The World and Everything in It: January 19, 2023

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Dozens of countries report rising rates of cholera, and Africa is hardest hit.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also the lingering effect on church attendance following pandemic shutdowns.

Plus an elderly widow passing on a pro-life legacy.

And commentator Cal Thomas on Elvis and his daughter’s fame.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, January 19th. 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 for the news. Here’s Kristen Flavin.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told leaders at the World Economic Forum meeting that supplies of Western weapons must come quicker than Russia’s attacks.

ZELENSKYY: Tragedies are outpacing life. The tyranny is outpacing the democracy.

He spoke Wednesday by video to world leaders gathered at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

The meeting came just hours after a helicopter crash in Ukraine killed more than a dozen people, including top Ukrainian officials. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken:

BLINKEN: We stand with our friends in Ukraine in mourning their loss and recommitting to the efforts that we’re making to help Ukraine defend itself against this aggression.

The chopper crashed into a kindergarten in a foggy residential suburb of Kyiv, killing everyone on board and one child on the ground.

Ukraine’s minister and deputy minister of the interior were aboard the helicopter.

Investigators are trying to determine the cause of the crash.

Debt ceiling » Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says today will be the day the U.S. government maxes out the amount of debt it is allowed to take on.

She says that as soon as the government reaches what many are calling its debt ceiling, the Treasury Department will resort to so-called extraordinary measures to delay a government default. Those extraordinary measures will stave off debt default until summer.

Democrats in Washington say Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling to avoid wrecking the U.S.’s financial credibility.

Democrat Congressman James Clayburn

CLAYBURN: We ought not to be playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States of America. It’s in law, we have to deal with it, let’s not be political about it.

But some Republicans are arguing the government needs to start using money more responsibly.

Republican Congressman Jim Jordan.

JORDAN: We’ve got record inflation, record spending, record debt and the Democrats say we don’t want to change any behavior? We don’t want to do anything?

The United States has never before defaulted on its national debt.

Microsoft layoffs » Tech giant Microsoft said today that it is laying off 10,000 workers. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The layoffs make up about 5 percent of the company’s workforce. Microsoft says it’s cutting jobs in response to what it called “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities.”

The company hired more than 75,000 people during the pandemic, when it experienced a greater demand for its software.

Microsoft is also consolidating its hardware portfolio and the number of its office locations.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Wholesale prices / Retail sales » Wholesale prices rose just 6.2 percent in December compared to a year earlier, according to a government report yesterday. That’s more than a whole percentage point lower than November’s rate.

The report indicates that the U.S. inflation rate could be easing.

Loretta Mester is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

MESTER: The way I think about what the most recent monthly numbers are telling us is that we can have some confidence or more confidence about the inflation projections, which do have inflation moving down this year.

This and recent reports might motivate the Federal Reserve to relax its strategy of aggressive interest rate hikes, but it may not halt the hikes all together.

MESTER: We're not at 5% yet. We're not above 5%, which I think is going to be needed given where my projections are for the economy. So I just think we need to keep going.

The Federal Reserve will meet at the end of this month to discuss whether and how much to raise interest rates further.

California shootings » Authorities blame drugs and gang-related violence for the grisly murders of six people at a Central California home.

The victims ranged in age from 10 months to 72 years.

Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux

BOUDREAUX: Let me make this very clear: not all these people in this home were gang members, and not all of these people in this home were drug dealers

The sheriff also criticized Governor Gavin Newsom for halting executions in the state.

BOUDREAUX: Well, there are certain crimes just like this—when you shoot a 10-month-old child in the head—they deserve the death penalty. That death penalty needs to be part of our justice system in California.

Newsom put a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019 and recently announced a plan to transfer condemned prisoners off death row.

Pro-lifers prepare for march, Roe anniversary » Pro-life advocates will participate in the 49th March for Life on Friday in Washington, D.C.. It’s the first time the annual event will take place since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of last year.

Carol Tobias is president of the National Right to Life Committee.

