The World and Everything in It: January 23, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today—the 53rd annual March for Life in Washington.

We’ll talk abortion-politics and more with John Stonestreet on Culture Friday.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today—

LADY CATERHAM: In my experience, people who go looking for trouble usually find it.

WORLD film reviewer Collin Garbarino with a new film—and a classic.

Later, music critic Arsenio Orteza on a poet, a composer, and a partnership decades in the making.

BROWN: It’s Friday, January 23rd. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Board of peace » President Trump unveiled the new Board of Peace for the Gaza Strip on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

It will help oversee the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and guide Gaza’s future and reconstruction.

TRUMP:  There's tremendous potential with the United Nations, and I think the combination of the Board of Peace with the kind of people we have here, coupled with the United Nations can be, you know, something very, very unique for the world.

Trump says 59 countries have signed on, but only about 20 countries were physically represented.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio remarked:

RUBIO:  Countries of different backgrounds from different parts of the world. Majority Christian, some majority, uh, Muslim, others who've come together in time. In fact, former adversaries who have joined here as part of this board of peace.

Many close U.S. allies have yet to join.

Some countries say they support the ceasefire but have concerns about the board’s scope and how it would interact with the United Nations.

U.S. officials say additional nations may still join after finishing internal reviews.

Greenland update » President Trump says the U.S. is negotiating a deal that would give American forces broad access to Greenland as part of a new Arctic security framework.

TRUMP:  It's really, uh, being negotiated now, the details of it, but essentially it's total access. It's uh, uh, there's no end, there's no time limit.

He says the deal does not require Denmark to give up sovereignty over the island. And nevertheless, he’s satisfied with the arrangement, saying it was enough to cancel his threatened tariffs on eight European countries.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says the plan would mean allies working together more closely on Arctic security.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen says details are still being worked out.

NIELSEN:  We are ready to cooperate more in economics, in in other areas, but that's something we have to talk about in mutual respect.

Trump says the agreement would tie Greenland into the Golden Dome missile defense system and expand U.S. and allied military activity in the Arctic.

Ukraine: Trump-Zelenskyy » Also in Davos Thursday President Trump met with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump said the talks were “good,” and both leaders said they want a path to peace.

Zelenskyy used his Davos speech to challenge Europe. He said European leaders are moving too slowly and relying too much on Washington, even as Russia keeps attacking Ukraine.

ZELENSKYY: Europe looks lost, trying to convince the US President to change and turning a blind eye to Russian atrocities. Europe says almost nothing. America says nothing.

EU officials pushed back, insisting they are deeply involved.

On Thursday, Russian strikes hit towns in Ukraine’s southeast. Regional officials said one person was killed and others were hurt.

Next, the focus shifts from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates.

Zelenskyy says U.S., Ukrainian, and Russian national security advisers are set for two days of trilateral meetings starting today.

Trump’s team was also expected to meet with Russian leaderVladimir Putin.

Ice storm » A powerful winter storm is barreling across the United States and could hit areas from Texas all the way to New England this weekend.

Forecasters warn this system could bring heavy snow, ice and dangerously cold air to more than 200 million people. Ice is expected first in the South and Plains

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott:

ABBOTT:  Uh, because of the severity of this storm, uh, right now I am making a, a disaster declaration, uh, covering 134 counties across the state of Texas to make sure that, uh, every possible resource, uh, can be made available … to them so they can respond quicker, faster, and better.

Officials have closed schools and cancelled events from Texas to Georgia ahead of the storm.

Snow is expected to build in the Midwest and Northeast later in the weekend.

Jack Smith » Former Special Counsel Jack Smith faced sharp questioning Thursday during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, defending his handling of investigations involving then-former President Trump.

Smith told lawmakers he has no regrets.

SMITH: I stand by my decisions as special counsel, including the decision to bring charges against President Trump.

Smith argued the evidence supported his actions and suggested the cases could have led to convictions .. including for alleged 2020 election interference.

Republicans on the committee strongly disagreed, accusing Smith of overreach and political bias. Committee Chairman Jim Jordan:

JORDAN:  But of course we shouldn't be surprised. Democrats have been going after President Trump for 10 years, for a decade.

President Trump reacted online, calling the testimony a failure for Smith and accusing the former special counsel of lying under oath. He said Smith should face prosecution.

Uvalde police » In Texas...

JUDGE: We the jury find the defendant Adrian Gonzales not guilty.

...a jury acquitted former police officer Adrian Gonzales of charges that he failed to adequately confront a mass shooter at a Uvalde elementary school. That gunman killed 19 children and two teachers back in May of 2022.

