The World and Everything in It - January 25, 2022

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Americans are having fewer babies. We’ll find out how some in the church are combatting that trend among Christians.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And the United States isn’t the only country with this problem. We’ll tell you how the birth dearth is affecting China.

Plus, audio from last week’s March for Life. 

What’s ahead for the pro-life movement post-Roe v. Wade? We’ll hear from three pro-life leaders.

And spiritual lessons from a day at the creek.

BROWN: It’s Tuesday, January 25th. 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 has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. puts 8,500 troops on heightened alert amid Russia tension » At President Biden’s direction, the Pentagon is putting about 8,500 U.S. troops on heightened alert for potential deployment to Europe.

That comes amid rising fears that Russia’s military will soon invade Ukraine.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stressed that those troops are not yet being deployed.

KIRBY: Particularly with the NATO response force, it has not been activated. It is a NATO call to make, but we have contributions to that response force, as do other nations.

NATO could activate what it calls its Response Force. That’s a multinational force totaling about 40,000 troops.

Kirby clarified that if US troops deploy to eastern Europe, they will not be going to Ukraine, which is not a NATO member.

At the White House, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the U.S. government is encouraging Americans to leave Ukraine.

PSAKI: Our recommendation is that U.S. citizens currently in Ukraine consider departing now using commercial or other privately available transportation options.

NATO leaders announced Monday that they’re sending additional ships and fighter jets to eastern Europe.

Russia has massed an estimated 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s border.

High court to hear challenge to consideration of race in college admissions » The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge that could bring an end to the practice of considering race in college admissions. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina discriminate against Asian American applicants by giving preference to other races.

The case seemingly puts affirmative action on trial and might end the practice in higher education.

Lower courts rejected the challenges, citing prior high court rulings that allowed schools to consider the race of applicants to promote diversity.

The most recent ruling came in 2016 when the justices ruled 4-to-3 against a woman who filed suit against the University of Texas.

But two of the majority justices in that decision are no longer on the court: Justices Anthony Kennedy and the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

And notably, Chief Justice John Roberts, who has served as a swing vote in some high profile cases, was among the dissenters in the 2016 decision.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

SCOTUS rejects challenge to proxy voting in U.S. House » Also on Monday, the Supreme Court turned away a challenge from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to the proxy voting system. That means lawmakers won’t actually have to be present on the House floor to cast a vote.

The House introduced proxy voting in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic. That means lawmakers can send members of their staff to the House floor to announce and cast votes in their place as heard here in a floor vote last month.

AUDIO: As the member designated by Mr. Paul Gosar from Arizona, I inform the House that Mr. Gosar will vote nay …

McCarthy argued that the Constitution requires lawmakers to be present when casting their votes.

But lower courts said the lawsuit should be dismissed because each house of Congress can set its own rules for voting.

As is typical, the high court did not explain its reasons for rejecting the challenge on Monday.

Omicron cases falling in the United States » Has the omicron wave peaked in the United States? The latest numbers suggest the answer may be yes.

President Biden’s top medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, told ABC News…

FAUCI: If the pattern follows the trend that we’re seeing in other places, such as the Northeast, I believe that you will start to see a turnaround throughout the entire country.

The omicron surge is clearly declining in some parts of the country. In others, it’s still too early to tell if the wave has peaked.

But nationwide, a rolling seven-day average now has new daily COVID-19 infections below 700,000 after peaking at more than 800,000 less than two weeks ago.

And overall hospitalizations are down slightly over the past week. COVID-related deaths also appear to be leveling off.

Globally, many health officials are cautiously optimistic that the end of the omicron wave is in sight. But the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said the world cannot let its guard down.

GHEBREYESUS: There are different scenarios for how the pandemic could play out and how the acute phase could end. But it’s dangerous to assume that omicron will be the last variant or that we are in the endgame.

Still, many health experts are hopeful that the omicron variant may have helped to increase global immunity.

Virginia school boards sue over mask-optional order » Seven school districts are suing newly sworn-in Gov. Glenn Youngkin over his executive order allowing parents to opt out of school mask mandates for their children. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has that story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The leaders of the school boards filing suit say they should have the authority to enforce safety measures for teachers and staff.