TOBIAS: We are celebrating victory; we are celebrating life. It’s not anymore, “Can we overturn Roe? When are we going to overturn Roe?” Roe is gone.

Since the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution does not declare a right to abortion, numerous states have implemented pro-life policies. Kristan Hawkins with Students for Life of America says there is still more to do.

HAWKINS: We know this is not over it is simply the beginning of the next phase of our fight…

Pro-abortion counterprotesters are expected to turn out in D.C. on Friday, as well.

I’m Kristen Flavin. Straight ahead: Africa's battle with cholera.

Plus, church attendance after COVID.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 19 of January, 2023.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up, illness ravaging parts of Africa.

Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in twenty years. That country is not alone: the World Health Organization says 31 countries have reported a 50 percent increase since December, as compared to previous years. Nearly half of those countries are in Africa.

BROWN: WORLD’s Africa reporter Onize Ohikere takes us to Malawi, where health workers are fighting the waterborne disease in communities at risk.

AUDIO: [Footsteps/health workers]

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Two weeks ago, a 27-year-old man walked into the single-brick clinic in Msambo village north of Malawi’s capital of Lilongwe.

Violet Chikwatu is one of the nurses who attended to him. She works with the Lutheran Mobile Clinic—a mobile healthcare service that covers four villages.

CHIKWATU: So this patient was vomiting and then had diarrhea. And he had some signs of dehydration.

Chikwatu said he received oral rehydration therapy before the team referred him to a nearby cholera treatment center.

He is now one of the more than 22,000 confirmed cholera cases since the current outbreak began last March. More than 750 people have died, and daily infections continue to rise.

Chikwatu said the mobile clinic’s response also includes educational talks.

CHIKWATU: Like the frequent hand washing, the use of safe chlorinated water, the proper usage of latrines. Yeah. And thorough cooking of foodstuffs.

Malawi is now averaging about 500 new cholera infections a day. Yahya Kalilah is the country emergency coordinator with the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

He says his group confirms at least 70 cholera cases daily across its seven treatment centers that operate in partnership with Malawi’s Ministry of Health.

Kalilah partly blames the high mortality rate on delayed medical attention. Some patients first turn to traditional care before seeking medical assistance.

KALILAH: You know, most of the cases arrive to the health center with severe dehydration.

Health agencies have attributed the global cholera surge to a complex humanitarian crisis that particularly hit countries with fragile health systems.

AUDIO: [Health workers]

In Malawi, health responders are pointing to poor drainage systems, poor hygiene, and an absence of clean or treated water.

Those factors have prompted Kalilah’s team to take a more targeted approach. They identify hotspot communities and increase health education, supply hygiene kits, and run vaccination campaigns.

In some cases, it works.

KALILAH: It’s the main job honestly, for the treatment for the cholera. And there is a really good response from the community.

The group’s first treatment center at the Kochi community hospital in southern Malawi had 90 in-patient cases when it first opened in November. By the first week of this month, Kalilah said the center was down to three cases a day, so his team handed the center back to the Ministry of Health.

AUDIO: [Kids at school]

On Tuesday, classes resumed across primary and secondary schools in the capital of Lilongwe and the commercial hub of Blantyre.

Authorities delayed school this year over high infection rates in both cities.

AUDIO: [Water rushing]

At the Lilongwe Christian School, students queued up to wash their hands with water from a plastic bucket.

The numbers are still rising, but authorities insist the schools now have access to safe water and improved sanitation.

In the city of Nkhoma, American international worker Bethany Robbins and her husband also shut down their home library for children in the community as cases spiked in December.

ROBBINS: They’re eager to play again and take books. It’s been really sad.

Her community has recorded some deaths. Cholera patients continue to flock into the Nkhoma community hospital. It’s also planting season in the community.

ROBBINS: Having it be planting season along with rainy season, that combination can be dangerous because you have a lot of runny water though the fields, a lot of people working in the fields where there’s all sorts of things combining together in one place.

