The World and Everything in It - January 6, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Teachers are leaving traditional teachers unions. Why are they defecting?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also it’s a year to the day since the attack on the nation’s capital. We’ll get an update on lawsuits related to it.

Plus, fact versus fiction with regard to a memorable moment in the Christmas narrative.

And commentator Cal Thomas on playing politics with the filibuster.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, January 6th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Omicron now accounts for 95% of new U.S. COVID-19 cases » The omicron variant now accounts for nearly all new COVID-19 infections in the United States.

Just over a week ago, the CDC estimated that omicron was behind just under 60 percent of new cases. But now…

WALENSKY: Based on CDC genomic sequencing, we now estimate that Omicron represents about 95 percent of cases in the country and Delta represents the remaining 5 percent of the cases.

CDC Director Rochelle Walenksy heard there.

Omicron is far more contagious, driving record levels of infection. The good news remains that it is also less severe.

The CDC also said Wednesday that it’s not changing the definition of “fully vaccinated” to require a booster shot. But the CDC continues to urge Americans to get both vaccinated and boosted.

Chicago teachers leave classrooms amid omicron surge » Roughly 350,000 students in the nation’s third-largest school system stayed home from school on Wednesday, unsure when they’ll return to class.

The Chicago Teachers Union voted Tuesday night to move classes online because of rising COVID cases.

But Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfood blasted the move, saying kids need to be at their desks. And district leaders called it a “walkout,” opting to cancel classes instead. That means teachers won’t be paid until they return to classrooms.

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez called the union’s decision unnecessary.

MARTINEZ: There’s no widespread issues around safety in our schools. I’ve been to our schools. Our children are wearing their masks. Why? Because they want to be there in person.

But Chicago Teachers Union President Jesse Sharkey said throughout the pandemic, the city has failed to deliver on a list of basic needs.

SHARKEY: Has failed to provide adequate staffing, adequate cleaning in the schools, has failed to provide adequate testing.

About 73 percent of union members approved the move to leave classrooms. They called for remote instruction until “cases substantially subside” or union leaders approve an agreement on safety measures.

At least 13 dead in Philadelphia public housing fire » Fire tore through public housing units in Philadelphia on Wednesday, killing at least 13 people, including seven children.

That marks the highest death toll in a single fire in the city in at least a century.

Mayor Jim Kenney…

KENNEY: This is without a doubt one of the most tragic days in our city’s history, the loss of so many people in such a tragic way.

The blaze ignited before 6:30 a.m. in a residential area of the city's Fairmount neighborhood, northwest of downtown and home to the Philadelphia Museum.

Investigators said they do not yet know the cause of the fire. But Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy said residents were not alerted to the fire in time.

MURPHY: There were four smoke detectors in that building and none of them operated.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority said the alarms had been inspected annually, and at least two had been replaced in 2020. Officials said the last inspection was in May of last year.

Boy Scouts' multi-billion-dollar abuse settlement plan misses mark » A multi-billion-dollar plan to settle sexual abuse claims against the Boy Scouts of America missed the mark this week. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: About 73 percent of the nearly 54,000 claimants voted to support the Boy Scout’s bankruptcy settlement plan. But that might not be enough.

It’s unclear exactly what level of support the plan needs in order to win court approval, but the Scouts were hoping for seventy-five percent. That is a seemingly safe benchmark under the bankruptcy code.

A judge will decide next month whether to OK the plan to settle more than 82,000 abuse claims.

Local councils, insurance companies, and multiple affiliated church groups would pitch in to a compensation fund … totaling about $2.7 billion. That would be the largest sexual abuse settlement in U.S. history!

But those representing the victims say it’s not enough. The Tort Claimants’ Committee estimated the fund nets an average of $28,000 per claim.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

At least 8 dead amid protests in Kazakhstan » At least eight people are dead and hundreds more injured amid protests and violent clashes in Kazakhstan.