A new law passed last summer under the previous governor states Virginia school districts should follow federal health guidelines to the—quote—“maximum extent practicable.” And the CDC recommends that kids wear masks in K-12 schools regardless of vaccination status.

But Youngkin says the district should be doing more to respect the rights of parents.

After the order took effect Monday in districts that required masks, children not wearing them were asked either to sit in a different room or attend class online.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: America’s baby bust.

Plus, a parable of a parasite.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 25th of January, 2022.

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. Have you ever heard this expression?

AUDIO: [Fur babies montage]

Fur babies.

You may have heard a few weeks ago Pope Francis criticizing this notion—the idea of married couples treating pets like children instead of having children. He minced no words—in his view “fur babies” instead of babies is plain selfish.

The papal chastisement came as birth rates in many parts of the world continue to fall. In some places, they are now below replacement rate. That means, the population in those countries is shrinking.

BROWN: Pope Francis was speaking to Catholics, but it’s not just a Catholic problem. Evangelicals in the United States are also having fewer children.

WORLD’s Lauren Dunn reports on efforts to encourage more children.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Erin Davis is a Bible teacher and author of several books, including one for parents called Beyond Bath Time. But years before she wrote a book for moms, Davis didn’t plan on ever being a mom. She and her husband Jason married in their early 20s but decided not to have children because of their plans for ministry.

DAVIS: The messages of our culture drip into our systems, probably even more than we realize. I mean, I am somebody who was a follower of Jesus, who believes the Bible was the source of authority for my life, and had this idea that, you know, well, how many children I have, or if I have children at all, is not even something I need to submit to God's lordship. I've never prayed about it. I've never opened my Bible trying to decide God's will for it, I just decided, we just decided this is what we're not going to do in our case.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics , birth rates for American women in every age group fell in 2020. The overall U.S. fertility rate dropped to its lowest point ever.

In November, Pew Research released a survey showing that nearly half of childless American adults don’t think they’ll ever have children. Over half of them say they just don’t want to.

Lyman Stone is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He blamed economic issues for the waning interest in parenting.

STONE: Part of this is the follow on from the recession in 2008-09 that drove a decline in a lot of places. And in particular, it really hammered the financial resources of younger Americans. And they really never did recover. And not just younger Americans, but young people around the world. And particularly as a lot of countries have this large Baby Boomer generation. It's created a lot of difficulty in bringing up the next generation. Baby Boomers expect to work longer years, they expect their houses to appreciate greatly in value. And both of these create problems…

Stone says the greater cultural emphasis on education has also influenced the drop in birth rate, with more women choosing to get advanced degrees.

But it’s not just about economics.

Trevin Wax is the vice president for research and resource development at the North American Mission Board. He follows data on declining denominations—which includes declining birth rates.

Wax says Protestants “underestimate” how birth control has influenced society, creating what he calls a “contraceptive mentality.”

WAX: There's this understanding of freedom that takes root in the hearts of many people in a society where expressive individualism is strong, in which freedom is seen as the absence of constraints. And the challenge with a family, the challenge even with marriage in general, is that it is by nature, constraining.

Wax hasn’t tracked a trend toward intentional childlessness among evangelicals. But he says birth rates in the church do seem to be falling, likely due to men and women marrying and having children later in life.

And their smaller families may not be intentional.

Lyman Stone says that while men and women are having fewer children, the data show they aren’t wanting fewer children.

STONE: There's a huge disconnect between fertility desires and fertility outcomes. There's going to be lots of people not having children that they would like to have, because they got started too late, or they didn't find a suitable partner or they didn't feel they had enough money to provide for what they see as the needs of that child.

According to a report Stone co-authored last October, people of faith may be more likely to want to have children. Among people who regularly attend religious services, interest in having children fell by just 1 percent in the last two years. But for Americans who don’t regularly attend religious services, that interest fell by 11 percentage points.

