The World and Everything in It: July 10, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Charlie Kirk made his name arguing in public. What happens when violence answers back?

NICK EICHER, HOST: That and more today on Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

Also today:

AUDIO: It is a myth that men can make it out here alone.

The Ingalls family returns to the prairie. Today a review of a new adaptation of a family classic.

And Quest: George Grant talks with Jonathan Master on the books that shaped him.

BROWN: It’s Friday, July 10th. 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: Iran war latest » The U.S. has struck Iran for a second straight day, hitting about 90 more military targets.

That's on top of the 80-plus targets struck the night before. All of it retaliation for Iran's continued attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran fired more missiles and drones at Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and a U.S. base in Jordan.

That, after President Trump said Wednesday that the ceasefire reached last month is likely now over.

On Capitol Hill, most Republicans are backing the latest U.S. strikes. Congressman Mike Lawler sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee:

LAWLER: They continue to show themselves as unreliable partners in a negotiation. And so I think the president was right, given their actions in the Strait of Hormuz the other day, to take aggressive military actions.

Lawler says keeping the pressure on — militarily and economically — is the way to force a resolution and neutralize Iran as a threat. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott agrees:

SCOTT: President Trump is pushing Iran into the smallest corner in all of the Middle East. That's good news for global peace.

But Democrats are sounding the alarm, accusing the president of restarting a war Congress never authorized.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer says his party remains—quoting here—"united in our efforts to end this illegal war immediately and permanently."

Negotiators are still expected to resume talks aimed at a long-term peace deal, once the shooting stops.

Planned Parenthood to target GOP in midterms » Planned Parenthood is preparing for the midterms by boosting ads attacking Republican lawmakers. WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more.

HARRISON WATTERS: Last year, Republicans in Congress passed a measure in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that halted federal funding for the abortion business …for one year. That funding ban ended last week, restoring about $700 million a year in funding to Planned Parenthood. Now a super PAC affiliated with Planned Parenthood is adding to its nearly $50 million war chest, challenging House Republicans in blue states who are defending their seats. Some Republicans have floated reimposing the funding ban in a third reconciliation bill this Fall.

Planned Parenthood says it closed around 30 locations nationwide last year. While access to federal funding is restored, states still have discretion to block Medicaid funding thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last year, and more than a dozen states have done so.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters.

Some health workers in Ebola outbreak on strike » The fight against Congo's Ebola outbreak just got harder. Some of the exhausted frontline workers have walked off the job — furious over wages they say haven't been paid since the outbreak began in May.

In the hard-hit Ituri region, workers protested this week, burning tires outside a treatment center. No formal strike has been called, but some have stopped.

That threatens a response already losing ground: officials say the virus is spreading faster than they can contain it. The death toll is nearing 600, out of more than 1,700 cases — the worst start to any Ebola outbreak on record.

Missionary pilot death » An American missionary pilot is dead, and authorities across West Papua have shut down all charter flights. WORLD's Benjamin Eicher reports:

BENJAMIN EICHER: American pilot Nicholas Gosselin was shot dead by separatist rebels in Indonesia's Papua region last week.

The West Papua National Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the killing. They accused civilian pilots like Gosselin of transporting supplies and troops for the Indonesian military… and said his killing and the burning of his plane sent a message.

But the Indonesian military denied any connection to the flight.

29-year-old Gosselin hailed from Connecticut and flew for Associated Mission Aviation, a Christian ministry.

His obituary says he lived a life of serving others unconditionally.

The military says seven Papuan passengers on board Gosselin's plane were rescued by local residents.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Bonnie Tyler obituary » Singer Bonnie Tyler has died. The Welsh pop star was best known for her number one smash hit single, Total Eclipse of the Heart.

SONG: [“Total Eclipse of the Heart”]

But she scored several hits on the US and global charts, including 1984’s Holding Out for a Hero from the Footloose soundtrack.

SONG: [“Holding out for a Hero”]

Born Gaynor Hopkins, she grew up in Wales and was inspired by artists like Janis Joplin. She went on to earn three Grammy nominations.

Tyler was hospitalized in Portugal back in May for emergency surgery and placed in an induced coma. Bonnie Tyler was 75.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: John Stonestreet is here for Culture Friday.