Last week, Malawi’s Health Ministry ordered businesses without safe garbage disposal and clean water to close. The restrictions also extended to the sale of pre-cooked food.

Kalilah said a lot of the current measures are trying to bring down the mortality rate and infection numbers. But his team has started to look into longer-term resilience.

KALILAH: Water treatment, cleaning the boreholes, have access to clean water and, yeah, building latrines.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: COVID and the church.

The pandemic may have subsided now, but its effects still linger in American life.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: One long-term change from the pandemic: Going to church. The American Enterprise Institute reports that while Americans say they are just as religious now as before the pandemic, more of them just stopped attending church.

Dan Cox is the director of AEI’s Survey Center on American Life. He joins us now to discuss his research on the state of religion before and after the pandemic.

REICHARD: Dan, welcome.

DAN COX, GUEST: Thanks for having me.

REICHARD: Dan, let’s start by talking about the research you conducted. Who did you survey, and how reliable are the results?

COX: So, I think this is one of the best looks at religious change over the past couple of years because what we did is we interviewed close to 10,000 Americans who are at least age 18 or older. And we interviewed them before the pandemic, so mostly in 2019 and a few in early 2020. And then we re-interviewed this same group of folks in the spring of 2022. So we asked them the identical questions about religious affiliation and religious attendance. And so we're actually seeing change occurring within individuals. And that's a methodologically complicated way to set it up, but it's actually provides more reliable results.

REICHARD: I had a chance to look over your results, and this jumped out at me. You found that before the pandemic, one in four Americans said they never attended worship services. By the spring of 2022, that number was one in three. What does that mean for our churches?

COX: Yeah, so I think the increase in people who were not attending at all anymore is a real sign of challenge for a lot of denominations and congregations. And I think it's one of those things that's not evenly spread out over the country. Some congregations are seeing a lot of decline, some are quite healthy. And so I think the one really telling thing for me is who's leaving. And it's a lot of folks on the periphery. So people who were involved a little bit, they may have gone around the holidays, or a few times a year, but these aren't the folks that were in the pews week in and week out and involved in committees and involved in leadership activities in their church or congregation. And so I think we're seeing kind of a hollowing out of the middle.

REICHARD: Do you know whether the people who say they no longer attend church also have completely abandoned belief in God altogether?

COX: Yeah, so the really interesting thing that we noted in the report is that while we didn't see declines in religious affiliation, we did see declines in religious participation. And that's pretty normal in terms of like the lifecycle of disaffiliation. So you don't generally see rapid changes of belief following someone who kind of drifts away. But for folks who kind of drifted away, which I think characterizes a lot of what happened during the pandemic, then I think it occurs more slowly. So a lot of people retain their sort of formal religious affiliation. Many of them—if not most—will still believe in God and have maybe a personal and private spiritual religious life, but it's disconnected from the formal practice of religion.

REICHARD: Conversely, I’ve also heard people say living through the pandemic deepened their faith. Does your survey say how many people had that kind of experience?

COX: Yeah, so there was another study, I think it was conducted by the Pew Research Center, which showed that for some people, the experience and the challenges of living through a once in generation global pandemic, strengthened their faith. And, again, I think that goes to the really disparate experiences people are having. For some people, it separated them from their religious communities in a way that was really negative and led some people to fall away. For others, it provided maybe new ways and new avenues of connecting to their community, whether that was online, maybe they found more informal activities, outdoor activities, ways of being together, of being part of a religious community together. And I think for those folks, yeah absolutely, I think it would make a lot of sense that that experience would strengthen their commitment in their faith, whereas for the other folks, it kind of pushed them out.

REICHARD: You touched on this…your study mentions something called religious polarization. Can you explain what that means, and what effects it can have on American life?