Steve and Candice Watters got married in 1997, just a few weeks before they both turned 27. Several months later, an older couple who had mentored them asked when they would have children. The Watterses cited finances and career goals as good reasons to wait.

WATTERS: She said, “How do you know you'll still be fertile when you decide you're ready to have babies?” And I didn't have an answer for her. Nobody in my whole life had ever posed that question to me. Nobody had ever talked to me about fertility and the idea that there was a window of opportunity to have babies, and it shook me to the core.

Steve and Candice now have four children. In 2008 they wrote Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies. Today, they work to encourage young couples who may have had the same hesitations they did.

CANDICE: It's always a bad time to have children, if you take the world's advice. If you read the headlines, if you know any history, you know that it's always crisis time, there's always going to be a lot of reasons that it feels like a scary time to start a family or to have another baby.

But for Christians, those concerns shouldn’t have the last word.

STEVE: If you really do embrace an understanding of who God is, what His design is, who He is, and His ability to help, that if you don't trust Him, and you really are left with the kind of what you can do in your own strength and ability, I think it is easy for people's inertia to keep them moving in a childless direction.

Jason and Erin Davis got a new perspective on parenting after they welcomed a teenage foster son into their home. They now have four boys, ages 13 to 3.

DAVIS: The epiphany for me was that parenthood is ministry, that I didn't have to sacrifice one for the other, I didn't have to choose a life of service to Jesus or a family—that my family was an opportunity to serve Jesus, it was a mission field.

Trevin Wax says that’s a message Christians need to hear.

WAX: What I think churches can do and should do is, is everything possible to push back against the idea of freedom, that means freedom without constraints, but also to push back against the idea that is in our culture, that children are more a burden than a blessing. When it comes to fulfilling the, you know, the cultural mandate, we need to celebrate that when we see it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: falling birth rates in China.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Right, the United States isn’t the only country with a population problem. Last year, China recorded 7.5 births for every 1,000 people. That was the lowest level on record. And it was the fifth straight year that the country’s birth rate has dropped.

The Chinese government, of course, largely has itself to blame. For years it imposed strict birth limits to avoid rapid population growth and conserve resources.

But that policy is backfiring. And some say China is now facing a “demographic time bomb.”

BROWN: Well, Dean Cheng joins us now. He has studied China's defense-industrial complex for the U.S. government at the Office of Technology Assessment. He also worked in the China Studies division of the Center for Naval Analyses. He’s now at the Heritage Foundation. 

Dean, good morning!

DEAN CHENG, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: Well, government controls are certainly a big part of the reason for the falling birth rates in China, but it’s also a cultural issue, right?

CHENG: The Chinese government has used a variety of tools to try and push people to have only one child when there was a one child policy. Those policies included restricting access to education, access to medical care, there was a lot of pressure on parents—you were unpatriotic, you are not a good person, if you and your family had more than one child. All of that added up to a lot of pressure not to have children.

Now, on top of that, there were other cultural aspects that weren't so much an issue of the one child policy per se, but certainly influenced the result. For example, the Chinese culture heavily emphasizes male children. If you could only have one child, the tendency was to favor boys. What did that mean? That meant sex-based, gender-based abortion policies. It also meant giving up baby girls for adoption or simply abandoning them. And the result is in China, the combination of Chinese culture and the one child policy led to the major imbalance in today's China where you have millions of young men who will never marry simply because there aren't enough girls.

BROWN: What else is China trying to do—and what can it do—to reverse the falling birth rate?

CHENG: There are some things you can do—and the Chinese are doing this. They have legalized second children. They have now legalized third children. They are engaging in propaganda, saying it's good to have more children. But there are several problems here. The first is that—again, going back to the gender imbalance—you're simply going to have literally tens of millions of young men who are never going to find a wife.

On top of that, in the case of China, you have the reality that actually children are very expensive. I mean, they're expensive everywhere. But in China, because of multiple generations of only children, what has happened in Chinese society is massive expenditures and investments in that one child. In particular, education. One of the things that the Chinese Communist Party has cracked down on this year is private tutoring firms. So, if you have a second child and you want to give that second child all of the additional education, additional benefits, etcetera that you typically gave your only child, that is extraordinarily expensive for even a dual income family. So, what we have seen is that despite allowing second and even third children, the Chinese birth rate has dropped.