And later, George Grant talks with Jonathan Master about the books that shaped him.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday July 10th.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Carl Trueman writes this week in WORLD Opinions about the first reported euthanasia of a child under age twelve in the Netherlands.

He argues the real question is whether a culture of assisted death can ever hold the line once it decides some lives may be intentionally ended.

John, is Trueman right? Is there any evidence anywhere the line ever holds?

STONESTREET: No, the evidence goes the other way, that it’s never held, and more and more people are included either in some loose category of autonomy, having the right to decide for “themselves,” or into the category of those who need to have us wiser, more tolerant—I’m trying to remember whatever language that Justice Kennedy used in the Obergefell decision to describe us—we need to make those answers for them.

This is what C. S. Lewis had written about when he said that the controllers—he talked about those who think they know what’s best for everyone else and have the technological capability, because we have exerted this mastery over nature. He said that when that mastery is exerted, it becomes the power of some individuals over other individuals.

But it’s even more than that. I mean, I think Carl will probably regret that he hit publish on this article just, I think, a day or two before David Virtue, who writes about global Anglicanism, talked about the Church of Canada developing liturgy for MAID, developing liturgy for MAID procedures.

Think about what a—the Book of Common Prayer is just full of applied theological wisdom and applied theology to these scenarios: weddings, births, at the time of death, facing great sickness, after death. That’s directed at all parties involved.

And basically what the Church of Canada now has done is, without any sort of statement about dignity or value, taking the words of Jesus and turning them into a de facto endorsement over the killing by medical professionals of others, has developed this “liturgy.”

It’s blasphemous. It’s something that is essentially applying a theology of death. And so when you ask, can it hold the line culturally? It can’t hold the line intellectually. It can’t hold the line practically. It can’t hold the line politically. And it can’t hold the line theologically, right? Clearly.

And so, where can it hold the line? It actually is the equivalent of putting dish soap on a slippery slope, is what it does. It just makes it way more slippery than ever before.

BROWN: I’m familiar with birth doulas…some mamas in my church have utilized the services of these advocates for expectant moms. But, I was not familiar at all with death doulas. When it comes to end of life care, death doulas are on the rise. The National End of Life Doula Alliance reports its membership has grown from 260 to more than 1,600.

The industry also got a boost from actress Nicole Kidman. Following the death of her mother, she announced she would become a doula herself.

Now, this is how one writer describes it: “a hunger for a more expansive cultural conversation around the topic of death itself.”

Now, what comes to my mind: so much emphasis on non-medical, holistic end-of-life caregiving with very little attention to helping people realize the abundant life that is available to all of us through Christ. I feel like I’m preaching here, but that abundant life through Christ, by the way, takes away the sting of death, right?

STONESTREET: Yeah. Well, it does. I mean, obviously, your worldview determines what you think about everything, and that includes death.

And that’s why, by the way, in the history of particularly the West, in which Christianity rose to such prominence and influence, there was a different way of thinking about death because there was a different way of thinking about life and human dignity and human value. And that all made sense.

I mean, there was attention paid to how Christians should both think and act in the face of death, and to do it differently. There were theologies of dying that were written and that were applied, which is what makes the story in Canada so especially egregious, but also this one, where you have the growth of an industry.

Now, of course, what values are going to drive this? I think a way of making it more humane. This is natural law poking its head through the door when you overmedicalize it and ostracize it from others.

I think part of this is probably a reaction to the number of people who died alone during COVID, for example. And you just go through, “Oh, well, this is what it should look like,” and say, “Wait, wait. It needs to be more human than this.”

And it is interesting to me that we have a segment of the church—and I’m using that term loosely if speaking about the Church of Canada—that’s part of this tradition that’s already cared and tried to bring a Christian vision to death, now actually being those who celebrate the taking of life. I mean, it’s just backwards.

And then you have a group of me-centered secularists emerging to take its place. That’s something that should be shameful.

I don’t begrudge certainly anyone from trying to enter this. We clearly have a market need. That market need, on a pure economic level, was made obvious during COVID. We don’t know how to die. We don’t know how to die together. We don’t know how to help somebody else die.

But you’re right. This will not take the place of a Christian vision, because how is death going to be treated properly if you don’t know what life is all about?

