The World and Everything in It: January 21, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

World leaders are gathering in Davos as President Trump prepares to speak—and allies are bracing for what comes next.

CARNEY: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons

NICK EICHER, HOST: The future of U.S. leadership—today on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, World Tour.

And later: a family that proves disagreement doesn’t have to mean division.

ROBERTS: There's always been that sense of camaraderie and that even if we disagree, we're still family.

And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney on what our voices say about who we are.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, January 21st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

MAST: Up next, Paul Butler with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Davos / Greenland » President Trump today will address global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The president said he’ll talk at length about U.S. accomplishments through the first year of his second term.

But he’s also expected to make the case once more that the United States must acquire Greenland for national security reasons. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

BESSENT: He believes that Greenland is essential for the Golden Dome Missile Shield.

European leaders have already been discussing the matter, including at an EU meeting on Sunday. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

LEYEN: We have to be strategic about how we approach this issue, and this is why we are working on a package to support Arctic Security. First principle, full solidarity with Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark. The sovereignty and integrity of that territory is non-negotiable.

European ladders are hoping to talk Trump out of planned tariffs on European countries tied to the Greenland dispute.

Markets took a big hit Tuesday, with Wall Street concerned about a new trade war.

President Trump says he spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte today. Rutte has not endorsed the takeover bid, but Trump said Rutte committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.

Trump marks 1 year in press briefing » At the White House on Tuesday, President Trump marked the one-year anniversary of his second term in office.

TRUMP: We've done more than any other administration has done by far, in terms of military, in terms of ending wars, in terms of completing wars, nobody has really seen very much like it.

The president marked the occasion with a nearly two-hour news conference in which he touted what he framed as the top successes of his administration, including the economy and foreign policy.

Trump pointed to beefing up immigration enforcement and slammed critics of those immigration policies, saying they're aimed at getting violent offenders off the streets:

TRUMP: We have a lot of heart for people that came in illegally but they're good people and they're working now on farms and they're working in luncheonettes and hotels. And we're not looking -- we're looking to get the criminals out right now.

But opponents of the president's immigration crackdown accuse the administration of deporting migrants at the expense of their civil rights.

Ukraine latest » In Davos on Tuesday:

DMITRIEV: [Speaking Russian]

Russian Presidential Envoy Kirill Dmitriev told reporters he spoke with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and unofficial envoy Jared Kushner.

Dmitriev says they had a constructive discussion about Russia's war with Ukraine. He declined to comment further on that discussion.

Meanwhile:

SOUND: [Strike on Kyiv]

…a major Russian airstrike knocked out the heat for about half the apartment buildings in Kyiv amid freezing temperatures.

Minnesota subpoenas » Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to several Minnesota leaders as part of an investigation into possible interference with federal immigration enforcement.

Attorney General Pam Bondi says rhetoric from local and state officials is putting agents in danger.

BONDI:  This state is a mess right now. We've seen the chaos and it's constant, and our men and women in law enforcement deserve to be safe.

Federal authorities served subpoenas Tuesday to Gov. Tim Walz as well as the state’s attorney general and the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul, among others.

Investigators are seeking records and communications tied to public statements or actions that may have discouraged cooperation with federal immigration officers.

State and city leaders have sharply criticized the probe, calling it political and saying it is meant to intimidate officials who oppose the enforcement operation.

New Jersey governor inauguration » Democrat Mikie Sherrill has been sworn in as New Jersey’s 57th governor.

The former Navy helicopter pilot and four-term Congresswoman took the oath today in Newark.

SHERRILL:  And maintain the lawful rights of the state of New Jersey.

RABNER: So help me God.

SHERRILL: So help me God.

RABNER: Congratulations governor.

At 54, Sherrill becomes only the second woman to lead the state.

She replaces fellow Democrat Phil Murphy, giving Democrats control of the governor’s office for a third straight term for the first time in more than 60 years.

She immediately signed two executive orders during the ceremony—one freezing utility rate increases, and another aimed at expanding electricity production, including solar and nuclear power.

Guatemala state of emergency » Violence targeting police in Guatemala has left at least ten officers dead, as the government moves to tighten security. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The trouble began over the weekend when inmates took control of three prisons and held dozens of guards hostage. Authorities say the unrest was coordinated by powerful gangs demanding special treatment for their leaders.

After security forces retook one of the prisons early Sunday, attackers struck police officers across Guatemala City.

Officials confirmed Monday that a tenth officer later died from injuries.

