUTT: Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection long before social media made that fashionable.

Now a new generation of young men is doing the same thing — only with scalpels, steroids, and hammers.

They call it “looksmaxxing.”

The goal? Maximize your attractiveness.

There’s even a guru: A young influencer known as “Clavicular.” His name is for the length of his collarbone, which he says meets the ideal masculine measurement. He and others promote what they claim is a “science-based” system of perfect facial angles and body proportions.

Young men follow it with near-religious devotion.

Some break their legs and insert metal rods to gain height.

Some inject fillers or undergo jaw reconstruction.

Some take anabolic steroids and risk permanent infertility.

Some hit themselves in the face with a hammer, hoping microfractures will sharpen their features.

Some use meth to suppress appetite.

For years we assumed body dysmorphia was a women’s issue. No longer. A British study found that more than half of young men show signs of it.

Looksmaxxing is a bundle of lies. And like many lies, it attaches itself to something true.

It is true that we are made in the image of God.

It is true that the body is a gift.

It is true that hygiene, discipline, exercise, and health are good things.

Christians should reject sloppy stewardship. Taking care of your body matters.

But there is a line — and this movement sprints past it.

John Calvin famously wrote that the human heart is an idol factory. Looksmaxxing is but one more proof.

It breaks the first and second commandments by making a false god of the self — bowing down to a technologically enhanced reflection.

It violates the sixth commandment through reckless procedures and drug use that shorten life and damage fertility. It is self-harm disguised as self-improvement.

And it is fueled by envy — the tenth commandment — the resentful desire to have someone else’s face, someone else’s body, someone else’s status.

There is also something darker at work. Looksmaxxing is not even primarily about attracting women. It’s about status. In a recent interview, Clavicular admitted that simply knowing he could have sex was more satisfying than the act itself.

Within these communities, male approval often matters more than female attention. Constant fixation on sculpted male bodies breeds confusion and disordered desire.

Looksmaxxing is the marriage of transhumanism and sexual distortion. It treats the body as raw material to be engineered. It turns both men and women into commodities to be optimized and consumed.

But God made every man on purpose and with purpose.

Rejecting His design — and its limits — is not confidence. It is ingratitude.

We live in a culture offering counterfeit visions of masculinity.

Parents need to know about this.

Pastors need to address it.

Lawmakers need to understand it.

Young men are being catechized by influencers who promise status, power, and admiration — at the cost of their health, their fertility, and their souls.

The answer is not self-hatred.

It is not obsessive self-worship either.

It is gratitude.

Stewardship.

Embodied faithfulness.

A positive vision of masculinity grounded not in the mirror — but in the image of God.

For WORLD, I’m Seth Troutt.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Culture Friday’s tomorrow, and we will visit with John Stonestreet. And, the gospel story at the heart of an Oscar-nominated short film. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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

The Bible says: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good. God looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all fallen away; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one. … Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice, let Israel be glad. —Psalm 53:1-3, 6

Go now in grace and peace.

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