An uncle of a 9-year-old student who died in the massacre said he wasn't happy with the outcome:

RIZZO: What message does it send out there? That if you're an officer, you can simply stand by, stand down, stand idle and not do anything and wait for everybody to be executed, killed?

But defense attorney Jason Goss told reporters his client was unfairly targeted.

GOSS: It’s not fair to do that to any officer because everybody out there was trying to do what they thought was right. And we know that there were failures, but it wasn't because they wanted to fail. It's because they were trying to do what they thought was right.

Prosecutors said Gonzales was the first officer on the scene...but it was more than an hour before law enforcement staged a counterassault to end the massacre.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A look at the 53rd annual March for Life on Culture Friday. And later, WORLD film reviewer Collin Garbarino with a new film—and a classic.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, January 23rd. 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!

John Stonestreet will be along in a moment. But before we go to him … today marks the 53rd annual March for Life … the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world. It’s going on in Washington today.

Ahead of that, our Washington producer Harrison Watters caught up with some of the state delegations from around the country … with special attention to those fighting local measures that put unborn children at risk.

SLEDGE: We're so excited to see all of your signs.

BROWN: Yesterday, a group gathered in a hotel conference room nearby … to strategize about defeating abortion legislation in their home states.

MIZE: Virginia is going to be a real challenge for us.

John Mize is CEO of Americans United for Life. A-U-L fights for passage of pro-life legislation and defeat of pro-abortion measures.

This November, voters in Nevada and Virginia will decide whether to make abortion a constitutional right in those states.

Nevada would allow abortion up to viability. Virginia could join nine other states and the District of Columbia to remove virtually all limits on abortion up to the moment of birth.

MIZE : The other side is not being incremental in their approach. With the government in Virginia right now, the new governor, and the the General Assembly, they are all in just about on every different un-life affirming, high tax, taxing, you name it. They're they're overreaching, and that could potentially bite them come November when we have a ballot amendment.

EICHER: Missouri voters this fall will take a second look at a 20-24 state constitutional amendment that established a fundamental right to reproductive freedom …

It had the effect of pulling the legal rug from underneath nearly every pro-life law approved in Missouri.

EBEN FOWLER: We went from essentially a pro-life state to a not pro-life state because of the 2024 amendment three.

BROWN: That’s Eben Fowler … a pro-lifer from Kansas City … in D.C. with his wife for today’s march. After the pro-abortion amendment passed in Missouri, Planned Parenthood sued the state, arguing that laws setting medical standards for surgical abortions are an unconstitutional burden. That case was in a Kansas City court this week, and Fowler was paying close attention.

FOWLER: My prediction is that this judge will probably keep some of the regulations. She will also probably get rid of some of the regulations. So they’re trying to chip away at it.

EICHER: He’s hopeful voters will repeal the pro-abortion amendment and replace it. The proposed new measure is a compromise, allowing abortion for rape, incest, or life of the mother.

FOWLER: If amendment three passes…the new amendment three…we will be a 98% pro life state, I'll take that, because if we lose, then we will be where we are now, probably with fewer regulations because of this case that's going on.

But even with state issues on their mind, pro-lifers have national objectives today, too. They hope to convince Congress and the White House to stand by the pro-life cause. Mize of Americans United for Life told WORLD job one is defending the so-called Hyde Amendment that bars federal funding of abortions.

MIZE: And then the second is they've got to accelerate the study on mifepristone to reimplement the safety measures to keep them safe. And so we're holding them to account in that regard, while praising them for the work that they're currently doing.

Let’s bring in John Stonestreet now, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John you heard that report and I want to mention something we had yesterday … a report by Lauren Canterberry … some concern among pro-lifers that the White House is really pulling back from the issue … fearing it’s a political loser and may contribute to losing control of Congress.

So I’ll flip the question around and say, what if the political people in the administration are right, what if pro-life is a net negative at the polls. Is it a smart move to just acknowledge the reality … or do you stick by your guns and say, “Look, I’m pro life, and I can’t worry about your political judgments”?

STONESTREET: Well, you have to stick by your guns. I mean, in terms of what can be politically accomplished, that’s just the question of what’s possible, and many people have defined politics that way.

But then to actually not be pro-life, to be pro-abortion by making a generic version of mifepristone more widely available and reinforcing FDA shortcuts and by restoring funding to Planned Parenthood, there’s not a strategic level to this.