President Bernardo Arévalo declared a 30-day state of emergency. The measure gives police broader powers, limits some public gatherings, and allows arrests without warrants in gang-related cases.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I’m Paul Butler.

Straight ahead: still ahead, World leaders gather in Davos as President Trump prepares to speak. Plus, Washington Wednesday and World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 21st of January. So glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

DON LEMON: So this is what the First Amendment is about, about the freedom to protest. I'm sure the people here don't like it, but protests are not comfortable.

MAST: We want to begin today with a story that hits on the First Amendment rights of Americans to exercise their religion: a first-person account of what happens when a congregation is interrupted by protesters in their sanctuary, during a worship service.

CALEB PHILIPS: The congregation just really loves each other and is so welcoming to newcomers.

MAST: Caleb Philips works at a Christian radio station in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He began attending Cities Church in Saint Paul with his girlfriend several months ago. This past Sunday, the Southern Baptist church’s Pastor Jonathan Parnell planned to preach on John 13.

PHILIPS: …the passage where Jesus says “A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.”

EICHER: But as Parnell began, a woman in the back stood up and began shouting. Sound here from footage shot by former CNN news anchor Don Lemon.

PHILIPS: She starts going off on this rant about how one of our pastors is employed with ICE and we should be ashamed to have a pastor like that on staff, and there's no excuse for this, and we're fake Christians and all of these things.

EICHER: Other protestors, seated around the sanctuary, stood up to chant slogans.

PHILIPS: A couple of the dads got up and kind of started trying to shout down the protesters. Pastor Jonathan actually made a pretty valiant effort to shout them down over his mic, saying, shame on you. Shame on you, which I think that they all should be ashamed. But we pretty quickly realized that, you know, fighting fire with fire wasn't really going to work out.

MAST: Some families with children left the building, while other members faced off with protestors.

PHILIPS: We were either praying, singing or reading scripture. I myself, I stood up and started reading the Psalms directly at the protesters… Psalms about the power of God, about the, how wickedness will not prevail.

MAST: Eventually, church staff shepherded members into a nearby room and emptied the sanctuary of protestors…who Philips says were gloating about shutting down the service, but later that night, worshipers returned.

PHILIPS:. Pastor Jonathan addressed everything, and he preached his sermon the same way that he would have that morning, telling us that the way that we will show these people Jesus Christ is through our love for one another, and that that is the most important thing.

MAST: Joining us is to talk about it now is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions Contributor and provost at North Greenville University. Good morning Hunter!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning!

EICHER: Hunter, let's begin with First Amendment principles. Here in his live stream, Don Lemon played the part of a journalist enjoying ample First Amendment protections, repeatedly asking these church goers whose worship service had just been invaded, what they thought about the rights of the protesters. Didn't they have the right to protest? After all, we've got the First Amendment, et cetera and so forth. It's all the way through the interviews that he conducted, but I want to get your take on this idea of the bounds of protest, so I'm going to ask you to put your J.D. hat on this morning and talk about what they are and how, how thoroughly those lines were crossed.

BAKER: When it comes to free speech protections and other types of protest, typically, we understand that those things are regulated by time, place and manner. And the place that we're talking about is a church. This is private property. A church is not a public park. It is not a government building or the area surrounding a government building. It is a private place where people are invited to come and to join or observe the service there. So this is not the typical place where you would see a protest. I don't think that a court would protect this as a venue of protest, but I just want people to think about what life would be like if it worked this way. I mean, what if protesters, anytime could enter into your place of work and perform this kind of disruption on it. Or, what if any given conference that you might go to, people might come storming in and start disrupting the conference, it would be intolerable. And this, this is not really the nature of the kind of protest that is contemplated by the First Amendment. What it really reminds me of, and I'm going to. I'm going to sound extreme here, but it reminds me of the fascists of the early 20th century who would go places and try to intimidate people through their noise, through their violent behavior and seeming instability. So no, this is not a protected protest, and we shouldn't want it to be.

MAST: Well let’s switch gears here to talk about why those protestors were out: the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Twin Cities. We talked to Minnesota state legislator Kristin Robbins. She says the state is in crisis, and that what happened Sunday stems from state and city officials who don’t want to allow ICE to work as it was designed to, at courthouses or at the airport.

ROBBINS: I really think we need to focus on allowing ICE to do their jobs and pick criminals up at the courtrooms so that they don't have to go through our neighborhoods. And for these protesters to go target a person who they think is an ICE officer in their place of worship, I mean, it's just unconscionable. I would hope that everyone on both sides of this issue would realize that that is a bridge too far and stand up against it.