AUDIO: [Sound of protests]

Protesters in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, stormed the presidential residence and the mayor's office on Wednesday … setting both buildings on fire. They’re angry about sharply rising gas prices.

Government forces responded by firing tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowds.

AUDIO: [Sound of protests]

Some reports state that police fired live rounds at intruders at the presidential palace.

The demonstrations mark a rare challenge to the ex-Soviet country's authoritarian regime. The government resigned in response to the unrest and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev vowed to take harsh measures to quell it.

He declared a two-week curfew in parts of the country.

And the government may be blocking internet access amid reports of widespread outages.

While the cost of gas has nearly doubled of late, some analysts say the unrest reflects wider discontent with the government. Kazakhstan has been ruled by one party since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: teachers quitting unions.

Plus, the hypocrisy behind the latest effort to end the filibuster.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 6th 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.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: cutting ties to a union.

The National Education Association began as the National Teachers Association in 1857—four years before the Civil War. Today, it’s the largest teachers union in the country, but its membership is shrinking.

WORLD’s Lauren Dunn explains why.

LAUREN DUNN, REPORTER: Tracy Hiebert teaches first grade in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district in Minnesota.

HIEBERT: I knew since I was in first grade, that I wanted to be a first-grade teacher, I loved my teacher. She told me that I was a leader. And I never forgot that, you know, and we were really close - she even invited me to her wedding. And I just thought that first grade was the best because I learned how to read, and I learned to do math. And I told my students that now I knew when I was your age that I wanted to grow up and be a first-grade teacher and now I am.

Hiebert joined the NEA when she took her first teaching job. She left teaching for several years to stay home with her daughters when they were young, then jumped back into teaching when all her girls were in school. But she didn’t rejoin the NEA right away.

HIEBERT: Over those years of being home, I just heard some things that you know, they supported candidates that I would never vote for because of my pro-life stance.

The NEA has donated millions of dollars to political causes in recent years, and many are not education related. In July, The Wall Street Journal published a list of business items on the 2021 NEA Convention agenda. The topics included things like teaching critical race theory and anti-racism training for teachers.

Its 2021 “Legislative Program” listed the organization’s support for what it calls “reproductive freedom without governmental intervention.” And to back that up, it’s donated money directly to Planned Parenthood.

Chester Finn is a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank.

FINN: The NEA has leaned Democratic, and that is because they have found rightly or wrongly, and with some interesting exceptions, I should add, that their interests are more often looked after by Democratic politicians. And so they make political contributions, mostly to Democrats, and others, they think will advance their interests.

Finn says one big example of the NEA showing its priorities came during school closures related to COVID-19.

FINN: We know from all kinds of data that the being kept at home and online during the pandemic has been devastatingly damaging on many fronts, to kids across the country, especially for minority kids, but all kids and not just damaging to their educational achievement, but also to in some cases, their mental health, their self discipline, their character formation, their social development, all sorts of things. And yet, both teacher unions, the NEA and the A F T, were pushing pretty hard for schools to stay closed…And that is most outrageously not in the interest of children.

Tracy Hiebert’s decision not to rejoin the NEA was costly. Since she wasn’t a member, she couldn’t take advantage of the group liability insurance. So she paid for coverage through her family’s insurance provider. But Hiebert still had to pay about three-quarters of what would have been her dues to the NEA. That’s because in many states, including Minnesota, unions could collect what was called “fair share” dues from non-union members.

Over the years, Hiebert began to worry about her liability coverage because lawsuits against teachers seemed to be more common.

HIEBERT: And so I did rejoin, because I was almost paying for the whole thing anyway, without that liability. And so I did make that decision to rejoin, but it actually weighed on me pretty heavily.

But things changed in 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public employees could not be forced to join a union or pay fair share dues. The next year, NEA membership began to drop. Since then, it’s lost 65,000 members, about 2 percent of its membership.