COX: Yeah, so we've seen this significant increase in people who have no formal religious affiliation, the nones—the N-O-N-E-Ses—and these folks have gone from single digits in the mid late 1990s to about one in three Americans who are now religiously unaffiliated. And the really interesting thing that's happening is it's not happening equally across the U.S.—generationally, geographically. And so we're sort of seeing this kind of polarization. You look to where we are now and it's like a 25 plus point gap between where younger Americans and older Americans are in terms of religious affiliation. So that gap is widening as well and it's creating a lot of problems when we're trying to solve national problems.

REICHARD: Finally, what lessons can Christians take from your research that could help them better minister to their friends and neighbors?

COX: Yeah, I think the portrait that I paint in some of my writing and in this report is well, people can perceive it is kind of a gloomy portrait, but I think one of the things that we should remember is that a lot of Americans still broadly affirm basic values of religious pluralism and the principle of religious liberty. And I think that the growing religious diversity in the country is a challenge, but I think it's one that we're very, very well-equipped to manage and handle.

REICHARD: Dan Cox is the director of AEI’s Survey Center on American Life. Dan, thank you.

COX: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Earlier this week, a visitor to an Australian McDonalds drive thru looked over to the next lane and couldn't believe her eyes...

CLIP: [WINDOW ROLLING DOWN] Is that a horse in your car?

At first, Donna Bevan thought it was a really large dog, but it was a Shetland pony in the backseat of the compact car.

CLIP: That's Rocco. Hi Rocco!

I wonder how often she takes the horse to the drive thru a lot, or just a spur of the moment thing?

BROWN: Good question. What I want to know is what’s a horse order off the McDonalds’ menu anyway?

REICHARD: I'm guessing that it's something with mayo-neighs or maybe a McFlurry as it's all stirr-up?

BROWN: You're close…

CLIP: He's excited for his ice cream...

REICHARD: That's haylarious.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, January 19th. 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. Up next, Sanctity of Human Life Sunday.

But first, I want to give a quick word about our live pro-life discussion happening tonight. We’re bringing together a panel of WORLD Opinions columnists to talk about the current state of the pro-life movement, as we approach the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Albert Mohler will serve as our moderator for this conversation. You can see the livestream tonight at 8 pm EST at wng.org/live.

BROWN: Well, as we mentioned, this weekend is Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. If you have little ones around, this is probably a good time to hit pause and come back later to listen.

Back in 1984, President Ronald Reagan issued a presidential proclamation, designating the third Sunday of January as a day to affirm life and expose the darkness of abortion.

I met a Florida grandmother who plans to mark this day by sharing her pro-life testimony.

AUDIO: [Shakes fence]

That firm grip belongs to Evelyn Owen. The 73-year-old is using a chain link fence surrounding her four-acre pasture to rouse her newest business partners…

AUDIO: [Baaaa baaaa]

…six Dwarf-Nigerian goats: five females and one buck.

MYRNA TO OWEN: What’s that sound you’re making? That’s their sound, baaa. I’m substitute goat here.

AUDIO: [Baa baa]

Owen is a widow with kind eyes. She says she’s no stranger to rural life or hard times. While we wait for Starlight, Moon Pie, Blaze, Saddle and Cookies & Cream to make an appearance, she talks about her growing up years.

OWEN: I grew up in Central Florida. I had no brothers. My father…we lived on a ranch and he used my sister and I as cowhands. My mom was a stay-at-home mom. She didn’t work, but she had a hard life because dad would get angry and would beat her.

Owen says most people in their small town knew about the violence in her home. That’s why she became a loner.

OWEN: Everybody was afraid of my father, so nobody dared date me.

After graduating high school in the late sixties, Owen enrolled in junior college. She dreamed of becoming a dental hygienist. She worked part-time in fast food.

OWEN: I didn’t need the money, but I wanted the social life, so I went to work for Burger King.

One evening after work, a few coworkers who shared a garage apartment invited Owen and several others to come over.

OWEN: I remember thinking, well finally maybe I can get some friends. I remember them offering me a cup of soda and I took it because I was thirsty. I was so naive. I did not know that they had put Roofie in that coke.

The date rape drug made her drowsy and disoriented.

