The World and Everything in It: January 17, 2025

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday expressions of faith among leaders of the nation’s top offenses and the would-be leader of our nation’s defense. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Anda defense of the faith on America’s top podcast, John Stonestreet is standing by to talk about that and more.

And :

ALIEN: And you’re the leader of?

ELIO: Uh? Earth?

ALIEN: Hear that, everyone? It’s the leader of, Uh Earth!

New movies for kids. Arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has a review.

Later, losing a baseball icon.

We revisit the highlight reel.

BROWN: It’s Friday, January 17th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

BROWN: It’s time for the news. Here’s Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR:  Gaza ceasefire » Deal or no deal? The Gaza cease-fire agreement announced on Wednesday seemed in danger last night. Then early this morning

Israel said Hamas was trying to change the terms yet again creating a “last-minute crisis” just days before the cease-fire was set to take effect.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer:

MENCER:  There remains disagreement. Some things which we thought were agreed have been changed.

That announced deal would require the release of more than 30 hostages held by Hamas. In turn, Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including militants and many accused of crimes.

The U.S. government, which helped negotiate that deal, is downplaying the holdup. Secretary of State Tony Blinken:

BLINKEN: I fully expect that implementation would begin, as we said, on Sunday. Look, it’s not exactly surprising that in a process, in a negotiation, that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end. We are tying up that loose ends as we speak.

It's widely hoped that the ceasefire, if implemented, will halt 15 months of bloodshed.

Ceasefire demonstrations » Meantime in Jerusalem, dueling demonstrations:

SOUND: [Jerusalem demonstration]

Israeli protesters blocked a highway in protest of the announced cease-fire deal, saying it means effectively surrendering to Hamas.

But others are angry about the holdup in finalizing the deal:

SOUND: [Tel Aviv demonstration]

Many friends and family members of the hostages still held in Gaza held their own rally, blocking streets in Tel Aviv. They’re demanding that the Israeli government get the deal done and bring the hostages home.

Confirmation hearings: Burgum » On Capitol Hill:

Thursday was the busiest day so far in Senate hearing rooms as lawmakers question President-elect Trump’s cabinet picks.

Interior Secretary nominee Doug Burgum told the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that he is all in on Donald Trump’s ‘kitchen sink’ approach to energy. He warned that America could soon have an energy crisis:

BURGUM:  Electricity is at the brink. Our grid is at a point where it could go completely unstable. We could be just months away from having skyrocketing prices for Americans.

Burgum said America needs a wide range of energy sources including ramping up production of fossil fuels.

Democrat lawmakers pushed back, raising concerns about the environment and climate change.

But Burgum said he’d work to find a balance between protecting lands and tapping into resources needed to fuel the economy and national security.

Confirmation hearings: Others » Meanwhile, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi for a second day.

Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:

WHITEHOUSE: And I’m questioning you right now if you will enforce an enemies list that he announced publicly on television?

BONDI: Oh senator, I’m sorry. There will never be an enemies list within the department of justice.

WHITEHOUSE: Thank you.

Senators also questioned Trump’s pick for EPA Administrator Lee Zelden. And they held hearings for secretary nominees: Scott Turner for Housing and Urban Development, Scott Bessent for Treasury, and Kristi Noem for Homeland Security.

California wildfires » Even as firefighters continue to battle blazes in the Los Angeles area, authorities are already looking ahead.

LA County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella says large areas of now scorched and barren land puts residents at greater risk of flooding.

PESTRELLA:  I have to give everyone an early warning that we do expect the window to open for rain in the later part of this month. And so we are already pre deploying, uh, labor forces into the area to make sure that the flood control system is ready as well as our street system is ready again as much as possible.

Meantime, other officials are planning for the hazardous task of cleaning up and removing debris, some of which may be toxic.

The fires have destroyed thousands of homes and other structures and have killed at least 27 people.

Christian persecution report » The international non-profit Open Doors has released its annual persecution watchlist identifying the most dangerous nations in the world for Christians. WORLD’s Christina Grube reports.

CHRISTINA GRUBE: The report reveals that more than 380 million Christians across the world are facing persecution. That’s roughly one out of every seven believers!

Using grassroots data and eyewitness reports, the group once again named North Korea as the most perilous country for Christians, followed by Somalia and Yemen.

Researchers said sub-Saharan Africa is the most violent region for Christians due to Islamic extremist groups growing in power.

The report also found that over 7 thousand Christian churches and homes were attacked within the last year, and nearly 45-hundred Christians were killed for their faith.

For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.

I'm Kristen Flavin.