David Schmus is executive director of the Ohio-based Christian Educators Association International, or CEAI. It’s an alternative professional organization that also provides liability coverage. While NEA membership has declined, Schmus says CEAI’s rolls have grown by 25 percent this year.

SCHMUS: It's really becoming quite a tidal wave of people, teachers leaving unions. There's a, I think, a kind of a two-pronged approach that is driving teachers out of unions right now. One is just all the radical woke-ism, if you will, that's that teachers are experiencing, whether that's, you know, sex ed, whether that's critical race theory, whether that's the gender issues, the politicization of our, of their classrooms that they're acting against, they're seeing the unions is driving those things. And then the other thing would be the COVID vaccine issues.

Schmus says CEAI has seen its biggest growth in membership in states that used to require public employees to join unions: In Minnesota, where Tracy Hiebert teaches, CEAI membership has grown 470 percent.

Hiebert joined CEAI several years ago. She says leaving the NEA became her only viable option after she learned what her dues were supporting.

HIEBERT: Our kids are failing in reading and math. And we, when I see their notes and their agenda, and the magazines would come, you know, to my home, they're focusing on other things like, especially recently critical race theory, and, you know, which I feel like divides us, instead of unites us. I have to do what I know is right for me.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lauren Dunn.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the ramifications of the Capitol riot a year later.

One year ago today, a Capitol Police officer issued this warning to lawmakers in the House chamber.

OFFICER: Get down under your chairs if necessary, so we have folks entering the rotunda and coming down this way. So we’ll update you as soon as we can, but just be prepared. Stay calm.

BROWN: Outside, pro-Trump demonstrators protested. They believed Democrats stole the election. This just as Congress convened to certify electoral votes.

Most protesters were peaceful, but some were not. And as hundreds stormed the Capitol, five people died in the chaos.

In the 12 months since, Congress has conducted multiple investigations, including an ongoing probe by a House select committee.

REICHARD: Here now to discuss the fallout one year later is Marc Clauson. He is a professor of History and Law at Cedarville University in Ohio. Professor, good morning!

MARC CLAUSON, GUEST: Hello. How are you today?

REICHARD: Doing well and glad to have you. Well, let’s start with the criminal cases. What charges have we seen against the people involved in the riot up to this point?

CLAUSON: Well, it’s a pretty broad range as you'd probably expect. You have trespassing, trespassing on government property, you have assault, battery. In some cases you have attempted attempted murder, a whole range of charges.

REICHARD: You know I’ve seen reports about people held without charges all this time. Marc, what do you make of those reports? And how many people are we talking about if it’s true?

CLAUSON: Yeah, it's not many. It's probably three or four that we've heard reports of. Now, there could be more, but it does present a problem. And this is not the first time this has happened. But it's a bit disturbing coming from the federal government, the Justice Department, and it has happened, like I say. People can be held up to a certain time period and even beyond that time period without having formal charges made against them. And that just kind of means you keep them there in the jail or the prison until you're ready to do something. Now, in fairness, they are getting lawyers now to say something on their behalf and to go to courts to try to deal with this. And in at least one case a court has intervened in that case and said, “Look, you got to do something about this. You can't just keep people indefinitely, because we have a right to a speedy trial.” So it's an issue, but it's not a big issue at this point. But I think it could have the potential for being bigger in the future.

REICHARD: Now I know some of the defendants made pretty quick plea deals. Do you have an idea of how many people chose to plead guilty rather than go to trial? And does that tell us anything about how strong the prosecution’s cases are?

