The World and Everything in It: January 26, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I'm Steven Stone, a member of Highland Community Church in Highland, Illinois. We're preparing for one of our ministry projects. We provide free automotive oil changes twice a year for clients of our local food pantry. I hope you enjoyed today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday, Republicans are running away from the abortion issue, while Democrats are running toward it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll also talk immigration, church disputes breaking into the open, and the end of Sports Illustrated. John Stonestreet will be along in a few minutes.

Also today, a critical assessment of Oscar nominations for the 2023 film season.

STRAUSS: I gave him exactly what he wanted… to be remembered for Trinity. Not Hiroshima! Not Nagasaki!

And two months of Listener Feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, January 26th. 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: Ukraine aid / border talks » The White House is again stressing an urgent need for aid to Ukraine. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One:

KIRBY: Ukraine is heading into a critical few months here as winter is full on, and as spring approaches, the Russians have shown no intent to [slack] off from the drone and missile attacks. So it’s an important time.

Lawmakers are still wrangling behind closed doors over a bill that would fund more aid for Ukraine, among other things while also addressing the U.S. border security.

But a growing number of GOP lawmakers say those talks are teetering on a knife’s edge. The number two Republican in the Senate, John Thune said Thursday, “Something’s got to give here,” adding “We’re at a critical moment.”

NYC tent camp » Meantime, the impact of the border crisis is still being felt nearly 2,000 miles away in New York City.

MIGRANT: [Speaking Spanish]

One migrant heard there standing outside of a growing homeless tent camp blanketed with snow next to an overflowing city shelter. When asked how he was doing, he said, “a little cold.”

The city and state of New York have long provided a legal right to shelter, but the city says its resources have been stretched beyond the breaking point.

David Giffen is director of the Coalition for the Homeless.

GIFFEN: It’s insanity for the U.S. government to welcome people from other countries into the United States and say ‘Come in, but by the way, you can’t work.’ What are they supposed to do? People have to eat. People have to survive.

Many Democratic mayors say the answer is to provide work permits to nearly all migrants.

But Republicans say the answer is to not release thousands of migrants from the border inside the country each week before they’ve completed a legal process to enter.

William Burns/Gaza talks » CIA Director William Burns is now in Europe hoping to help negotiate another cease-fire in Gaza. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Burns is meeting with his Israeli counterpart and officials from Egypt and Qatar in a renewed push to secure the release of Hamas hostages and pause the fighting in Gaza.

Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages unless Israel effectively surrenders, ending all military operations, leaving Gaza, and releasing Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.

But negotiators are still holding out hope of freeing more hostages as part of another limited humanitarian cease-fire.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Navarro sentencing » Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro is appealing his conviction after a judge sentenced him Thursday to four months in prison.

A jury in September found Navarro guilty on two criminal counts of contempt of Congress after he refused to testify before the House January 6 committee.

He argued that he could not testify because President Trump invoked executive privilege.

Navarro’s attorney John Rowley told reporters:

ROWLEY: We've always understood that this case was going to have to be resolved at the DC circuit. We've already noted our appeal.

Navarro was also ordered to pay a nearly $10,000 dollar fine.

Biden infrastructure Wisconsin /economics report/Housing » President Biden paid a visit to the key campaign battleground state of Wisconsin on Thursday. He returned to a deteriorating bridge in the port city of Superior to say his administration is following through on an earlier promise.

BIDEN: $1 billion dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law will be used to build this new bridge — a new bridge with a modern design, wider shoulders, smoother on and off ramps.

He visited the bridge two years ago when he promoted the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Biden on Thursday announced a total of $5 billion dollars for new infrastructure projects nationwide.

The president also touted new numbers that show better-than-expected growth in the economy. It grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the final quarter of last year, according to an initial government estimate.

U.S. delegation in Taiwan » American support for Taiwan is 100 percent bipartisan.

That was the message that a group of House lawmakers delivered in person Thursday in Taipei.

Democratic Congressman Ami Bera of California:

BERA: A core principle and a core value of ours is that the future of Taiwan is up to the people of Taiwan.

And Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida applauded efforts by the Taiwanese government to bolster its military defenses against Chinese aggression.

Diaz-Balart: I am a firm believer in you know what Ronald Reagan used to say ‘peace through strength’. Nobody wants confrontations. But it’s important that Taiwan do its part to let the communist party in China know that it will not roll over.

Beijing, which claims Taiwan is Chinese property denounced the visit.

Alabama execution » The Alabama Department of Corrections made history last night carrying out the first execution by nitrogen gas in the U.S.

The state used the new method to carry out the death sentence of Kenneth Eugene Smith, convicted in 1996 for a murder-for-hire plot.

Anesthesiologist Dr. Joel Zivot:

Zivot: When he's breathing nitrogen gas, assuming that there's no leak, assuming that it all is conducted properly, there's a pretty good chance that he'll have a seizure. So if he has a seizure, then he'll stop breathing.

Advocates of the method say it is the most humane option. But critics argued there was no way to know that. They called it a violation of the Constitution’s 8th Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined requests to stop the execution.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Listener feedback for January.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 26th of January, 2024.

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 time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: January 22nd has long been an important date on the pro-life calendar. It is the anniversary of the Supreme Court abortion decision Roe vs. Wade. And that date came and went this week on Monday.

The annual March for Life is still observing it, choosing the Friday nearest the anniversary date. At WORLD we’ve historically done our Roe magazine cover in January, but we’ve moved the date to June, to remember the anniversary of the Dobbs case that reversed Roe.

Here’s why I bring this up. Because it seems like even though this year’s March for Life was well-attended and youthful, it seems like some new energy is lifting the pro-abortion cause.

Vice President Kamala Harris did a big event on January 22nd calling for a reimposition of Roe. And then the next day, she and President Biden appeared together with spouses for a raucous abortion rally. So two days of that, and making abortion the centerpiece of the re-election campaign, all the while the Republicans are running away. And I don’t mean just Nikki Haley. I mean the presumptive nominee Donald Trump. Do I appraise that right? Politically, is pro-life kind of on the run?

STONESTREET: Absolutely. And I think it is concerning what the two remaining nominees have done on this particular issue. Although I think Nikki Haley has been a little bit more policy driven and policy focused in her comments, at least in the first debate, for example, than Trump who actually needs something else to blame kind of the losses on since his last election run.

But I think even more concerned is when you see where the voters and so far in Iowa and New Hampshire come down on this, despite the fact that President Biden has been really clear, which is unusual for President Biden to be very clear, but the one thing he has been very clear on is that abortion is the centerpiece of this campaign. Now, you know, he's not just doing that - he's trying to distract against, you know, again, from the immigration issue on the southern border. And there's a reason that that's a top issue and the number one issue in Iowa, for example, which should be a top issue, there's no question about it. But given all the context of where we are right now, and kind of the history of abortion in America, for this not to be a front and center issue for voters should be really concerning.

It's going to be more challenging in the days ahead, not just because of the political realities that we're talking about. But because abortion now was becoming even more unseen, through chemical abortion. So now we're dealing with government agencies that are just turning on the spigot for unfettered mailings of abortion medications around the country. We have got no way to stop, you know, off-brand abortion medications from coming in from outside countries. So in other words, the states that have become pro-life states, and we've seen dramatic reductions in the number of surgical abortions in those states, we can't keep the mail out.

Listen, this is a real crisis. And it has a lot more to do with just who's in the White House. But we got to be somewhat pragmatic on the policy side of it, I get, and it's got to be incremental until we get to where we want but the worldview is so far off right now. And that's what's been revealed since the Dobbs decision.

EICHER: You mentioned the border. I want to dig into the illegal immigration question. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that, but it does seem like a cultural issue of sorts. The Supreme Court issued a ruling supporting the removal of the barbed-wire, razor-wire barrier, and I can understand the narrowness of the issue. Lots of conservatives were really disappointed. But how do you balance, from a Christian perspective, the issues of rule of law, nationhood, borders, that kind of thing, against welcoming the stranger, the sojourner?