I mean, listen, the president was always transactional on the issue of life. He had a few moments in his first term, in particular, where he was very out front and vocal and articulate even about why life should be protected. Certainly, J.D. Vance has been more so that way as a vice president.

But I don’t know that anyone’s ever believed, or should have believed that, you know, there was a personal level of commitment from the president. And we certainly had no reason to believe that from someone like RFK, who’s driving many of these decisions. Clearly, his priorities lie elsewhere.

This isn’t the first time, by the way, that we’ve been told that to be pro-life is kind of a political disability. That, of course, happened all the way through the ’90s, and we didn’t allow it to come off the docket of the conservative platform.

Trump’s presidency ends soon, and we’re going to have another candidate, and that candidate is going to support another platform. And we don’t think, as President Trump has said repeatedly, that the real success here is overturning Roe. We think, and the goal has always been, that abortion is both illegal and unthinkable.

You know, as Ryan Anderson said, I think very well, when the Dobbs decision came out, this is not the end of the pro-life movement, or even the beginning of the end. It’s the end of the beginning. And now we go on to step two, and it goes on.

So I think it has to be called out. I don’t think we should think that there’s some sort of strategy or commitment here that the president himself hasn’t owned up to.

I mean, that’s the good thing about President Trump. You know exactly what he believes. You know exactly what he’s going to fight for. He may change his mind, but if he does, he’ll tell you about it, right?

So we know this, and the movement now has to stay committed. It’s got to be committed at the state level. And on the federal level we have to make sure that the only party that we’ve had any sort of alliance with in the last 30 years—50 years, really—is still on our side, because that would be a real big loss, if not

EICHER: Let’s shift gears. Yesterday … Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the FBI to arrest three of the ringleaders responsible for the disruption of church services last weekend in the Twin Cities … in Minnesota: Nekima Levy Armstrong, Chauntyll Louisa Allen, and William Kelly. Kelly is a frequent flyer. He’s evidently able to shuttle between Minnesota and Washington, DC. He’s a regular disruptor at Christ Church in DC, but was one of the most aggressive ones you saw at the disruption up in St. Paul. He posted a video of himself taunting the A-G, saying come get me Pam Bondi … to which she replied simply OK, followed by a green check mark.

But John, I want to hear you on this church disruption, seemingly this new low that we’ve hit … and I want to ask, if you’d been present at that worship service … what would you have hoped you’d done … especially in the face of a guy like Kelly screaming at you, cursing at you, saying you’re a fake Christian because you disagree with him on illegal immigration.

STONESTREET: Well, listen, I don’t think we have to worry about what a clear pagan, non-Christian activist has to say about what Jesus would have done, or what Christians should do, any more than we should care when Whoopi Goldberg or the other members of The View do it.

To ask what I hope I would have done, as much of what I saw the church members did, which is, first and foremost, protect the children. And I think that has to be the number one priority.

And then I appreciate the pastor being firm, being clear, but also wanting to avoid any sort of escalating violence as it goes along.

Listen, we are in a new place, and I don’t think we should skip over that too quickly. This is a real issue.

I appreciated an observation Scott Jennings made on CNN the other night to a group of fellow panelists who were downplaying this as being no big deal by saying, “Look, you might remember, just a few months ago, there was a shooter that came in and targeted children at a Minnesota church.”

So you can really forgive a group of Minnesota churchgoers for maybe being a little bit on edge.

But what I think that means is that we’re in a moment—the freedom of speech, like the freedom of religion, something we’ve discussed here many times, has limits. And the freedom of speech is being claimed by these protesters actually interfered with the freedom of assembly and the freedom of religion.

And the idea here is that the freedom of religion has been often called our first freedom, not only because it’s found in the First Amendment, but because from it, as Chuck Colson would say, all the other freedoms go.

And we’re now at a place where we have to really be serious, because this is a fear-inducing act of emotional terrorism that took place, and the goal of that is to silence people. The goal of that is to inflict fear.

I was in South Korea last week. The government there has jailed a pastor on trumped-up charges, held him without bond, and he faces trial. Now whatever they decide in the end, the whole point is intimidation.

What the state of Colorado did to Jack Phillips, the point was intimidation.

The question is, is this government going to allow this kind of intimidation to stand, because it has a chilling effect on people’s willingness to exercise the freedom of religion?

Certainly, the high courts have been very clear on protecting freedom of religion and how that connects to speech and how that connects to association. But the process—it has been the punishment—for folks like Jack Phillips, from the incident to the resolution, has taken a long time.