And honestly, I owe that observation to my pastor for years, who I’ve watched walk people to death in a Christian way, in the tradition of the church, and the way that the church has been doing things and should be doing things today.

But whenever you see somebody enter into this cultural space from a different worldview and this kind of work—I mean, you think about education, or if you think about disaster relief, or charity—in some ways it almost always is the case that the space has become open because Christians have abdicated that space.

I don’t know the history here altogether and the specificity that would be required to make this judgment. So I’ll acknowledge that this is somewhat a postulation. But it seems to me that this is an area left open, and the church should be the ones at the front of the line here, and have been, but have abdicated that space.

EICHER: Death is on our minds this week as the Charlie Kirk trial goes on. Some of these preliminary moves are pretty startling as you consider the evidence for the man accused of assassinating Charlie Kirk. So we’ll stay on the topic here.

The defense is doing its level best to try to keep politics out of this. Prosecutors are saying that the political motive is absolutely central to this.

Now, Charlie Kirk was killed, as we know, while doing politics in public. He was arguing and debating. He was trying to persuade. That’s how he did it. He went to college campuses and said, “Who disagrees? Bring them on up front. Let’s talk about it.”

And frankly, he was doing politics, I think, the way you want it done. But what happens to a free society when violence becomes a way of answering an argument or silencing the person making it?

STONESTREET: We are. And Charlie himself said that when the conversation stops, when the argument stops, when the debate stops, that’s when the violence begins.

And he was prophetic in that, in an eerily self-fulfilling way, which is really, really terrible.

But it’s interesting, even as this narrative has continued, because if you remember the conversation he was having specifically, it wasn’t about politics. It was about identity, what it means to be human, whether we’re created by God, and what that means.

Now, of course, you’re not wrong to call it politics because politics has become everything. We’re all political creatures.

At our recent conference, Carl Trueman quoted another writer who said, “We’re all Marxists now.” And not that we all believe in Marxism, but Marx reduced everything to economics and politics, and we reduce everything to politics.

So even something when we’re talking about anthropology, which might be a discipline of the sciences, or certainly, if you’re talking about it in a philosophical way, as a discipline of the humanities, this is actually what he’s talking about. You could say he obviously was doing some theology and biblical studies in how he’s doing it, but it’s all called politics.

And so part of it is not just about the fact that we stopped having arguments and therefore the violence begins. But that’s the inevitability when everything gets reduced down to politics or gets identified as being a political thing.

Because if everything ultimately is a political problem, then what’s needed is a political solution. And political solutions run out because political solutions are matters of pragmatism: What can I get away with? And they’re matters of power.

And what happens if you lose power? How do you regain power? And you have to have something outside of politics guiding it morally, or it’s every man for himself, or might makes right.

And I think we’re seeing so much of our experience reduced in a violent way primarily because we have enthroned politics over everything else. We’ve allowed the political distinction to become the defining aspect of our culture.

We’re thinner in the middle than we used to be. We used to have all kinds of pre-political aspects of our lives that stood in between the citizen and the state. But now there’s not a whole lot.

So all we have is politics and the manipulation of the state. And that’s an inherently volatile business because you only have a limited amount of tools at your disposal. And if you are losing, then lashing out becomes the obvious next step.

So I think it’s both of those things. It’s not just no longer having an argument. I think it’s politics sucking all the air out of the room.

BROWN: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of The BreakPoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, July 10th.

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: back to the American frontier.

It’s been more than 90 years since Laura Ingalls Wilder first introduced readers to her pioneer family. Now Netflix has launched a new adaptation of Little House on the Prairie.

EICHER: WORLD reviewer Steve Limkeman says this version captures much of the warmth that has made the books a family favorite for generations.

STEVE LIMKEMAN: After the end of the Civil War, the Ingalls family felt the Big Woods of Wisconsin were growing too crowded for them. So Ma and Pa don their pioneer spirit, pack up a covered wagon with their young girls Mary and Laura, and head southwest to the great plains of Kansas to stake their claim.

MARY & LAURA: The Ingalls are coming, hurrah, hurrah / The Ingalls are coming to Kansas now / The Ingalls are coming, hurrah, hurrah / The Ingalls are coming, hurrah.