STONESTREET: Yeah, well, the biblical concepts are difficult because you know, a lot of times you lift verses out of the Old Testament that had to do with the State of Israel and then you jump in to make policy today that's not legitimate, because, you know, there's a whole lot of other things that were not. I mean, all the people that are saying, the Bible says welcome the stranger. But the Bible also says go sacrifice a goat. No one's doing that, right. I mean, so it's completely inconsistent. It's a terrible hermeneutic on each way you go.

So what do you build it off of? You build it off of things that the Bible is really clear on. Number one, every human is made in the image of God and worthy of dignity and respect. Number two, people are fallen. And the critical theory mood says that some people are fallen and not others, right? And that no one would ever have nefarious purposes. That's just naive and foolish. Number three, the Bible sets up nations and even sets up nations, the existence of nations, it's after the fall, but it's before Babel, right? And even at the end of time, when we see the new heavens and new earth are still national identity represented in Revelation, chapter seven; the Bible doesn't have a problem with nations, it doesn't have a problem with borders. And then finally, the Bible sets up that the state has laws and has laws for a purpose. Right?

So look, it's not an exact science, the process should always be to make our laws more and more humane. Anytime we have a law - and I was one of that quickly that spoke out on the separation of families at the border. That's a dehumanizing practice, right? But to ignore then, that children are being carried by mules and put into trafficking on that side of the border, and then just saying, well, it just doesn't happen, or it doesn't. I mean, that's, that's inhumane. So that's the thing about being inhumane, you can be inhumane with bad laws, you can be inhumane by not having laws and recognizing the real sense of evil.

So you've got to have strong laws, or you can't have humane ones. And, you know, that's the math that has to be done. And I'm not going to give a policy prescription, but that's, that's the worldview framework of this. And you know, what's currently driving the narrative to reduce the laws is a deeper narrative of the rejection of national sovereignty of borders, of the existence of nations. And that's not humane, that's not even sensical that you can live that way, given what we know about the human condition.

BROWN: John, I think you’ll be interested in this next story involving the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina and British cleric Calvin Robinson, who is also one of our WORLD Radio commentators.

As you know, Robinson is a conservative straight-talker, unafraid to touch on hot-button cultural topics. You’d think that’s why the organizers of last weekend’s conference, hosted by the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina invited him. As I understand it, they asked him to speak broadly about critical theory. Instead he blasted feminism and female ordination. In his words ”the female priesthood is ontologically impossible.”

Not only was Robinson privately chatisted, he was not allowed to be on stage to participate in the closing panel. The first time he says he’s been canceled from an event during the event.

These kinds of public squabbles make me wonder if the body of Christ as a whole really understands what’s at stake?

STONESTREET: Well, you're right. I was really interested in this issue for a number of reasons. Number one, Father Robinson is someone that I have been very impressed by and thankful for, both as a Christian and as an Anglican. Second, Father Robinson is coming to the Colson Center National Conference at the end of May. And I promise if we have him scheduled for a panel, he will show up on that panel, even if he says some things that we disagree with, which I don't foresee, but you know, who knows?

I was also interested because, you know, really all the data was out there that Father Robinson thankfully posted a transcript of the speech and he was very clear on women's ordination, which is a divisive issue within the Anglican Church. It has to do with how the ACNA - the Anglican Church in North America - let me be clear, it has to do with how the ACNA was formed coming from multiple bodies coming, some running away from you know, pagan Episcopalianism, some running back to the prayer book from evangelicalism, there's all kinds of directions into the ACNA. I think he was falsely accused of something that he actually did. He was asked to speak on critical race theory and its kind of history and how it fits with the gospel.

You can't deal with critical race theory without dealing with critical theory - otherwise, it actually becomes kind of racist in a way. You got to deal with the that you know that this has something to do with the, you know, the overall framework of oppression and oppressed and how that reflects Marxist categories. And you know, what, there are plenty of mainline Protestant bodies as Father Robinson said, that have embraced these Marxist categories, and it's become a real problem. So I look at it and they accused him of not speaking on what he was agreed to speak on. You can't deal with this and see these as isolated issues. Otherwise, you're training a group of people to play Whack-a-Mole. It's not helpful for the formation of the clergy.