I’ll add that there did appear to be multiple officers outside the church Sunday by the time the protest quieted, but by all accounts, none of those officers went in to disperse the crowd. So law enforcement called but no discernible action.

So talk about what happens when laws aren’t enforced as intended, and what’s at stake for the average American.

BAKER: We're really seeing a decline of our political culture, and we see it in a lot of different ways, but in this particular instance, I think that law is being corrupted by politics. It's sort of an immediate callback in my mind to the Jim Crow South where the police would not protect African Americans would not give them the benefit of ordinary law, not just with regard to segregation, but with regard to protection from the standard crimes, you know, things like assault and battery and murder and things like that. And here we see these people who are entitled to protection from local law enforcement, who are there, and they do not receive it. But we need to remember that law exists for everyone. The law is supposed to be much more politically insulated than it seems to be in this case, and I think that office holders, specifically of the type that we see in Minnesota, are failing us because they really seem to be encouraging people to break the law or to stretch the law. And the other thing that I want to say is, so we have this federal law. A lot of people are pointing to the FACE Act, which is a weird law, right? It's a law that protects people seeking an abortion and protects people engaging in religious worship. Very odd piece of legislation. I don't like this over federalization of law. We already have perfectly good laws against trespassing, assault and things like that, and local police could enforce those laws. But again, you're going to see the FACE Act come into play, because just like I mentioned with the civil rights era, the local police have become unreliable, and so you see people looking back toward federal law. It's not ideal. It's much harder to use in the moment, but that's where we are.

EICHER: President Trump is set to speak shortly at the World Economic Forum in Davos—early afternoon, Swiss time, about 8:30 a.m. Eastern time here in the U.S. Allies are bracing for what he may say on Greenland, trade, and the future of U.S. leadership abroad. Even before Trump takes the stage, the tone of the summit has been set by sharp warnings from other world leaders.

Let's listen to a little bit of those. Very pointed remarks. Here’s Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, speaking yesterday. He said that if great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values ... the allies will have to adjust. Sovereignty, he said, will no longer rest on rules but on the ability to withstand pressure.

CARNEY: Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons — tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, and supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

MAST: Likewise the president of France, Emmanuel Macron ... if you saw pictures from yesterday ... he's got a blood vessel rupture, so he showed up in some pretty stylish mirrored shades. Looked sharp ... sharp like his rhetoric, criticizing what he called “bullies” and you know who he meant, if he went unnamed.

MACRON: It's clear that we are we are reaching a time of instability, of unbalances, … I mean a shift towards autocracy, against democracy, more violence, more than 60 wars in 2024, an absolute record, even if I understood a few of them were fixed… . It's as well a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled under foot and this is as well, a shift towards a world without effective collective governance, and where multilateralism is weakened by powers that obstruct it or turn away from it, and rules are undermined

EICHER: Let’s rewind to Carney’s characterization of a “rupture in the world order.” What do you think: Is this about Greenland specifically, or about fear that U.S. guarantees and alliances are just weakening?

BAKER: I think that it's all tied up together. I can't ignore the fact that Trump has been pressuring NATO since 2016, he has been pushing them to carry more of their own weight militarily. He has been pushing them to spend more on defense and not to free ride on American protection. And so that sets up an interesting dynamic. When you're when you're paying all the bills and you're burying all the burdens, then other people kind of have to listen to you. But we're in a transition phase. Trump has wanted the U.S. to be more of a normal nation on the international stage, and so that's happening. So we are forcing them to pay more and to do more, and so that means that they may want to resist when we start pushing, and especially in a situation like this, because it's just hard to understand. It is clear that we have the right and the ability to do what we need to do in Greenland. We can have military bases, we can set up missile protection, we can do all kinds of things. We do not have to acquire Greenland to do that, and yet he is. He is really pushing in that direction.

MAST: Davos is often caricatured as a gathering of global elites, but it is also where norms get articulated. How much does it matter that these warnings are being delivered there, in that setting, rather than quietly through diplomatic channels?