Straight ahead: apologetics and podcasting on Culture Friday. Plus, a preview of some of the kids movies coming out this year.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 17th of January.

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

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

It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet … president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: The College Football National Championship Monday night will feature two starting quarterbacks known for their outspoken Christian faith.

Will Howard—quarterback for Ohio State, sorry, The Ohio State University.

And Riley Leonard—quarterback for Notre Dame

Will Howard’s first, then Riley Leonard.

WILL HOWARD: First of all, God is good and I got to give all the thanks to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And man, we wouldn’t be here without these guys right in front of me, this coach right beside me. I love this place, man. I’m so glad I decided to come here. I’m just blessed, man. This is unbelievable.  

RILEY LEONARD: I looked up and said, “Jesus, whatever your will is for my life, I trust it 100 percent.” I know that this offense and this team trust in Jesus and His plan for this season.

If you’re not an Irish fan or a Buckeyes fan, I think we can just root for some interesting post-game interviews at least. Pretty exciting, John.

STONESTREET: It is exciting. It’s exciting to see these public expressions of faith—and not to make this too much about the actual game itself, but it’s probably good for Notre Dame that they’re doing a bit of praying.

It looks like they may need it! That’s my hot take for the evening! Next week we’ll find out if I was right or wrong.

Look, this is a trend that a lot of people have been noticing for a while now, and it actually started with coaches. I first tuned into this maybe seven or eight years ago. I caught the pregame show of the college football National Championship game, Clemson versus Alabama, and coach Dabo Swinney was talking about their culture at Clemson.

Player after player after player talked about how they thought about each other as a team—and I heard the word “love” a lot. It wasn’t “Oh, I love these guys” the way that athletes usually talk about it. It was that they have intentionally built a culture around the idea that “the greatest of these is love.” Of course, thrown in here were biblical references here and there.

You’re seeing this not just in college football, but in the NFL. Arguably one of the great rookie quarterback seasons that we’ve seen in our lifetime by the Redskins quarterback, Jaden Daniels, unapologetic about his faith and thanking not only the Lord, but the Lord Jesus Christ.

I think it’s interesting too that we’re getting more airtime for this. It used to be that networks were seemingly instructed to cut this off as soon as possible. Now it seems to have a little bit more airtime—and good, it should, if you look at what motivates and drives these players.

So it is a very important development when you see so many other aspects of culture—particularly academic culture has been going secular where we’ve lost even the Christian part of Christian colleges over the last several decades (at least Christian moral beliefs or Christian convictions). In sports, it just seems to be an exception to this rule.

The last thing I’ll say is, you could say praise God, thanks for the Christians that God has put in these places.

EICHER: Speaking of Christians God has put in key places, I wonder what you thought of the same sort of conspicuous use of the name of Jesus by the nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. This is quite the story arc. Drunkenness, divorce, serial infidelity, and now he says that’s all behind him. He’s repentant, received forgiveness, and he’s giving glory to Christ. But is it possible the politics around the nomination kind of muddies the public-witness waters here? It’s one thing to say if you love Notre Dame, well, “Good on the Ohio State Q-B, great guy.” I don’t see Democrats rallying around Hegseth in any way. What do you say about that?

STONESTREET: Well, the politics certainly makes it messy. I think there is a level of tone deafness from those on the political left being so out of touch with reality and then suddenly playing the morality card on the nominee. There’s something frustrating about that.

We have a challenge: what does it mean to be forgiven? I especially appreciated that he thanked God for working in the life of his wife to forgive him. Look, sin is messy. Sin messes up a lot of things.

But what do we think Jesus does?

So I want to be hopeful, certainly. We do have in a culture so dominated by sexual brokenness on so many levels, the question of what does restoration look like? When can a pastor be returned? When can a leader be returned? When can a public figure be returned?

It’s important to note that’s a question that goes back to the very first persecutions the church had to wrestle with.

What do you do with those who actually succumbed to the pressure to renounce Christ or to at least claim the Roman gods and then came back later, repentant, saying, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

This is not exactly the same thing, but forgiveness and grace are such a scandalous, essential part of the gospel. I guess at some level it makes sense that we would have to wrestle with it to this degree because sin is that bad and grace is that brilliant.

BROWN: John, I’m sure you have heard the recent conversation between Joe Rogan and Christian apologist Wesley Huff. Here’s a quick clip of Huff responding to Rogan’s question about Jesus as a moral example.