CLAUSON: Yeah, the first thing to note is there haven't been too many to make plea deals thus far. And normally that would tell you that the cases they think—at least their lawyers do—the cases against them are rather weak. And the reason they tend to be weak, in most cases, is because they've been overcharged. They're charged with something more than that actually fits their behavior. For example, if somebody trespassed and they got charged with attempted murder just for being on the property or treason or insurrection or something like that, then that's an overcharge. And you can't prove it. And the lawyers know you can't prove that. You can't convince a jury that that's the case or a judge that that's the case. So those would be the ones that you would say, “No, I don't want to plea deal.” However, on the other side of that coin, the government uses those things against people often to get them to enter into the plea deals. And you don't know with certainty what could happen. So they overcharge in order to get you to come to their side and enter into the plea deal. But there haven't been too many yet, which indicates to me that the charges in many cases have been a little too far.

REICHARD: Mm-mm. Maneuvering going on there. So that’s the criminal side of things. What about the civil cases? So far, we see, what, eight lawsuits by police officers against former President Trump. Two just filed this week. What are those legal arguments?

CLAUSON: They're obviously tort kinds of argument. Well, tort would be a civil wrong against somebody. It would be assault or something like this. Now, in this case, there's a disconnect, which makes it harder to prove, right, obviously, in court. They're making an argument that somehow or other, Donald Trump was connected to what happened to them. He caused them emotional harm, he caused them physical harm, indirectly, by the words he used. And so he can be complicit as well as the other people who are directly charged. And this is not an uncommon kind of case to bring in the civil realm. However, it's much more difficult to prove. You've got to prove that there's a direct connection between what he said—or didn't say—and what happened. And there has to be a strong direct connection. And that's very difficult to prove with the factual situations in these cases.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about the probe by the House Select Committee now. Most Republicans have charged that this is just a lot of political theater. Democrats counter that the GOP is trying to whitewash the incident. But let’s just put the political battle aside and talk nuts and bolts here. What, specifically now, is the committee investigating? What’s it looking for?

CLAUSON: Well, that's actually two questions. On the one hand, what are they investigating? On the other hand, what are they actually looking for? Now, the first question I would answer, they want to find out exactly what happened. They want to get the facts. They want to find out whether this is truly an insurrection that was planned in any way, had planning going on behind it that led to the actual breaking into the capital and so forth. Or whether it was just a spontaneous riot of some kind that really doesn't have anything to do with trying to bring the republic down or anything like that. Now, to actually get to that point, you've got to have the facts of what happened. That's what they want to do on the one level. On the other level, this is where it becomes impossible to separate out the politics from it. That committee has clearly been established by the Democratic leadership in order to find something against Donald Trump and against other conservatives, who they think may have been involved in this in some way, advisers to Trump, officials in the Trump administration, and so forth. So on the one hand, it's supposed to be a nonpartisan gathering of facts. On the other hand, it is clearly also political as any congressional committee is bound to fall into at some level. That's just impossible to escape.

REICHARD: Professor Marc Clauson with Cedarville University has been our guest. Professor, thanks so much!

CLAUSON: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Nadia Popovici had great seats for a recent NHL game between the Seattle Kraken and Vancouver Canucks. And that seemingly insignificant fact may have saved someone’s life.

Popovici was seated right behind the Canucks bench and directly behind assistant equipment manager Brian Hamilton.

She told CBC News what happened.

POPOVICI: He reached over and the back of the lapel of his jacket kind of came down, and I caught sight of his mole right in front of me.

Turns out, she’d worked in a cancer clinic. That’s why she noticed a suspicious blemish on the back of his neck that most people would never notice.

Popovici banged on the plexiglass to get Hamilton’s attention. Then she held up her phone with a message: "The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!"

HAMILTON: I didn’t know I had a mole on my neck. I didn’t know it even existed.

Well, it was a malignant melanoma. It’s now been surgically removed.

As a hearty thank you, the Kraken and Canucks presented Popivici with a $10,000 medical school scholarship.

MYRNA BROWN: A win-win-win!

REICHARD: Kinda like a hat trick in hockey, right? Or something like that.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, January 6th.

You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we thank you for joining us today.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the visit of the wise men.