BAKER: It shows that there's a lot of frustration. I can't believe these, you know, these men, you know, publishing each other's messages on social media, these sorts of things. It's, I mean, this is so far outside of any kind of diplomacy that I've seen in the past, and what that shows is they're trying to win the battle over public opinion. I think that they think that they can make progress by showing that Trump is a bad guy, by showing how far outside the lines he is coloring. But ultimately, I want to say this. I'll put my credibility on the line. I'm going to agree with Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce. He says there is going to be a reasonable resolution of this thing. It will be resolved reasonably. I agree with that. I continue to persist in my feeling that Trump is going to push it as far as he can possibly push it and then probably arrive at a reasonable sort of a solution. So that's what I think.

EICHER: You know, you've read all the Presidential books, and there's the public rhetoric and the back channel conversations. You know, you had these politicians who spoke so kindly, out in public and then behind closed doors, it's like this hardcore thing. It's almost like we're saying, well, with Trump, all the hardcore stuff is public, but the nice Trump happens behind the scenes. It's a little counterintuitive.

BAKER: I think that's exactly right. I had a friend who used to say that Trump is kind of like the professional wrestlers. You know, he kind of gets up and he gives his big monologue, and then behind the scenes is a much more reasonable sort of fellow we'll see.

EICHER: Hunter Baker, WORLD Opinions commentator and political scientist. Hunter, thanks so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Oduah.

Syria

SOUND: [Pro-Kurdish protest]

We begin today in Syria, where renewed fighting is threatening a days-old ceasefire.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, commander of the U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, reached a 14-point truce Sunday. The ceasefire sought to end nearly two weeks of deadly fighting.

On Monday, Syrian forces advanced into northeast regions controlled by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. The region is also home to more than a dozen prisons holding some 9,000 Islamic State insurgents.

U.S. special envoy Tom Barrack called the agreement a pivotal effort in uniting Syria.

But fighting between both sides ticked up Monday as government troops entered the town of Shaddadi, where several prisoners escaped. Both sides blamed the other for the escape.

The SDF reported fighting near another prison holding insurgents in Raqqa.

Shivan Ibrahim is a Kurdish researcher.

IBRAHIM: [ARABIC] We should view the agreement as a very good initial framework that can develop, but it requires compromise from every party. We need to think about how to protect Syrian identity, and the Syrian authorities also need to think about how to protect Kurdish identity.

He says the agreement should be considered an initial framework, but more effort needs to go into protecting both Syrian and Kurdish identities.

The Sunday truce also sought to integrate SDF fighters into state institutions.

Japan nuclear plant

SOUND: [Protesters chanting]

Over in Japan, protesters chanted outside the electric company headquarters in Tokyo to oppose the reopening of the world’s biggest nuclear plant.

Local lawmakers approved the reopening of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in a Monday vote.

Japan shut down Kashiwazaki-Kariwa and 53 other nuclear reactors in 2011. That’s when an earthquake and tsunami hit Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Since then, Japan has gradually restarted several nuclear reactors that were shut down after the disaster.

Masashi Goto, one of the protesters, worked as a nuclear plant engineer.

GOTO: After the Fukushima accident, there's a lot that could be said, but I've come to think that nuclear power plants themselves are fundamentally unworkable, technically speaking. No matter what you do, you can't ensure safety.

He says he has come to realize that nuclear plants are unworkable because they’re inherently unsafe.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa can generate enough energy to power a few million homes.

Spain crash

Next to southern Spain, where authorities say they have found a section of broken track that may be related to Sunday’s deadly high speed train crash.

PUENTE: [Speaking Spanish]

Spanish transportation minister Oscar Puente told Spanish television channel Cadena SER Tuesday that investigators still must determine whether the broken track was a cause or a consequence of the accident.

The crash killed at least 41 people and injured more than 120 others. It happened Sunday evening when one train derailed onto neighboring tracks and slammed into an oncoming train.

Emergency workers are still removing the twisted metal train cars from the scene, and expect to recover more victims.

Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the crash site on Tuesday, as the country observes three days of mourning. Flags flew at half-staff across the country, and both the Spanish and European flags were lowered at the EU Parliament in Brussels.

PUENTE: [Speaking Spanish]

Puente earlier called the crash “extremely strange,” as the stretch of track where the crash occurred was flat. Railway authorities also confirmed both trains were traveling under the maximum speed limit. The section had been renovated last May, and the train that derailed was less than 4 years old.

Spain has Europe’s largest high-speed rail network with about 2000 miles of track built for trains, moving at speeds up to 150 miles per hour. Train services between Madrid and the southern region of Andalusia remain cancelled, causing major travel disruptions.

Uganda election

SOUND: [Supporters cheering]

We close today in the East African nation of Uganda, where some supporters celebrated as President Yoweri Museveni clinched his seventh term in office.