And by the way, I think they didn't like that there were implications from his line of argument for women's ordination, I hate that it went to social media. But it's, I think it's actually pointed to something that eventually you have to deal with bad ideas that have taken root in your church bodies. Otherwise this is the inevitable result. What are you going to do? Say, “Don't talk about these things.” Right? You know, I think his question was, are you asking me as someone who is a person of of color to talk about a race issue that's kind of a tokenized way of doing things, and he's smarter and more educated than that, and apparently then his critics in this case, so good for him

BROWN: For the sports fans in our audience—I know Nick is hockey—not sure of your sport of choice John. 

STONESTREET: Not hockey, basketball.

BROWN: I want to touch briefly on the end of Sports Illustrated just a few months shy of its 70th anniversary.

At the end of last year, we talked about the death of Norman Lear and how his sitcom content impacted the culture. I wonder if Sports Illustrated to print what All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude, etc were to television and the culture?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I mean, well, you're right to say it's more than just about a particular sport. It's even more about sports. No question Sports Illustrated was part of it. I mean, this that was a one of my Christmas gifts every year was an annual subscription. And then around February my, my mom would, you know, hawk the mailbox and grab the swimsuit issue and chop it all up and give me what was remaining, you know, as a good mom would. So I mean, that's my experience with it.

But you know, there, I don't fully agree, you know, with this line that we want to throw it a lot of celebrities like stay in your lane just shoot the ball and don't talk. But on an institutional level, Sports Illustrated drifted dramatically from its brand promise. And for some reason, they thought that demoralizing and dehumanizing women, the way that they had done for years, would somehow be you know, okay, if they changed the definition of woman, as opposed to the definition of demoralize. And that's what this philosophy about human nature and identity being constantly fluid and the whole narrative of oppressed and oppressor does. It makes you do dumb things and makes you think dumb thoughts and therefore do dumb things.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks so much, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, January 26th, 2024. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Oscar nominations.

On Tuesday, we found out who’s up for an Academy Award. Oftentimes there’s a disconnect between what the Academy values and what’s prized by general audiences. Is that the case this year?

Envelope, please? Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

[Oscars Theme Song]

COLLIN GARBARINO: We all have our own ideas about what makes a movie “good.” And every year, Hollywood elites put on a series of award shows to let the rest of us know which movies they think were “good” this year. But “good” can mean different things. Is this movie good like eating ice cream? Or is it good for you like eating your vegetables? Is the movie entertaining? Or is it important?

So which movies does Hollywood think were the best from last year? Here are the ten nominees for best picture in alphabetical order.

American Fiction, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, The Holdovers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives, Poor Things, and Zone of Interest.

I would guess the average American has probably only heard of two of these.

MUSIC: [Dance the Night - Dua Lipa]

Barbie was the highest grossing movie of last year, and for months pink was everywhere. Though it did get a best picture nomination, with only eight nominations overall, many people feel like this year’s cultural phenomenon got snubbed. Greta Gerwig failed to get a nomination for directing, and lead actress Margot Robbie got shut out. I didn’t care for Barbie’s humanistic subtext, but it probably should have gotten more nominations based on its originality and how well it connected with audiences. However, America Ferrera did get a nomination for best supporting actress … for delivering a painful monologue that’s probably the least entertaining part of the film. Barbie does have two nominations for best song: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” and Ryan Gosling’s power ballad “I’m Just Ken.”

MUSIC: [I’m Just Ken]

I’ve had that song stuck in my head for about six months. It’s like the “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” of 2023.

The other nominee you’ve undoubtedly heard of is Oppenheimer which debuted the same day as Barbie.