OWEN: I remember getting very, very sleepy and they had this parsons bench with no cushions in it. Was just wood and I curled up on it just to go to sleep. Everything is so foggy, that you are just not aware of what’s going on. And I did not have enough knowledge to know what was going on.

Owen says at some point during the night a boy with dark hair woke her up and led her to a bedroom.

OWEN: And I just couldn’t resist. I just wanted to go to sleep and I did afterwards. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning and the house is empty. My purse is there, my car is there… praise the Lord. And I realized what had happened, but there was nothing I could do about it. I never went back to confront him or anything because at that point, I thought well, he’s just had his way and that’s it. But I ended up pregnant.

Her first response to the news: denial.

OWEN: This can’t be happening to me. This is ruining all of my plans. I’m going to become a dental hygienist. I’m too responsible for this. How in the world am I going to tell my parents? My father will kill me.

While she grew up unchurched, Owen says her mother told her bedtime Bible stories and her grandmother spoke often about Jesus. But Owen didn’t know Him as Lord. So, when the thought of abortion came up, she considered it, although in 1968 it was still illegal.

OWEN: What I did was I went to a doctor, put on a fake wedding ring and pretended I was married and asked to have an IUD inserted and knowing that it would cause a spontaneous abortion. But, the doctor very wisely realized from an exam that I was pregnant and he would not do that and so I went home and said well that’s that. I’m having the baby.

But instead of telling her parents she was now four months pregnant, Owen pursued another route. She took advice from someone she’d never met.

OWEN: I wrote Ann Landers or Dear Abby, one of those and she told me about a home for unwed mothers in Jacksonville. Right after Christmas, I just left notes on my pillow, took the car, drove to Pulaka, left it at the automobile dealership to get an oil change, walked next door to the Greyhound bus station with my little suitcase, got on it with a ticket to Jacksonville and the whole way there I opened my New Testament and I just read. It was just me and Jesus. That’s when I got saved. I realized I couldn’t make the right choices in my life, that I would mess up everytime. I needed to have a Savior and have a Lord.

Even with her new-found faith, Owen says she still vacillated between strong feelings of shame…

OWEN: That I wasn’t a good girl. I didn’t want to let my parents down.

…and a deep desire to protect her unborn child.

OWEN: Back then it just wasn’t accepted like it is today. Your child was called a bastard. It was an out of wedlock child. And they were looked down upon and excluded or even shunned.

Owen spent the next five months at that home for unwed mothers, sponsored by the organization, Volunteers of America.

OWEN: It was a two story old colonial home. Upstairs were all the bedrooms and downstairs was the kitchen. We had to do our own cooking. Ms. Murray, the house mother, taught us how to cook, clean.

Mrs. Murray, a minister’s wife, played another vital role in Owen’s life. She convinced the 19-year-old to reach out to her parents.

OWEN: I dialed the number and she was praying the whole time. I was scared, but I told them where I was and that I was pregnant and oddly enough they didn’t react like I thought they would.

Owen says her parents were understandably shocked but surprisingly supportive.

OWEN: Before I gave birth my father and mother actually came up brought a load of watermelons, because he was a watermelon raiser, to the home for everybody. And he told me, he said, you have a home. If you want to keep the child you can bring him home.

But Owen didn’t want to expose her baby to the violence she had grown up around. She told her father no and delivered a baby boy in June, 1969. Owen got to hold her son once, before making another life-changing decision.

OWEN: I had plenty of time alone talking with the Lord, just pray, pray, pray and get a clear answer. Read scriptures, get a clear answer and His answer was very simple to me. He will have a better home. He will be safe. Give him up for adoption.

So she did. Two months later, Owen met her husband Bill, a bi-vocational pastor. They were married for 50 years and served as missionaries until his death in 2019.

OWEN: My husband knew. I was totally honest with him before he married, but I didn’t tell my friends or my people in my church or anything until I had children almost grown. They were teenagers. That’s when I told them they had a half brother.