Here we have an incident that has had a chilling effect on whether people will have the willingness to express it, and you don’t want that silence. You don’t want that chilled in America.

And so I think it is a critical moment. I think it matters now what the state is going to do on behalf of people of faith. They should not interfere, but they should make sure that interference doesn’t happen, especially when done in a planned, systemic way here.

BROWN: That's true. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, I was a little bit hesitant about whether John, you wanted to go here, even if I wanted to go here, because, you know, I grew up in an era where grandmamas and Sunday school teachers had at least two pictures hanging on the walls. And one was Jesus, and one was Martin Luther King Jr. So I’m a little nervous right now.

But anyway, this week we observed, as a nation, MLK Day. But more and more, I am reading and hearing pushback from the younger generations. This young lady, Sarah Wilder, for instance, said younger generations are bristling against holidays like MLK Day. And then this conservative commentator, Chad Jackson, making some bold, pointed statements about King, what he stood for, etc.

But I want to go back to Wilder. She says she doesn’t want to leave us with the impression that “noble movements cannot be led by complicated or even immoral men.” But she points to something else that goes beyond King’s flaws and his indiscretions. She writes, “MLK Day represents the de facto wokism which infects both the right and the left, rewriting our history into a basic story of oppression and hate vs. freedom and liberalism.”

She goes on to say “the conservative establishment is willing to overlook a whole host of the most leftist positions because their opponents may call them racist for opposing a universally-beloved character like King.”

Does she make a valid point? And if so, how do you think discussions like this will affect future MLK observances?

STONESTREET: I think there’s a completely valid point in how we talk about our heroes, and Martin Luther King Jr. is a prime example of that.

Here’s someone who was facing injustice, facing oppression, and doing it in a way that stood up for the idea of the image of God, based it on natural law, and made some very compelling arguments that are very important and very true.

And yet was a flawed man, both in his personal conduct—and that’s really saying it lightly—and also in many of his positions.

But I think where the problem lies here is in allowing the de facto wokeism to hijack the MLK legacy. That’s really the problem.

Just because the wokeism has hijacked history into a basic story of oppression and oppressor, I agree with that, but we shouldn’t then allow that to reframe what was actual oppression taking place and what were actual movements of liberation that the Civil Rights Movement accomplished.

While at the same time talking about the flaws when it’s appropriate and how it’s appropriate.

In other words, we call balls and strikes, and we do that with our heroes, and we do that with others.

I think it would be a real loss to lose the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. to the left.

Now, that doesn’t mean he acknowledged biblical truth in every area of his life. And I think in many ways, he accepted insufficient and even heretical positions on the person and life of Jesus.

And so what do we do with that? Well, we say that out loud. We just talk about it.

You know, the issue isn’t to downplay what it is that the man and the movement actually accomplished. It’s to not allow it to be hijacked.

And let me be really clear, de facto wokeism in our culture, the critical theory mood in our culture—and I think especially the sexual version of critical theory—they don’t have arguments to make on their own, so they hijack legacies.

That’s actually the strategy. And I just don’t want to concede that to them.

I don’t want to concede a holiday. I don’t want to concede a legacy. I don’t want to concede a movement. I don’t want to concede a man.

We should not fall for that. We should not accept that.

BROWN: Saying it out loud, is that what they're doing then, these young people, these from the different younger generations? Is that what they're doing, saying it out loud?

STONESTREET: Well, maybe some of them are. I mean, I think they’re asking questions.

But I do think we have to teach them the intellectual and academic integrity and patience. And I think, by the way, that involves getting the human person right.

And critical theory gets it wrong by saying those are the people that are messing up the world, and we’re the ones that are right.

And that’s just not the way the Bible describes the human condition, and it can’t be the framework that we use to try to understand the past, the present, or the future.

BROWN: 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 23rd. 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: two very different takes on the mystery genre.

WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino reviews a new release—and a classic brought back to life.

COLLIN GARBARINO: This weekend a new movie called Mercy opens in theaters. It stars Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson and it’s set in Los Angeles in the near future. Crime is out of control, and the city has implemented a new artificial intelligence justice system for the worst offenders.

JUDGE MADDOX: Based on available evidence I’ve already judged your probability of guilt to be 97.5%.

Ferguson plays the imperious AI who acts as judge, jury, and executioner. Pratt plays a police officer who’s now at the mercy of the draconian system he once championed.

JUDGE MADDOX: Mr. Raven, how do you plead?

CHRIS RAVEN: Not guilty. I’m not guilty.