MUSIC: [Oppenheimer theme]

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic about J. Robert Oppenheimer’s creation of the atomic bomb scored the most nominations this year with 13. In addition to Best Picture, Nolan is up for directing, and Cillian Murphy who plays Oppenheimer was nominated for best actor. But the role everyone’s talking about is Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Oppenheimer’s nemesis Lewis Strauss.

STRAUSS: I gave him exactly what he wanted… to be remembered for Trinity. Not Hiroshima! Not Nagasaki!

Oppenheimer is a really good movie. It wrestles with the nature of genius and ambition, and it asks us whether we should place limits on science and what we should do once we realize we’ve already crossed the line. I’m expecting it to sweep the competition when the Oscars air on March 10th. But if you haven’t seen it yet, be warned. It’s rated R because Nolan threw in a few jarring nude scenes. Barbie and Oppenheimer were the only two best picture nominees that attracted crowds. The rest of the nominees are fairly niche films that altogether made a fifth as much money as Barbie at the box office. And more than half of that came from Martin Scorseses’ three-and-half-hour movie about the murders of the Osage Indians.

TOM: I was, uh, sent down from Washington DC to see about these murders.

ERNEST: See what about ’em?

TOM: See who’s doing it.

Not only is Killers of the Flower Moon brutally long. It’s just brutal. It’s rated R for intense violence, but it’s otherwise light on objectionable material. It’s a good movie, if you can stomach the gore, showing how greed can deceive us and cause us to call evil good. It’s up for 10 Oscars including best director and best actress for Lily Gladstone who portrayed the Osage woman at the center of the story.

MOLLIE: You talk too much.

Gladstone is the first Native American to be nominated for best actress, and most people consider her the front-runner for the award.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tends to ignore family-friendly movies. This year is no exception. Only three of the ten best picture nominees were rated PG-13. The other seven were rated R.

Besides Barbie, the other two PG-13 movies are Past Lives and Zone of Interest. Past Lives is about a Korean immigrant who reconnects with a friend from her youth and wonders about what life might have been like had she made different choices. Zone of Interest is a German-language movie about a Nazi family living next door to the notorious extermination camp Auschwitz.

Clip from Zone of Interest: [Speaking German]

You can find full reviews of both Past Lives and Zone of Interest at wng.org.

But what about the R-rated movies? Most of them achieve that rating for foul language. And it’s a shame because a few of these movies, especially The Holdovers, would be pretty good otherwise.

But there’s one movie you should avoid at all costs, despite the Academy giving it 11 nominations. Poor Things is an extravagant fable about a female version of Frankenstein’s monster who takes a trip of self discovery. But this isn’t a morality tale. It’s an “immorality” tale. I won’t describe all the iniquitous things this movie celebrates. Hollywood elites are fawning over this reprehensible film claiming it’s about female empowerment, but that supposed empowerment actually disguises the worst sort of exploitation. Some movies are like ice cream. Others like broccoli. Poor Things is cotton-candy poison.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, January 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Up next, listener feedback — two months’ worth — December and January. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s dive in. We start today with a handful of corrections:

December 14th we misidentified the government agency known by its initialism DEA. Spelled out, it’s the Drug Enforcement Administration.

BROWN: January 15th … we reported that voters in Taiwan elected the pro-democracy candidate. Of course, all the candidates are pro-democracy. We should’ve clarified that the victor in the race was the candidate most firm in opposition to China which is not pro-democracy.

EICHER: And last, we have made errors in making “chapter” delineations for the Psalms.

A listener who’s a pastor. Jeremy VanDelinder wrote this note: “Each Psalm is an individual unit, so the plural should only be used when referring to several or to the collection as a whole.” The book of Psalms, in other words. “Additionally, there are no chapters in the book [of Psalms].” So if we’re referring to the 100th Psalm, it’s simply Psalm 100.

BROWN: Now on to some listener feedback. Garrett Miller and his wife appreciate the program and are encouraged by it every day. But they were puzzled by a choice we made in this year’s obituaries on religious leaders.

GARRETT MILLER: We were surprised that Tim Keller was left off the notables list and wondered why such a great, powerful and positive voice who cared for the shepherding and also the teaching of the church locally and universally was left off.