SOUND: Because the law is a mirror. It shows you how dirty you are. But His critique is, you guys are trying to clean yourself with a mirror. That’s stupid. (Ahhhh) If anything, it’s going to make you more messy. Like, get in the shower. The law is not what cleans you. The law is what reveals that you’re dirty. And so in that sense I think if Jesus as a moral example, it actually misses what I think Jesus actually said about what His purpose was. In that you can’t do enough to actually live up to the standard that God holds you to. And so if you keep striving. You’re actually going to wear yourself out and be exhausted….Like atheist…I didn’t say it. You did Joe. (laughter) a lot of them go crazy.

WORLD Opinions contributor Bethel McGrew thinks that conversation signals a tactical shift in how apologists make their case. What do you think….is this the “new age in apologetics”?

STONESTREET: I always hear that there’s a new age in apologetics because of this. Or a new age of apologetics because of that.

There are some cultural moments where certain existential questions rise to the top of the apologetic to-do list. I think, for example, that’ll be the case as we try to deal with the great suffering we’ve seen in California from the wildfires. The problem of evil is always right there. At times it moves from the second or third question that people have to the first question that people have.

We have to have that sort of flexibility. There's been plenty of people who have announced the end of apologetics, saying that people don’t think rationally anymore, or logical arguments don’t work.

Then you look at this and what do you see? Joe Rogan in pursuit of truth, asking rational questions, seemingly interested in things that are logical. But also open—which this gets into the difference between evidential apologetics and presuppositional apologetics to some degree—he’s actually open to supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. This is something we have seen more and more of when we talk about the fascination with the supernatural both good and bad.

Rod Dreher has been writing about this: the preemptive dismissal of anything supernatural that may have characterized the New Atheist era seems to have changed. I think there’s a lot we can learn.

Most of all, Wesley Huff’s appearance on Rogan was a commitment to being faithful to what is true, the full scope of what is true from a Christian worldview. You got to be willing to do it all: there’s not one “right” approach and all the other ones are wrong.

Lastly, let’s keep in mind that apologetics is about case-making for non-believers. But it’s also about bolstering the faith of believers.

It’s a strange dynamic right now. If there are difficult questions or challenges to the gospel, they have been thoroughly answered. I don’t know very many that haven’t. Yet the number of churches that won’t touch that stuff because they say it’s too hard, no one’s interested. What ends up happening—and I meet people like this who say, “Well, I’ve been in church my whole life and I’ve never heard anyone answer the problem of evil, so therefore there’s no real compelling answer.

I just want to tell them, “Look, this is the golden age of answers right now.” Part of this is, I think, people being really surprised that the answers are really there and the answers are really compelling. I say all that and I still want to say, Wesley Huff did a great job in this podcast across the board. He dealt with a real-life situation which sparked the invitation and he answered very specific claims. And he also made a positive case for things like the truthfulness of scripture and the resurrection. Good for him.

EICHER: I like that “golden age of answers,” John. But really extraordinary to sustain that for three straight hours, no commercial breaks. Really have to tip your cap.

STONESTREET:Well, look, and that should tell you that all the hot takes about social media and new communications techniques were wrong, do you remember?

I’m old enough to remember because it was like five years ago when we were all told that no one thinks longer than a tweet anymore. It wasn’t six months after I first heard someone introduce me to the history podcast where the guy sits there and talks for three hours about World War One? I listened to it and was absolutely captivated.

Joe Rogan has figured out how to be the most popular media platform on the planet by doing this. I think it’s helpful to go back to, what do we know about the human condition? God’s placed eternity in our hearts. We’re made in the image and likeness of God. We have the ability to think, but that ability is fallen. When we start with those assumptions, then you can actually carry out a conversation and an argument. You can be truthful and loving at the same time, you know?

We know that not because we’ve seen that many great examples of it lately, but we know that because that’s what actually the Bible tells us to do. So part of this is where do we get our information about the human condition?

BROWN: John, a few minutes back, you mentioned the fires in California. We live in a fallen world, so should we consider there may be moral evil as well as natural evil at work here? How do we think biblically about the tragedy of the devastation in California?

STONESTREET: Well there’s going to be a lot more than I can address here. One of the things we can realize is that we live in a fallen world—and a fallen world is a place that is often hostile to those who are tasked by God to care for it.

But those who are tasked by God to care for the world are also fallen. That means they can make bad decisions, even with good intentions. Sometimes they make bad decisions out of bad intentions. Anybody who wants to put this either on the natural world—as if humans are just victims of it—or those who want to put it at the hands of human action are going to have an insufficient explanation because both of those things are part of a Christian worldview.

It should be part of the framework we bring to understand.