Netflix’s first season of Little House on the Prairie adapts Laura’s beloved autobiographical novel. And a second season is already scheduled to tackle the next exciting chapter of the family’s adventures. The book series has sold more than 70 million copies in more than 100 different countries since its publication during the Great Depression. It’s a testament to the power this story has to warm the hearts of families as they relax by their hearths, dreaming of life on the American frontier.

Fans of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic book will be delighted that the show has retained the innocent, childlike curiosity and amazement of its narrator. The young Alice Halsey gives an enchanting performance as Laura.

LAURA: Ma, look! She’s an Indian doll, right? What do you think her name is? Can I keep her?

Buoyed by her father’s steady presence and his consistent optimism, Laura is determined to charm each new acquaintance she makes. She rarely fails to win over their hearts. Though Laura is brimming with wide-eyed wonder, the show doesn’t limit itself to her perspective. The adults on the Western frontier offer Pa a more sobering picture of the dangers on the prairie. After witnessing their wagon nearly capsize crossing a river, the town doctor gives this caution.

DR. TANN: I’ve seen entire families freeze to death out here, starve to death, get taken by fever, wolves, madness. It is a myth that men can make it out here alone.

In dealing with the Ingalls’ encounters with wolves, wildfire, and other perils of the wilderness, the show’s suspense is not quite as artful as the novel. However, the simple joys of the family establishing a new home on the frontier are just as wonderful as viewers might hope. The series revels in simple pleasures like singing hymns under the stars and dancing a jig as Pa plays the fiddle. The sense of peace and belonging that their neighbor, Mr. Edwards, gains through his friendship with the Ingalls creates a familiar kinship between the viewers and our kind hosts as they invite us into this chapter of their lives.

INGALLS & MR. EDWARDS: Charlie he’s a nice young man / Charlie he’s a dandy / Every time he goes to town he brings the girls some candy / I don’t want your weevily wheat / I don’t want your barley / I’ll take some flour in half an hour and bake a cake for Charlie.

The Ingalls have settled in American Indian territory, and the Osage nation plays a bigger part in this adaptation. Rather than being relegated to the role of an existential threat on the edge of civilization, the Osage are both compassionate citizens and bitter rivals for their ancestral lands. Laura’s touching friendship with an indigenous girl her own age serves as a poetic bridge between two worlds whose older generations are generally more skeptical about whether they can—or ought—to make peace with one another. After an unexpected confrontation with two young Osage men rattles the girls, Pa seeks out some measure of security from a friend.

PA: I can’t have strangers walking into my house uninvited.

MITCHELL: I think they’d say the same thing.

By dwelling on the complexities of the larger narrative of westward expansion, the show loses out on some of the intimate society of the Ingalls under the big sky. Seeing the wide world from little Laura’s perspective is what makes the book so magical, and the series suffers insofar as it departs from her limited capacity to make sense of it all. For example, we get contentious small town politics and a contrived family fallout between Pa and his father back in Wisconsin.

But the show’s tone can be best expressed in the impromptu speech that Laura gives at the first Founder’s Day celebration of the town of Independence.

LAURA: Independence isn’t about self-reliance or liberty or freedom or any of those things. It’s a place to come together.

This community-oriented adaptation is a heartwarming vision of how America was made. The frontier is open for family viewing.

I’m Steve Limkeman.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 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. It's time now for our July edition of Quest: conversations with thoughtful leaders about three books that have shaped their thinking. Not necessarily their favorite books, but the ones that have most influenced their lives and their calling.

BROWN: We’ve invited our resident logophile here at The World and Everything in It to lead the discussion. Here’s George Grant.

GEORGE GRANT: Today, I'm speaking with the author, theologian, publisher, and president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Jonathan Master.

Jonathan, I know that you live in a world of books and ideas. When did you first realize that reading could shape your life and would shape your life?

JONATHAN MASTER: I think growing up in the family I grew up in, that was always just a given. First of all, my parents were very godly, and so we were always in church, worshiping the Lord, reading our Bibles together. So there was a sense in which I knew that the scriptures were meant to influence my life. But more than that, they were just readers and they still are readers. This was part of my experience from an early age. I mean, there were, of course, moments along the way where certain books changed me and and and I sort of felt what I had already what I had already known to be true, which is books can make a huge difference.