The official Chinese figures say that they kept just ahead of the death rate, so just ahead of replacement, so that the Chinese emphasize that they will stay above 1.4 billion people. But there is some reason to think that perhaps the Chinese have fiddled with their numbers, in which case we're actually already starting to see a decline in the Chinese population, simply because there aren't as many babies being born to offset the people who are dying from a variety of natural causes plus COVID.

BROWN: As we’ve just heard, China is not alone with the declining birth rate issue, but why is this a problem for China in particular?

CHENG: So why is this a problem for China? Several things. One, China's economic status, the ability to develop as much as it has, has been partly due to cheap labor. And if China's population is aging, then you have a real issue here of who is going to be making all the bobblehead dolls and all the PCs and all the washing machines.

Another aspect of this is that China, despite being the number two economy, when you look at GDP per capita, when you look at how wealthy is China, it is not that wealthy, because every dollar of increased productivity nonetheless has to be split among 1.4 billion people. China is already growing old before it can grow rich. That is going to have implications for societal and political stability. What happens when the population gets older in a system that doesn't have a social security safety net? What happens when the economy begins to slow down because you don't have as many new workers coming online? Militarily speaking, who is going to be the infantry man, the sailor, the airman in 2029? In 2039? This aging population has distinct implications for, therefore, national security, for political stability, for economic growth and for technological and other innovation.

BROWN: Well, again, birth rates have also been falling in the United States. But one major difference is that America can attract workers from all over the world, including highly skilled workers. How does China’s more closed society factor into all of this?

CHENG: As you said, the United States has the benefit of being an immigrant society, a melting pot society. We are multicultural in the best sense of that. Other people come here. They flee their homelands, in some cases, and risk everything in order to come to the United States because it is still a land of opportunity, a land where people believe that, you know, with a bit of luck, but a lot of hard work, that they will live better. And as important, their children will live better. And they can live next to an Irish family, or a Pakistani family, or a Nigerian family and all get along. The Chinese system is very different. China is, frankly, xenophobic. It is not a society that is going to say, hey, Filipinos, hey, Japanese, hey, Russians, emigrate to China. There's also the additional problems that, again, 1.4 billion people in a country the size of China, you would think, well, they could all fit there. But much of China is desert, especially in the Northwest. Or extraordinarily mountainous with the Himalayas and the Ching Hai plateau. So all of this adds up to a really major dilemma that confronts Chinese leaders in a way that is very different from those confronting, say, American leaders.

BROWN: Okay, Dean Cheng has been our guest today. Dean, thanks so much!

CHENG: Thank you for having me.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Tuesday, January 25th. 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.

Last Friday tens of thousands of Pro-Life supporters gathered in Washington, D.C. for the 49th annual March for Life. There were many memorable speakers, including Lisa Robertson of Duck Dynasty. She had an abortion as a young woman:

ROBERTSON: We can't sit back any longer and allow our future generations to be aborted. We must act now. We are closer than ever, to reversing Roe versus Wade and bringing life—the importance of every life—and the sanctity of life back to the hearts and minds of America.

Katie Shaw, a 36-year old woman with Down Syndrome stole the show:

SHAW: I am proud to be here to march to show the world that people with a disability or not need to have a chance to show the world God’s plan for them.

BROWN: Actor/director Kirk Cameron reminded the marchers of our ultimate hope.

CAMERON: Our hope is not in the White House. It's not in Congress. Our hope is not in the people who govern us or the laws that we make in this nation. Our hope is in the power of God working in the hearts of his people.

There’s been a lot of talk leading up to this year’s march that this could be the last march under Roe. If the Supreme Court upholds Mississippi’s heartbeat bill, it could be the undoing of nearly 50 years of legalized abortion in this country.