Many churches around the world set aside this day each year to remember them. The wise men appear on Christmas cards, in nativity scenes, and carols. WORLD’s Paul Butler recently spoke with a Bible scholar to try to separate fact from tradition.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: For those Christians around the world who follow the church calendar, today is Epiphany.

IAN PAUL: The word comes from the Greek term meaning, “Revelation,” the presence of God. And it's in particular the revelation of what Jesus is doing…

Ian Paul is a theologian, author, and minister in the Church of England.

IAN PAUL: …An epiphany is just an early marker saying, “Look, folks, this is what is to come.” So it's a very important thing to notice.

The celebration of Epiphany on January 6th focuses primarily on the arrival of the Magi as recorded in Matthew chapter 2.

IAN PAUL: The gospel writers don't answer all the questions that we might want answering. Where do they come from? How long did it take? What time of year was it? What were their names? So what's happened is the Christian tradition is elaborated and filled in all these details.

In the process, medieval paintings, Christmas carols, and church customs have all done their part to obscure the reality of the Magi.

The opening line of T.S. Eliot’s 1927 poem The Journey Of The Magi is a case in point:

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year…

The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.”

Eliot’s account reflects our seasonal celebration of Christmas in December, but it isn’t based on any actual scholarship. One carol sings of three kings. It’s highly unlikely that so few would travel so far a distance with valuable gifts. Religious art often paints very distinct ethinic backgrounds to visually represent all the gentile nations. An appropriate vision of God’s family, but again, inaccurate in the specific. Does it matter? Ian Paul says it does.

As he teaches about these mysterious men, he begins by insisting on the Biblical term for them: Magi.

IAN PAUL: Matthew chooses his words carefully, because he hasn't got very many words to tell the story. Bible translators have to make a decision: what do they do with this word? And so one version I looked at—the ESV says—“wise men” with a little footnote. Somewhere in the Christian tradition…they've got translated as kings. And it is actually interesting that they are not kings as there's a particular significance to that. And it's really part of telling us that…Matthew simply isn't playing fast and loose with the facts. It would be quite convenient to have kings come and acknowledge Jesus as King of the Jews…And I think that's part the evidence that Matthew is actually telling his story in a way that's constrained by history.

So who were the Magi? Ian Paul says we can’t know with certainty. Matthew doesn’t say, but Paul believes they were Parthians from Persia—or modern day Iran. Historical records report that the Parthians made trouble for the Romans on the eastern edge of the Empire. This may explain one reason why the Magi’s appearance in Jerusalem was so troubling to the insecure Herod.

IAN PAUL: So, you know, Matthew tells us that when these Magi came from the east, Herod and all Jerusalem were disturbed, deeply disturbed. And the reason is that the Magi were probably a priestly class in power, they functioned as a kind of civil service. So we've got Roman sources who tell us that no one can became a king in Parthia, without the priestly class approving it. So they really did have a role as kingmakers. So it seems to me that what Matthew tells us rings very true with the political situation that we know of in the first century.

Even so, there are well known Bible critics who point to what they identify as contradictions between Matthew and Luke’s account of the nativity story.

IAN PAUL: What is very interesting, though, is if you go through the accounts, and you can actually match up all the key facts in the narrative. So for example, we note that Jesus's parents are called Mary and Joseph, Joseph is of Davidic descent. Both accounts agree that an angel has announced the forthcoming birth of Christ. Both of them agree that the conception of the child is miraculous. In both accounts the angel directs Mary and Joseph to name the child “Jesus.” Both accounts say “He’s going to be the Savior” and so on. So those are major elements of that narrative, which are a core, which agree.

One widely contested difference between Luke and Matthew centers on what Mary and Joseph do after Jesus’s circumcision and later consecration. Luke says they return to Nazareth. Matthew says they flee to Egypt. Is this a contradiction?

IAN PAUL: We need to recognize that both accounts are very compressed, and they both have particular agendas. So for Matthew, Jesus is the King of Kings. For Luke, He is the son of David who is going to suffer. So they have very different theological emphases.