The 81-year-old’s victory wraps up a troubled electoral process.

Authorities blocked internet access two days before the vote, saying the move would prevent misinformation.

Police officers were also stationed across the capital city of Kampala over fears of demonstrations seen in neighboring nations like Tanzania and Kenya.

The opposition leader, known as Bobi Wine, rejected the election result, adding that he remains in hiding after security forces raided his home.

WINE: We want to call upon the people of Uganda to non-violently protest and reject any effort to subvert their voice, and demand that the rightful results are announced.

Many Ugandans still praise Museveni for bringing peace and economic progress to the country after independence.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: British inventor Michael Wallhead says his Guinness World Record project is, well, let’s let him describe it..

WALLHEAD: Literally the most rubbish project I’ve worked on to date.

Literal rubbish. It’s a Wheelie Bin—what the Brits call vertical garbage cans you roll out to the curb each week—but this thing, this is tricked out.

SOUND: [Racing]

He calls his orange bin “The General Waste”--named after the car of a similar shade from TV show The Dukes of Hazzard. He says he spent about $900 bucks souping it up: adding an engine, go-kart wheels, a rear axle, chassis, until the General was race-ready.

ANNOUNCER: He’s done ’im! He’s done ’im! He’s done ’im! The wheelie bin takes the win!

He whizzed past the previous record holder and took the title at 55 miles per hour, but he says he’s gotten up it to 66. Now he’s shooting for 80. This is clearly a guy who can’t drive 55. If you know, you know.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 21st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: identical faces but contrary politics.

MAST: A nationwide debate over redistricting hit home recently for one family in Indianapolis. And social media drew attention to some surprises. WORLD’s Carolina Lumetta has the story.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: In December, an Indiana House panel heard contentious arguments on statewide redistricting before the 2026 midterm elections. Indianapolis City-Councilor Nick Roberts took to the floor:

NICK: For the first time as a councilor, I’m coming to speak about this bill as one against it, for a lot of obvious reasons.

The 25-year-old Democrat is one of the youngest elected officials in the state. Later that day observers were surprised the blond-haired young man wearing a red tie appeared at the podium again. This time to say something completely opposite:

NATHAN: I’m a lifelong Hoosier, and I’m a deeply concerned citizen. I’m 100% in favor of the new congressional maps. And I think Republican politicians need to take a strong stand on this issue to add fairness and deliver for President Trump and everyday Hoosiers

So Nick posted a video on social media to explain:

NICK: So my identical twin brother Nate has recently decided to get involved in Republican politics. And yes, I promise this is real and not a joke.

Nick is a Democrat and local politician. Nate is a staunch conservative and has founded a statewide nonprofit to oppose mass immigration. The brothers say they’re best friends.

NICK: I would say partially he and I are just, like, I am a very chill person. My brother, not as much, he can be a little more of a rabble rouser, but in general,

NATHAN: No, what? no!

NICK: I get along with pretty much everybody and okay, you have to agree with that, you don't get along with everybody as well as I do.

The twins disagree on pretty much everything. Nate supports the president’s tariffs, and Nick thinks Republican policies hurt the working class. Nick is an atheist, and Nate, a Lutheran. They started watching videos about politics on YouTube around the same time–as young teenagers. And then their viewpoints diverged. Here’s Nate:

NATHAN: I've been kind of Republican conservative really ever since then. I never really had a phase of anything different. The moment Trump came down the golden escalators in 2016, I fell in love as the saying goes.

Nick had a different reaction:

NICK: When Trump went down the golden escalator, I was like, man, this guy's crazy. Who'd ever vote for him?

You might think the holidays get tense in the Roberts household. But Nick and Nate say things stay civil. Polite, even.

NICK: Well, I would say, go ahead. No, go ahead.

NATHAN: Would say probably... No, no, you can go ahead. Go ahead, no,

The Roberts’ extended family spans the entire political spectrum, and they were never raised to believe politics is ultimate.

NATHAN: We've never really even had a discussion, I don't think, that's even gotten to that point of getting heated. And I think that's probably honestly more of a personality thing than anything else. He is like the only person in the world that can genuinely make me boil with rage, and it's always about dumb stuff, like especially when in high school was stuff like chores, but it's like never politics.

The twins have had to figure out how to keep the peace–they live in the same house in Indianapolis. In November, an anonymous caller made a false police report sending squads to the home. It’s an illegal practice called swatting. And it coincided with the week that Nick publicly opposed redistricting. He said he blames President Trump for politically-motivated violence.