EICHER: If that happens, it’s not the end of the pro-life fight, it merely moves the battle from the federal level to the states. So how are current pro-life ministries preparing for the possible shift in focus? WORLD’s Leah Savas interviewed a handful of representatives in the days leading up to the march. Executive Producer Paul Butler brings a few highlights from her conversations.

AUDIO: [MARCH FOR LIFE 2022]

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: It was freezing cold last Friday when dozens of pro-life organizations, grassroots advocates, and tens of thousands of pro-life Americans marched through Washington D.C. The weather may have limited the number of participants, but the enthusiastic crowd gathered on the National Mall all had one thing on their minds.

Jeanne Mancini is President of March for Life:

MANCINI: On January 22nd, 1973, our country was forever changed for the worse when seven men on the United States Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade. We are hoping and praying that this year—2022—will bring a historic change for life! [applause]

For 49 years, the overarching goal of March for Life organizers has been to overturn Roe v. Wade. And for the first time since the 1990’s, there’s a glimmer of hope that it could happen. If it does, what will that mean for the pro-life movement and the march?

Thomas Glessner is president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates:

GLESSNER: I think 15 states have 'trigger laws' that state if Roe vs. Wade is ever reversed, that state will revert back to what it was before 1973.

He believes that those states without trigger laws will move quickly—one way or another.

GLESSNER: Some will probably follow the Texas lead with heartbeat bills, which essentially bans surgical abortions. Other states maybe go the Mississippi route and put a stricter limit on when abortions can happen. On the other side, other states like California, New York, Massachusetts, go the other way. And so we're going to see a greater divide than ever.

According to Glessner, that means pregnancy centers in states with stricter abortion laws will see an immediate jump in the number of women seeking assistance.

GLESSNER: …they're just gonna see a lot more women, because women won't have access to it. And so, we have always said, You need to just prepare your operations, always improve, get more resources, be more professional than ever…

But Glessner adds in states that legalize abortion, pregnancy centers will probably become the main battle front.

GLESSNER: For the centers in states like California, the battle is going to be vicious, they're going to be the central focus of the other side's ire. And they're going to have some tough political battles in those states.

Jor-El Godsey agrees.

GODSEY: I think we are as ready as we've ever been.

Godsey is President of Heartbeat International. He says that one of the pro-life movement’s greatest assets is the local pregnancy center.

GODSEY: We've been refining our abilities, increasing our services, growing ultrasound and other things, creating more opportunities to serve them as they are in these situations. So I think that the pregnancy centers are equipped for the moment and will rise to the occasion.

He believes that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe, there will undoubtedly be what he calls “a bubble of confusion”—like what happened in Texas after the recent abortion bill there. It may lead to an initial spike in women seeking abortions but pregnancy centers are in a unique position to help women understand what’s at stake:

JOREL GODSEY: We actually had 1 woman that we talked to, and she said, “Now when is the heartbeat detected?” And we explained that to her, and she said, “Oh, good…because I didn't want to have this abortion anyway.” And I suspect many others like her, the law helped her do what she really wanted to do, which was carry that child and form that family or add that child to her family.

There are a handful of pro-life groups that have been planning on Roe’s demise for years. A decade ago, some labelled them naive, or wishful thinkers. But they persisted—and they’re ready.

HAWKINS: …when we launched 15 years ago, our vision was to create a post-Roe organization…

Kristan Hawkins is President of Students for Life of America. It focuses on those most targeted by the abortion industry: young people. Hawkins says young prolife advocates are uniquely suited to step into the breach whenever the abortion battle shifts to state legislatures.

HAWKINS: So in 2019, for example, we started a 501C4 organization: Students for Live Action, to take the young people that we've been training and identify and, and getting involved because we saw the writing on the wall for a Roe, and knew that, you know, phase two of the pro-life movement was going to be beginning—meaning shifting from this one fight to reverse Roe, to this 50 state battle of moving state by state to make abortion illegal and unthinkable.

So they’ve been preparing students to go to state capitals, speak to elected officials, and go door to door in districts where candidates ignore pro-life issues or go back on their pro-life campaign promises.