GRANT: So probably it's gonna be really hard for you to pick just three books.

MASTER: George, this was an almost impossible task. I think if you asked me three days from now to record this same interview, I might come up with a completely different list of books. So there were books that had a massive influence on me in my teenage years that now, they don't resonate with me in the same way, but they did. And similarly there are books that I read now that are really shaping my thinking that I wouldn't have been interested in then. So some of it is just whatever moment, we’re taking the snapshot, you're gonna have a slightly different answer.

GRANT: Let's jump in to see the list that you’ve come up with. What's the first book and what was going on in your life when you encountered it?

MASTER: First book that I want to highlight is entitled Albion's Seed. And it's a history book, and it's a sort of magisterial history book, very well known by a historian David Hackett Fisher, I was introduced to it by one of my brothers. First of all, what it did for me is it helped me understand better the nation in which I lived. I mean, it is in many respects a history of the early migration patterns from England to what became America. And so I started to understand regional differences in a way that I never had. I started to understand early historical discussions about ideas like liberty in a way that I never had before. But I would even say, perhaps more than that, there's a methodology that David Hackett Fisher uses that has really helped me, a way of analyzing particular groups of people. And so I think both because of his methodology and because of his conclusions, the content of it, it really shaped and I have not outgrown that. It really shaped the way I understood myself and understood the nation in which I lived.

GRANT: I love that book and I wish we could talk about it all day, but we have two more books to discuss. So what is your second book, and how did it deepen you or widen you or shape you?

MASTER: Second book I would select is George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards called Jonathan Edwards: A Life. I had just graduated from seminary. I was starting out as a pastor, and it hit me in a number of different ways. Marsden is a clear writer. Also, it's just so well researched. It gave me a kind of a window into a different time period and a different place, but the window into the life of a man who is doing pastoral ministry. So for me, that was profoundly significant. The other thing was I think it gave me a clear vision of what a great historical biography could be. I probably read more biographical material than anything else than any other single genre. But this is just such a well-researched, well-written biography. And there are criticisms that could be leveled of the book and that have been leveled of the book, but for me it stands as a pivotal book for that stage of my life.

GRANT: Yeah, one of my favorites too. Okay. Now to your third book. How does this one add to the picture?

MASTER: Well, I labored over this one too, but I would say The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R. R. Tolkien, or you could say the whole Lord of the Rings. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to do that, but if I had to pick one, I decided I would pick the Fellowship of the Ring. I've read this book I don't know how many times. And that's one of the striking features of it. Each time I read it, at each different phase of my life, it hits me differently. I see some of the same, same things I've seen before, but I see some different things too. And I think when I look at the effect that it had on me, even from the very first reading, it opens up a three-dimensional world that is that that that shapes your thinking. And as I said, having read it since, it hits me with even greater depth.

GRANT: Okay, now tie all of these three books together. What thread connects them?

MASTER: Each of these books came to me at a moment in time when I was ready for them and and they shaped everything I read after that. So there's a sense in which these were all building block books for me. I think if I were to take a step back from my own biography and say what holds them all together, I suppose they all give insight into human experience, into the the world in which we live that that helped me understand myself better, but I think help me understand other people and the Lord's work in in ways that perhaps I I wouldn't have understood as richly.

GRANT: Jonathan Master is a reader. He's a writer. He's a publisher. He is the president of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. You can find out more about that institution at gps.edu. And if you want to see some of the books that Greenville is publishing, go to Logcollege Press.com. Jonathan, thank you.

MASTER: George, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Now it’s time to name the crew who helped with this week’s programs:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Emma Freire, Joe Rigney, Hunter Baker, Abby Johnson, Bethel McGrew, Kim Henderson, Will Hoogendyk, Lauren Smyth, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Steve Limkeman, George Grant, and Josh Goniea.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Devine, and Christina Grube.

And thanks to the guys who are up late so your program is ready early: Tech producers Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Emma Eicher is assistant producer, Lindsay Mast is Producer.

I’m Executive Producer 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 Bible says, “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” —1 Corinthians 13:9-13

Find a Bible-believing church this weekend, savor His Word, get lost in worship and love one another.

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

Go now in grace and peace.

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