NICK: I try to lead with empathy and respect from my vantage point as a local elected official. But I hate to say it, until we have a president who is really going to value respectful dialogue and being kind to others, it's going to be very hard to see it go down.

But Nate says he’s seen the same danger from Democrats, especially after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated last year.

NATHAN: I've gotten so many death threats on my Twitter account through DMs of people just sending the picture of Charlie Kirk and being like, "you're next."

One thing both brothers agree on: something must be done to tone down political rhetoric, especially online. For his official government accounts, Nick says he tries to keep the tone non-confrontational. Nate adds that seeing the humanity in political opponents is essential.

NATHAN: You almost never see me personally attack anybody. I never get down talking about these people are evil, all this stuff. I think I'm pretty kind of policy-driven and all that stuff. So I think more people should look at it like that. They should stop assuming that the other side is fundamentally evil and they should probably assume the best of intentions of the people that they disagree with.

When the brothers do talk issues, they keep it respectful:

NICK: There's always been that sense of camaraderie and that even if we disagree, we're still family.

Family that keeps the relationship the priority over their politics.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Accents can be mocked, exaggerated, or smoothed away—but they also tell a story.

By some counts, there are dozens of distinct ways of speaking in this country. And WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney reflects on the Southern drawl and what our voices say about who we are.

My father was born in Mississippi and grew up in rural Alabama between two wars. During the second of those wars, in which he served as an MP, he was first stationed in Wheaton, Illinois – the coldest he’d ever been in his life. But one advantage of the frozen north was that he had no trouble getting dates. Daddy was an attractive man, but it wasn’t that. As he put it, “The gulls loved to heah me tauk.”

I grew up heahin’ him tauk, and occasionally had to ask him to clarify. By then he and his whole family had settled in Dallas, Texas. At get-togethers, such as Thanksgivin’, the air swelled with lazy “r’s” and drawun-out vowels. I can still hear my grandmother saying, “Oh, I wish you would look!” at a tasty spread or a sparkling new appliance. As for me, in her opinion I was “The smahtest gull in the wuhld” – probably for no other reason than I was named for her. (That’s what for the “B” stands for: Bess.)

It’s an easy accent to imitate, but hard to do well. English actors Vivian Leigh and Leslie Howard laid it on thick in Gone with the Wind:

AUDIO: But you love me! / How could I help loving you? You have all the passion for life that I lack.

… and more recently Daniel Craig as the celebrated detective Benoit Blanc.

AUDIO: A little bird has told me you have a regurgitative reaction to mistruthin'.

Craig’s southern is a caricature, but it does recall my Alabama relatives. With some nostalgia, for even as a teenager I recognized the old deep-south drawl was dying out, and I was going to miss it.

I’m not the only one. Writing in The Atlantic, Annie Joy Williams laments “The Last Days of the Southern Drawl” she remembers from her Tennessee childhood. Shifting migration patterns have poured clipped northern consonants and nasal midwestern vowels and west-coast upward inflections into the southern melting pot. It can work both ways: when one of my Texas cousins moved to California in the 70’s she was mocked for “fixin’ to leave, y’all.” Now, “y’all” as a plural pronoun has conquered the nation. (Unlike the Ozarks variation “y’uns,” which is rapidly dropping out of my Missouri in-laws’ lingo.)

In the movies and TV a southern accent often signals an ignorant or bigoted person. It’s true the region held on to a reactionary – and frankly, racist - posture much longer than it should have. But any strong accent, whether Charleston or Brooklyn or Valley Girl, speaks of a particular home and place and family. We can’t control these factors, but we can make the best of them.

As Paul preached in Acts 17, it’s God who made all nations from one man and determined each person’s time and dwelling place and cultural heritage. I suspect he enjoys the variations. In C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, Dr. Elwin Ransom observes (no doubt in cultured Oxford tones), “He didn’t make two blades of grass the same: how much less two saints, two nations, two angels?” Variety is more than the spice of life; it’s also color and glory. In heaven we will all praise him in the same language, but each in our way – and maybe even in our own accent.

I’m Janie Bess Cheaney.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: Pro-life priorities leading up to the 2026 midterms. We have a report. And, the challenges in prosecuting fraud in Minnesota. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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 law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul;
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;
the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever;
the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.” —Psalm 19:7-10

Verses 7-10 of Psalm 19. Go now in grace and peace.

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