AUDIO: [MARCHING THROUGH STREET]

All three pro-life leaders believe that even if Roe v. Wade is overturned in the months ahead, the annual March for Life needs to continue. National Institute of Family and Life Advocates president Thomas Glessner put it this way:

GLESSNER: Yeah, I think be definitely an emotional need for us to come together in one big family. But there will be a need to keep reminding the nation and our federal legislators here, there's still federal issues here. The the ultimate political step is to get a constitutional amendment that will provide personhood to the unborn child and therefore just take away abortion period. We're years or a lifetime away from that probably. So there'll be a need for March.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

BROWN: Our thanks to Leah Savas for sharing her recordings with us today. You can get the latest pro-life news directly in your email inbox each week. To sign up for Leah’s newsletter called “Vitals,” visit wng.org/newsletters. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, January 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Here’s commentator Whitney Williams with a warning from nature.

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: I wasn’t looking for a parable on the deceitful, destructive nature of sin when my boys and I biked to a nearby creek a few weeks back. The truth is: We just needed a reset. We’d started the day off on the wrong feet, my boys and I, and bike rides seem to be a much more effective way to restore our relationship than when I throw up my hands and scream like a goat.

AUDIO: [Whitney and kids biking]

On this particular outing, my 8-year-old led the pack, my twin 4-year-olds teetered on their training wheels in the middle, and Mama Duck brought up the rear. I showed the littles how to stand up and pump when we got to a big hill and yelled ahead to stop and wait when we got to the big road. We made sure the coast was clear, hung a right, and then parked our bikes on the bridge above the creek.

AUDIO: [Sound of creek flowing]

My eldest made his way down an incredibly steep concrete bank, while the three of us who do not have spidey skills headed to a 7-ish-foot-high retaining wall. I sat on the edge and lowered my twins down by their arms, one at a time, dropping them when they were about a foot above the ground.

AUDIO: [Sound of skipping rocks]

As the kids skipped rocks and sent sticks down the current, I noticed something in the water.

AUDIO: What is that? It’s a hair!

It wasn’t a hair, though. It was as thin as a hair, but alive and squirming. I squatted down to take a closer look and one of my sons jumped on my back to give me some love.

AUDIO: Don’t make me fall in the water … cough cough, oh, you just choked me. OK.

I decided to consult Google and what I discovered about this creature was deliciously disturbing:

AUDIO: [gasp] There it is!

Friends, I introduce to you today the parasitoid horsehair worm.

AUDIO: That is so creepy

The horror story starts when a male and female horsehair worm meet up down at the creek for a little Spring fling. Soon after, the female horsehair worm lays a long, gelatinous string of eggs, sometimes 12 to 24 inches in length. A few weeks later, the little larvae hatch and lie in wait for a hungry invertebrate to come and snatch them up. Sometimes there’s a middle man involved between the larvae and the invertebrate host, but we don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll get straight to the point.

Along comes Mr. Cricket… “Larvahuh, luhuhookin’ gooood.” And he partakes, not realizing that this tasty little nougat will eventually bore its way through his gut into his body cavity and feed on his insides. A few weeks or months later, when poor Jiminy’s just a shell of himself—essentially eaten alive—the now-adult worm compels him to seek out water and dive in. This goes totally against Jim’s survival instincts, but he’s no longer thinking straight. “Jump Jim,” the devil inside whispers, longing to make its home in the water. And Jim does—drowning almost immediately.

“Thanks for the food, Jim,” the worm says as it busts through the dead cricket’s abdomen … “Enjoyed the ride!”

If that wasn’t a warnin’ from the Lord, I’m not Whitney Williams.

AUDIO: They make the insect into like a zombie and then they BUST out of the insect’s belly!!
(Colt): If he gets on me will he control me?
(Whitney): No, I don’t think they’re dangerous to humans. … that’s gross. Wow.

AUDIO: Bye creek! See you tomorrow!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: election laws. We’ll talk about some of the new state requirements. Are they really as restrictive as critics claim?

And, proclaiming a pro-life message. We’ll tell you about efforts to strengthen and encourage pastors in the fight against aboriton.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist says, It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness by night.

Go now in grace and peace.

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