First and foremost, as Christians, we should bring the framework that this is devastating. It’s devastating because lives have been lost and lives have been upended. That tells you about the kind of creatures that humans are, that should not be preempted by political disagreement. What we need to do is bring the whole testimony to bear.

I will say that Christians do have the most holistic, robust framework for understanding evil in the world. The Eastern religions say it’s just an illusion. Well, great, it doesn’t feel like an illusion to those who are in Pasadena right now. So I think Christians do have the best explanatory mechanisms to bring to bear here.

We also have the responsibility, because what we believe to be true, to bring that to bear and to be ready to give an answer. Thankfully there are great resources—apparently one of those is, you know, Wesley Huff! So look up his YouTube channel and you can probably have some good answers.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, January 17th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a preview of movies for kids and families debuting in 2025.

2024 was supposed to be a really terrible year for the entertainment business.

With writers’ and actors’ strikes, there weren’t as many movies in the pipeline as are typical. Analysts predicted poor profits for both studios and theater owners.

But as it turned out, the fears were overblown and what saved Hollywood’s bottom line surprised people.

JOY: Orange? Who made the console orange?

ANGER: Do I look orange?

FEAR: I didn’t touch it.

ENVY: Orange is not my color.

SADNESS: Not me.

ANXIETY: Hello everybody!

[Screams]

BROWN: Inside Out 2 kicked things off as the highest grossing film of the year, and four of the other five top films were family oriented, three of those animated.

So will the family-movie genre be able to continue the hot streak?

Arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has a preview of some upcoming family films that seem promising.

COLLIN GARBARINO: A new installment in a beary charming franchise arrives next month when Paddington in Peru debuts on Valentine’s Day. Paddington and Paddington 2 are both excellent movies, so I’m excited to see what happens when Paddington and the Brown family leave London to visit Paddington’s Aunt Lucy in darkest Peru.

PADDINGTON: Oh, not at all. Thank you for having me.

Even though the franchise has a new director, fans in the UK, where the film’s already come out, are giving it a thumbs up.

In March, moviegoers will get a live-action remake of the original Disney princess Snow White. But I’m feeling pretty skeptical about this new adaptation. It’s been delayed by a year, and it’s been the source of controversy from the very beginning. Some fans didn’t appreciate Disney’s casting of Latina actress Rachel Zegler in the title role. Then, Zegler didn’t endear herself to fans of the 1937 cartoon when she disparaged it in an interview.

ZEGLER: There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird! So we didn’t do that this time.

There was even a kerfuffle over how Disney would depict the dwarfs. The studio has opted for animated dwarfs with big heads. To be honest, they’re a little grotesque. We’ll have to see if this adaptation finds an audience.

I think two other live-action adaptations of animated classics will have a better shot of drawing crowds. In May, Disney will release Lilo & Stitch, and in June, DreamWorks will release How to Train Your Dragon.

HICCUP: Dad, I can’t kill dragons.

Lilo & Stitch debuted in 2002 and How to Train Your Dragon in 2010 and interestingly, both of the films were the products of the same creative team, Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. It’s probably a good sign for the remakes that Sanders decided to once again supply the voice work for the blue koala-like alien Stitch and DeBlois agreed to direct the new version of How to Train Your Dragon.

These sequels and remakes that blend live-action with computer-generated effects will get plenty of attention this year, but there are also a few animated family movies that might be worthwhile.

After taking the box office crown in 2024 with its Inside Out sequel, Pixar seems to be back on track. Lately the studio has been alternating fresh ideas with franchise films. So this June, we’ll get Elio, a movie about an 11-year-old boy who gets mistakenly picked up by space aliens who think he’s Earth’s ambassador to the rest of the universe. Sounds like a fun idea.

QUESTA: I am Questa, leader of Gom.

FELIX: Felix, leader of Feluvenum.

ALIEN: And you’re the leader of?

ELIO: Uh? Earth?

ALIEN: Hear that, everyone? It’s the leader of, Uh Earth!

ELIO: Uh-oh.

I hope Pixar resists the temptation to slip in a political agenda.

Studios think fresh ideas are risky, so we’re also getting a couple of sequels to some recent kids films.

In the fall, Disney will release Zootopia 2. It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since the original came out. I thought the movie’s worldview was a little muddled, but I still found it enjoyable. In this new adventure, the optimistic bunny cop Judy once again teams up with the rascally fox Nick to solve a crime.

And not to be outdone in the animal-caper genre, DreamWorks will be offering The Bad Guys 2. The original movie told the story of how a group of villainous animals led by the Big Bad Wolf turned over a new leaf.

MR. WOLF: Now that we’ve had some time to get acquainted, we’re not so scary now are we? Webs, hit it.