Pratt’s Officer Raven wakes up after a drunken brawl to find himself in a chair in the AI courtroom. He’s on trial for murdering his wife earlier that morning, but he can barely remember the day’s events.

JUDGE MADDOX: You may use any and all resources available to this court to provide me with evidence of your innocence. Should you be found guilty, you will be executed in precisely 90 minutes.

Those 90 minutes zip by in real time. The evidence against him looks bad. But Raven puts his police training to work, sifting through mountains of digital data looking for the real killer. In the AI courtroom, Raven has access to every cellphone record and internet connected device in the city.

JUDGE MADDOX: This is the Los Angeles Municipal Cloud. Every private citizen and organization is mandated by law to connect their devices to it.

The setup feels compelling, and the film benefits from slick visuals. Pratt spends most of the movie strapped to his chair surrounded by holograms of bodycam footage and livestreams. But these promising elements are wasted in Mercy. The crime Raven uncovers ends up relying on a string of coincidences that make the central plot preposterous. It doesn’t help that none of the characters, including Raven, are particularly sympathetic. And the movie doesn’t even say anything insightful about the ethics of AI. In the end, it just kind of shrugs and mumbles something about how both humans and AI can make mistakes if we don’t have all the facts.

Mercy is a mildly entertaining police procedural, but it’s definitely something you can wait to watch when it finds its way to streaming.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a new mystery to stream right now, you might enjoy Agatha Christie's Seven Dials on Netflix.

SOUND: [Ticking]

This three-part series, based on the mystery novel of the same name, is one of those classic English-country-house whodunnits.

After a party at the home of Lady Caterham, played by Helena Bonham Carter, one of the guests dies of an overdose of sleeping medicine. Is it an accident? Or is it murder? Lady Caterham’s inquisitive daughter Lady Eileen aims to find out.

LADY CATERHAM: If there’s one thing I learned from your dear departed father, it’s it doesn’t do to ask too many questions.

BUNDLE: And that, Ma, is the difference between you and I.

Lady Eileen, who goes by the nickname “Bundle,” is played by a fresh-faced Mia McKenna-Bruce. Bundle may have recently experienced a personal tragedy, but her irrepressible spirit propels her deeper into the mystery.

OFFICER: Miss, you can’t go in there.

BUNDLE: You’re quite mistaken, officer. I absolutely can. See?

Her investigation puts her on the trail of the secretive Seven Dials club. Along the way, she crosses paths with an enigmatic police detective played by Martin Freeman. Both of them seem to think they’re in charge of the investigation.

SUPERINTENDENT BATTLE: You’re going to do exactly the opposite of what I’ve just advised, aren’t you?

BUNDLE: I don’t know why you’d think that.

I don’t usually expect too much from Netflix originals, but I found Agatha Christie's Seven Dials to be a worthwhile adaptation. The sets and costumes were charming. The dialogue, amusing. And the performances, endearing. McKenna-Bruce’s Bundle is the epitome of a plucky heroine.

Also, there isn’t much objectionable content. The show is rated TV-14 for “fear and smoking.” It’s a murder mystery so expect to see some dead bodies lying in pools of blood, but there’s no sensuality or strong language. Seven Dials is like a more fast-paced version of those classic Masterpiece Murder series.

LADY CATERHAM: In my experience, people who go looking for trouble usually find it.

The series features a multilayered mystery. As the characters talk through the clues, most viewers will have the satisfaction of solving part of the crime before the detectives do. But in true Agatha Christie style, there’s always a twist.

Of course, Bundle and Battle wrap up the mystery, but the series concludes by leaving the door open for more of Bundle’s adventures. I’m hoping the show garners enough views that Netflix considers greenlighting a sequel.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: poetry finds its voice.

A composer and a poet put their skills to work, beginning a collaboration that’s lasted decades.

It started in 1987 when the wife of composer Paul Salerni read a poem in The New Yorker by Dana Gioia. She thought it ought to be set to music. She persuaded her husband to give it a try. He did, and a team was born.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Salerni and Gioia’s first project was a one-act opera. Their second, a song collection. Their latest is a project that blends both.

WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza asked about the project, and what makes their partnership tick.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: In 2024, WORLD magazine chose Poetry As Enchantment as one of its books of the year. It’s a collection of essays by the poet Dana Gioia. “These essays, as a whole,” wrote Micah Mattix, “offer one of the most eloquent defenses in recent memory of the power of poetry’s musicality and the art’s spiritual nature.” Gioia's awareness of “poetry’s musicality” has not been lost on contemporary composers, many of whom have set his poems to music. One of the first was Paul Salerni, who in 1987 set Gioia’s poem “Garden on the Campagna.”