And she didn’t stop there. Over the years she's told her story to many women, helping them make godly decisions about their unborn babies.

OWEN: When I realized that what I had been through could be used to help other girls, that’s when I knew that God could bring good out of this. And indeed He did.

Owen says she also shares the unfinished parts of her testimony.

AUDIO: [GOATS BLEATING] Yeah… come on… you big babies

As Owen’s flock of goats finally starts to trot towards us, she recalls the day she met the baby boy she gave up for adoption. She hired a private investigator to find her son, who eventually reached out to her.

OWEN: And I walked up to him. He was standing in a pew and he hugged me. That’s the only hug I’ve ever gotten from him.

Owen says they talked for three days. The husband and father of four wanted to know more about his conception.

OWEN: He seemed to be a little shocked that it was under those circumstances. But I assured him, God had a purpose for him. He was not unplanned, God had a plan for him. And God’s using him. I'm so pleased that the Lord gave him a Christian home, good upbringing. He's everything you would want in a son.

Her son says he isn’t able to have a relationship with her yet. But Owen says…

OWEN: He knows I’m here. (laughter) And it’s ok. I’ll see him in heaven. He’ll be perfect and I’ll be perfect.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Cantonment, Florida.

MYRNA BROWN HOST: Today is Thursday, January 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Commentator Cal Thomas now on fame and its effect.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: The death at age 54 of Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis, has got me thinking again about the two-edged sword that is fame.

Poems, books, even movies have addressed fame–how some people even lust after it and how it seems to ruin more lives than it helps. Once you have attained fame you can never live as normal people do. Strangers want to approach you, some with good motives, some bad. The famous need security, locked gates, unlisted telephone numbers and people around to protect them and feed their egos. Such was the fate of country boy Elvis, as depicted in a recent movie about him. And it became the fate of his only child.

Lisa Marie never asked to be famous. It was thrust on her. True, she had a short career as a singer, but was always known first as Elvis’ daughter. As with Frank Sinatra, Jr., lineage can be a curse.

Neither Lisa Marie nor her father handled fame well. She was married four times, including to Michael Jackson. Elvis’ relationships with other women were legion. She struggled with drugs, as did Elvis, who died of an overdose. According to legal documents obtained by The Blast website, Lisa Marie was spending “$92k a month before her death and owed the IRS $1 million after squandering the $100 million fortune she inherited from Elvis.”

People handle fame in different ways. Pat Boone, who was born in 1934, seven months before Elvis, also had a head start on the “king,” recording three smash hit songs before Elvis scored his first.

Boone has told me and others that Elvis was his neighbor in Beverly Hills for a time. Elvis would often walk the one block to Boone’s home and seemed envious of Boone’s family. Elvis eventually had his own family with wife Priscilla and their daughter, but fame’s dark side got to him. His wife and daughter were also fame’s targets and eventually became its victims.

Boone, who had many years of fame, including movies and a network TV show on NBC, handled it much better. There were no “other women,” and no drugs. He credits his strong Christian faith and loving wife for protecting him, but Boone never indulged himself in his lower nature. He wasn’t surrounded by “yes men.” who told him what he wanted to hear.

Some mocked his clean-cut appearance, but given how Boone turned out (he is now 88 as Elvis would be had he lived), his lifestyle looks better every day.

Everyone wants to believe his or her life matters. Some find meaning in externals that can lead to dark and deadly places. Others find it in the spiritual realm, which has led many to light and a happy place.

Another song conveys a lesson to all who seek fame as an end in itself: “Fame if you win it, comes and goes in a minute. Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?”

Lisa Marie’s father seemed to love her, so far as Elvis understood love. He just never appeared by his life and love style to grasp its full meaning. This was his tragedy. Because of the fame he bequeathed to her, it became Lisa Marie’s tragedy as well.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow on Culture Friday: the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v Wade.

And, a review of a classic old film. Plus, Word Play and the rapidly changing English language.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Mryna 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 one of the Pharisees, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. (Matthew 22:35-37 ESV)

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.