In this new installment, the so-called Bad Guys get dragged into another caper by a criminal gang known as the Bad Girls. The first movie was probably my favorite animated film of 2022, so I’m looking forward to this one.

Of course, I haven’t seen any of these films yet, so I’m not recommending any of them. But the list looks promising. Maybe Hollywood is finally getting the message that the path to profitability lies in making movies that families can enjoy together.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, January 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Finally today, Major League Baseball said goodbye this week to a man known as “Mr. Baseball.” That is quite a nickname for a man, who, by his own admission, was a decidedly forgettable baseball player, and never even coached or managed in the big leagues.

BROWN: WORLD’s Kent Covington now on the career of an unlikely baseball legend.

By Big League standards, Bob Uecker wasn’t much of a hitter. He was no Gold Glove catcher defensively, and he certainly was not quick on the basepaths. But he was as quick-witted as they come.

In 2003, he told a crowd in Cooperstown, New York:

EUCKER:  I remember Gene Mauch doing things to me at Philadelphia. I'd be sitting there and he'd say, uh, Grab a bat and stop this rally. … Send me up there without a bat and tell me to try for a walk.

In the baseball world, Hall of Famer Yoga Berra may be the king of memorable quotes, but Bob Uecker definitely deserves an honorable mention.

He once remarked “I led the league in 'Go get 'em next time.’”

As he once put it, “I set records that will never be equaled. In fact, I hope 90% of them don't even get printed.”

UECKER:  .200 lifetime batting average in the Major Leagues. Which tied me with another sports great, averaging 200 or better for a 10 year period. Don Carter, one of our top bowlers.

Whatever he lacked in athletic ability, he made up for it with personality. So it surprised no one when he traded the dugout for the broadcasting booth.

Nearly a decade after he broke into the big leagues with his hometown Milwaukee Braves, the Milwaukee Brewers hired Uecker as their play-by-play man in 1971.

UECKER:  I remember working first with Milo Hamilton and Ernie Johnson. And I was all fired up about that, too. Until I found out that my portion of the broadcast was being used to jam Radio Free Europe. And I picked up a microphone one day and my mic had no cord on it, so I was talking to nobody.

For any entertainer in the 1970s or 80s, there was no more coveted seat, than the armchair directly to the (stage) right of Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show coffee mug.

And Bob was a regular in that chair. During one appearance in 1986, he recalled the year his Cardinals team won the World Series 22 years earlier.

UECKER: But it’s not the money that is so important to players, it’s the ring, the championship ring. This is a World Series ring here. The following year when they have the award ceremonies at the ballpark and each player receives their ring. And when they threw mine in the grass in left field, it was such a thrill … I found it in about the 4th inning. (big laughs)

Eucker went on to an acting career in the 80s and 90s, including numerous commercials:

AUDIO (Miller Lite commercial): These fans know I drink Lite because it’s less filling and it tastes great. Good seats, uh? You’re in the wrong seat, buddy. Come on. [fade under and out]

And he played father and sports writer George Owens on the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere. He also appeared on the big screen, including his role as a sportscaster in the 1989 comedy Major League.

AUDIO (Major League clip): Vaughn into the windup, and his first offering … juuuuust a bit outside. He tried the corner and missed. Ball 4, ball 8 …

But in that 2003 address in Cooperstown, where he was honored with an award for broadcasting excellence, Uecker made clear that even though his career included an unlikely Hollywood twist when it came to what he loved to do:

UECKER: Number one has always been baseball for me. No matter what else I ever do, baseball was the only way I wanted to go.

And that’s why they called him Mr. Baseball.

Bob Eucker was 90 years old.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week, recognized in alphabetical order:

Hunter Baker, David Bahnsen, Myrna Brown, Rachel Coyle, Kristen Flavin, Collin Garbarino, Brad Littlejohn, Carolina Lumetta, Lindsay Mast, Mary Muncy, Onize Oduah, Addie Offereins, Emma Perley, Mary Reichard, and Cal Thomas.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington (also a fount of baseball knowledge), Lynde Langdon, Lauren Canterberry, Josh Schumacher, and Christina Grube.

Thanks to the guys who stay up late (and you know why they do because it doesn’t matter if it’s quarter past 3 in the morning in the east they get it there): Johnny Franklin, Carl Peetz, and Benj Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Paul Butler executive producer, and Les Sillars editor-in-chief.

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 employees grumbling to the master of the house about their pay. He replied to one of them, “‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.’” —Matthew 20:13-14.

Be sure to worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s Day! And, Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

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.