In other words, Luke may simply skip over the trip to Egypt and pick up the narrative as they return to Nazareth sometime later. Ian Paul says: “Silence isn’t the same as contradiction.”

Other Bible commentators have taken a different approach: suggesting that Matthew is offering a parable—so whether it’s historically true or not doesn’t matter to them. They argue that Matthew uses the Magi to teach “Jesus is for all nations.”

IAN PAUL: There's no suggestion whatsoever within the gospel that there's a move from the historical to the parabolic and back again, I mean, when you read this, as many other scholars have said, the Gospels read, like what we would call an ancient life of Jesus. They're talking about things that actually happened.

For Paul, the historicity of the Magi—and the gospels—are critical.

IAN PAUL: Tom Wright is not alone among scholars and saying, look, the meaning of the word gospel is it's an announcement of something that's happened. It's not a pronouncement of sort of existential comfort. It's actually saying, God can make a difference in your life, because God has acted in history in the person of Jesus. And the Nativity stories are part of this.

And Ian Paul says the knowledge that God has worked in the past increases our faith that He is at work today.

IAN PAUL: In the Church of England, the Anglican tradition, we have a form of prayer, called a Collect, and it usually has a traditional form. It says, “Oh, God, who did this thing in the past, we pray in our situation, you will do it again in the present.” And it's rooting our confidence and our prayer and intercession: in what God will do, in what he has done. And in the same way that God revealed who Jesus was to these pagan astrologers, from a Gentile nation who were power players in their time—because God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus to these people. We can have confidence that we have good news to announce to all the nations.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, January 6th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s commentator Cal Thomas with another example of short sighted partisan politics.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Hypocrisy and lies from politicians are so rampant in Washington that hardly anyone pays them much attention anymore. Perhaps that’s why our country has such deep cynicism about so many things political, and distrust of our institutions is pervasive.

The latest fight on Capitol Hill is a perfect example.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set the middle of the month as his target for changing the filibuster. That’s the rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation. The one Schumer previously opposed changing.

In 2005, he claimed eliminating the filibuster would turn the country “into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules.” Of course, then it was Republicans threatening to do away with the filibuster. Schumer predicted such a move would be “doomsday for democracy.” As recently as 2017, he maintained that position. He said then, if you can’t get 60 votes “you shouldn’t change the rules.”

Democrats are likely to be the minority party after the midterm elections. Will Schumer still favor eliminating the filibuster then?

All of this brings to mind a quote from the late Groucho Marx: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them, well I have others.”

Schumer’s bid to end the filibuster is a power grab. Progressives in the Democratic Party want to federalize elections, removing states’ right to decide how to conduct their elections. Democrats frame this as a civil rights and “fairness” issue. But it’s not difficult to see their true goal: the creation of an electoral system that will allow them a permanent majority at the federal level.

The bill backed by Schumer would eliminate the voter identification requirement and allow ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted, among other changes. That will only deepen the public’s distrust of election outcomes. If we think it’s bad now with the large number of people who continue to believe, without evidence, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, wait until this monster is passed. It will only divide us further, if that’s even possible.

Fortunately, Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have stated their support for continuing the 60-vote requirement. Hopefully they’ll stick to their principles, as they did with their opposition to President Biden’s massive social spending bill.

A Wall Street Journal editorial got to the heart of Schumer’s hypocrisy and his attempt to link the disingenuously labeled “Voting Rights Act” to last year’s Capitol riot. The editorial concluded that “is like comparing criminal justice progressives to those who attacked police and property at Black Lives Matter protests last year. His aim is not to protect democracy, but to blow up Senate rules for partisan gain.”

Exactly.

I’m Cal Thomas.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: John Stonestreet joins us once again for Culture Friday.

And, Beanie Babies. Remember those? A new documentary looks into how that fuzzy fad became so extreme.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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.

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Go now in grace and peace.

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