MUSIC: [“Garden on the Campagna” by Alison Tupay and the Da Capo Chamber Players]

Since then, Salerni and Gioia have collaborated on three album-length projects. The first was 2010’s Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast, a one-act opera about a classical-music radio host on the eve of his station’s switch to a commercial format. The album Speaking of Love: Love Songs and Chamber Music followed seven years later, then, last year, Haunted and Other Works by Dana Gioia & Paul Salerni. It juxtaposes contemporary opera with art song. Some of it is contemplative, and some of it is playful. It’s an eclectic mix, and it made me wonder who Salerni considers his audience.

SALERNI: We want people who are committed to paying attention, who don't come with a lot of biases. I want to talk to my fellow composers because they're my colleagues, but I want to reach beyond them. I want my mother who had to get a high school equivalency degree in order to go to nursing school. I want to talk to my children when they were young. I think I started writing music that I write, both thanks to Dana's voice but also to this idea that, yes, there's a broad audience there that I really want to get to. And so, yeah, I think I'm trying to write for everybody.

A good example of how Gioia’s work takes on different dimensions when set to music is “Film Noir.” It’s a poem that cleverly tweaks and arranges clichés associated with the genre until they tell a suspenseful and compelling, if bare-bones, story. As recited by Gioia, it sounds like this:

MUSIC: [“Film Noir” by Dana Gioia]

But set to music by Salerni and sung by Jessica Bowers, it sounds like this:

MUSIC: [“Film Noir” by Jessica Bowers]

“Film Noir” is one of three stand-alone “other works” on Haunted and Other Works. The other two are “The Ballad of Jesús Ortiz,” which tells the story of Gioia’s great-grandfather, and “Prayer at Winter Solstice,” a kind of contemporary version of the Beatitudes. The main piece, though, is Haunted itself. It’s Salerni’s transformation of a 112-line blank-verse narrative poem into a 34-minute combination opera-ballet. And, like the other material on the album, it’s sung by the award-winning baritone Keith Phares.

MUSIC: [“Haunted, Scene 1: Remembering Mara” by Keith Phares]

Because the poem tells a story, it’s possible to spoil the plot by saying too much about it. But I can say that one of its main characters, just like one of the main characters in Tony Caruso’s Final Broadcast, is a ghost.

Gioia has what he calls a “metaphysical view of life.” In other words, he believes that we experience the material and the spiritual simultaneously, and that though we live in time, we have a sense of the eternal. It’s good, he says, for a writer to feel that way because it helps him to grasp life’s complexity.

GIOIA: I saw a ghost when I was young. When I was a young boy, both of my parents worked. But occasionally my aunt Felice would take me in because she had a whole bunch of kids and I just, you know, merged into the pack. And she died of cancer. And I don't know how old I was, maybe nine. And I was in my bed one night. And she came into my room. She looked at me. She put her hand on me. And then she left, and she didn't say anything. But I knew it was her, and I knew I was awake.

Gioia is a practicing Catholic and does not take the spiritual implications of such an experience lightly. He eventually described the encounter to a priest, who said that because the spirit didn’t speak, it probably wasn’t demonic. But, as far as the ghosts in his poetry goes, it’s important to him that they retain their mystery.

GIOIA: I'm trying to write a poem that awakens in my readers an increased awareness to the full realities of their own life, the possibilities of their consciousness, that I make them remember things in their past that they've forgotten. And my poems are deliberately unfinished. I leave something out of my poems. And the reader goes, ‘Well, why isn't he telling me this?’ And the reader then has to bring something from his or her own life to complete the poem.

In one sense, you could say that, in setting them to music, Salerni has already completed the pieces on Haunted and Other Works for the listener. In another sense, though, you could say that Salerni’s music has mysteries of its own, mysteries that, in overlaying Gioia’s, require even more of the listener than before. It’s a “more” that listeners will be happy to give.

MUSIC: [“Prayer at Winter Solstice” by Keith Phares]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Alright, time now to thank the crew without whom we’d have no programs this week:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Emma Eicher, Joe Rigney, Hunter Baker, Onize Oduah, Carolina Lumetta, Janie B. Cheaney, Lauren Canterberry, Josh Schumacher, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, and Arsenio Orteza.

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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 that: “… in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, ‘It is a ghost!’ and they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.’

And Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’” —Matthew 14:25–31

Walk in love this weekend as you worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ, in a Bible-believing church.

And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now, in grace and peace.

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