So here’s how we choose whom to include:

In our year-end obituaries, we highlight lesser known people we didn’t cover in the program throughout the year. When Tim Keller died, we produced an entire segment honoring his life and legacy so that’s why he wasn’t included in the roundup.

EICHER: If you’d like to hear the interview we did on Keller’s legacy we’ve included a link in today’s transcript. 

https://wng.org/podcasts/seek-not-great-things-for-yourself-1684964623

Our next comment is from David Nissen of Sioux Falls SD. He was concerned by our light-hearted story of the twins born in different years: one on December 31st, and the other on January 1st. In that story we heard the parents jokingly concerned about getting only one tax deduction, but in the end the mom said her twins were “cute and healthy,” and we added, “that’s what matters.”

BROWN: David writes: “I'm not trying to be harsh, but those of us who have children who are not healthy hear words like these and what we hear is, ‘cute and healthy are most important and valued above other qualities our children have or don't have.’ The premise is false. Cute and healthy are not all that matter.”

EICHER: David of course you’re absolutely right. And of course that was not at all what we meant to say. But we can always be more careful with our words, so thank you for the challenge, and would you forgive us for a poor choice?

BROWN: Our next comment is a concern of another sort. This time regarding our December 18th History Book on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. In that story we used an AI generated male voice to speak words written by GK Chesterton.

CHESTERTON: The Christmas Carol is a happy story first because it describes an abrupt and dramatic change…

Listener Jacob Young was not impressed.

JACOB YOUNG: I just wanted to let you know that I would certainly prefer to hear a real person's voice reading quotes like that regardless of the audio quality or vocal talents of the person reading it…it's really important to me to hear a real person's voice on podcast and I imagine a lot of other listeners would feel the same way.

Our Executive Producer Paul Butler produces History Book each week. He wrote back to Jacob—assuring him that we would not use AI in this way again. Adding that in the future, if we should happen to use AI-generated voices, we will clearly identify them as such.

BROWN: And finally this morning, listener Stefan Bucek had fun with this message for Johnny and Carl after Bonnie’s feature on the 100th anniversary of Rhapsody in Blue.

STEFAN BUCEK: On the January 9th podcast. After the kicker, there was a very strange silence. The hosts introduced themselves but there was no customary music bed. I thought to myself. Well, that's weird. The guys who stay up late to get the program to us early sure must have needed their sleep because they missed that one.

But as the report which followed got started and I heard the signature clarinet glissando which opens Rhapsody in Blue. I knew what I had thought was a dreadful mistake, was intentional. What a surprise. Instead of musically clouding our minds, they determined that the only melody that would occupy our thoughts was from the genius of Gershwin. Thank you WORLD for this segment which paid proper tribute to one of my favorite American compositions. And to Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz, thanks for being so sneaky.

Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in this month. We’re grateful that you listen, and that you take the time to provide thoughtful feedback.

EICHER: And thanks to everyone who has left comments and ratings on Apple iTunes. If you have comments to share with us you can send them to editor@wng.org. And if you’re writing, why not take a moment and record your comments on your phone and send those along as well. We’ve included instructions on how to do that on our website: wng.org/podcasts

And that is our listener feedback.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, now it’s time to thank the team who helped to put the program together this week.

Mary Reichard, Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Hunter Baker, Leah Savas, Jill Nelson, Janie B. Cheaney, Carolina Lumetta, Leo Briceno, Onize Ohikere, Jeff Palomino, Brad Littlejohn, Mary Muncy, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Special thanks to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Kent Covington, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

Thanks also to our breaking news interns: Tobin Jacobson, Johanna Huebscher, and Alex Carmenaty.

And the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters. Our Senior producer is Kristen Flavin and Paul Butler is Executive producer.

Additional production assistance from Benj Eicher, Lillian Hamman, Emily Whitten, and Bekah McCallum.

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 writes, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” —Psalm 23 verses 4-6

Worship with brothers and sisters in Christ in Church this weekend, and Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.