The World and Everything in It: July 28, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. Hi, I'm Jean Manninger. And I live and worship in Los Angeles, California where I love to ride my bike along the Santa Monica bike path to the beautiful Pacific Ocean on my right, a busy Pacific Coast highway on my left, and The World and Everything in It in my ear buds. I hope you enjoy today's show. Watch out for that seagull!

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday: the Emmett Till national memorial. And, history standards: Who’s gaslighting whom?

NICK EICHER, HOST: WORLD Opinions writer Samuel Sey will join us to talk about that and more. Also today: three films on the risks and rewards of innovation.

BALSILLIE: Mike, are you familiar with the saying, perfect is the enemy of good?

LAZIRIDIS: Well, good enough is the enemy of humanity.

Plus, Listener Feedback. And how grandparenting can make a person young.

BROWN: It’s Friday, July 28th. 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: Gender hearing » At a House hearing On Capitol Hill Thursday, several witnesses testified about the dangers of the transgender social agenda.

Nineteen-year-old Chloe Cole testified:

COLE: My childhood was ruined along with thousands of detransitioners that I know through our networks. This needs to stop. Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudo-science.

She said she was confused and uncomfortable with changes in her body in early puberty … and told her parents she kind of felt like a boy.

COLE: The gender specialist I was taken to see told my parents that I needed to be put on puberty blocking drugs right away. He asked my parents a simple question, ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living transgender son?’

Then came testosterone and surgery.

Cole said she was not suicidal at the time … though, that changed after she underwent those treatments.

Clinical researcher Dr. Jennifer Bauwens testified that those who keep calling transgender procedures “life-saving” care are misleading the public.

BAUWENS: Despite years of empirical study, this claim is also not supported by the literature.

Another witness, former NCAA Division 1 swimmer Paula Scanlan, testified about being forced to share a locker room with transgender athlete Leah Thomas. When some female athletes raised concerns to school officials:

SCANLAN: We were offered psychological services to attempt to reeducated us to become comfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a male.

Democrats on the panel accused Repbulican-led states enacting protections from transgender procedures on minors and for women's sports of pursuing anti-transgender policies.

Special counsel » Special counsel Jack Smith has added new charges in the classified document case involving former President Donald Trump. He and a staffer are accused of asking an employee to erase video footage to obstruct a Justice Department probe. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher reports.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Smith filed a separate indictment against an alleged co-conspirator as well as another espionage act charge against the former president. The charges stem from the storage of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump’s lawyers met with Smith’s team in Washington on Thursday. Trump said earlier this month that he had received a notice from Smith … saying he was the target of a federal, criminal investigation related to the Capitol riots of January 6th, 2021, and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

SCOTUS pipeline » The Supreme Court has allowed construction to resume on a contested natural-gas pipeline through Virginia and West Virginia.

A federal appeals court had blocked work on the Mountain Valley Pipeline even after Congress ordered the project's approval as part of the bipartisan bill to raise the debt ceiling.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Thursday.

MCCARTHY: That’s good news and the right call for American workers and helping to make American energy independent.

Environmental groups opposed the $7-billion-dollar project.

Meloni in Washington » President Biden on Thursday welcomed Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni at the White House, her first official visit as premier.

Biden had expressed some skepticism about Meloni’s right-leaning government. But those concerns were eased by Italy’s partnership in opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Meloni affirmed the bond between the two countries.

MELONI: Our relations are historically strong. They cross governments and remain strong regardless of their political colors. We know who our friends are in times that are tough.

White House officials said talks between the leaders focused on Ukraine and China as well as the stream of migration from North Africa to Europe's southern shores.

Biden heat measures » President Biden on Thursday also announced new safety rules for workers that he said will help to keep them safe amid the heat of a particularly brutal summer.

BIDEN: I've asked acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to issue a heat hazard alert. It clarifies that workers have a federal heat related, have federal heat related protections. We should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions, and we will.

Millions of Americans are currently under excessive heat advisories from states from Arizona to New York.

GDP » The U.S. economy surprisingly accelerated to nearly two-and-a-half-percent annual growth from April through June.

Mark Hamrick is Senior Economic Analyst at Bankrate.com

HAMRICK: The economy continues really to defy the odds. We have averted a recession so far, and it really does raise the likelihood of a so-called soft landing here as we look to close out 2023.

A ‘soft landing’ meaning reining in inflation without triggering a recession. Many economists questioned whether the Federal Reserve would be able to pull that off while repeatedly raising interest rates to fight inflation.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with Samuel Sey. Plus, your Listener Feedback. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s the 28th day of July 2023. 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 Samuel Sey. He’s a blogger, podcaster, and commentator. He’s a graduate of the World Journalism Institute, and one of the newest contributors to WORLD Opinions.

Sam, good morning.

SAMUEL SEY: Good morning, sir. How are you doing?

EICHER: Well, doing great. Sam, this week President Biden established the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.

Let's listen to some tape from the White House on Tuesday,

JOE BIDEN: We should know about our country. We should know everything. The good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.That’s what great nations do and we are a great nation.

Emmett Till was just 14 years old when he was brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1955. We know it as a big story, but we wouldn’t know it but for the actions of his mother. She allowed for an open-casket funeral to allow the world to see the brutality of her son’s death.

Now, the guilty parties were able to evade civil justice, but we know now that the tragedy would fuel the Civil Rights movement.

The new Till monument will cover three sites in Chicago and Mississippi connected to Till’s life and death.

So, Sam, talk about the significance of the Till National Monument.

SEY: Yeah, you know, I mentioned Emmett Till to my mom, many years ago, and I forget what she said she was in Ghana, she was born in 59. So three years after Emmett Till, maybe she won't be happy that I mentioned her age. But she was born three years after Emmett Till's death. And I mentioned and she remembered, because in school, this is Ghana, West Africa that he learned about Emmett Till. And it was a massive, massive story. It is significant. So you mentioned how important his death or really his lynching or murder was to the Civil Rights Movement, just a few months afterward, this will explain the significance, a few months afterward, his murder was so important that in Montgomery, Alabama, a woman named of course Rosa Parks mentioned that the reason why she refused to get off of her seat on the bus is because she kept thinking about the face of that little boy, Emmett Till, right, because weeks before that she had attended a rally in Montgomery, that was also one of the people there was also Martin Luther King, Jr. and that later on, when you had all the Civil Rights victories, Martin Luther King Jr. himself said, it was Emmett Till's death, and especially everybody's seeing the horrific photo of his face, you just couldn't recognize it anymore. That when they all remember that, it made them more passionate about ending segregation, and of course, racism, in terms of legalized racism, in a sense anyways in the South.

EICHER: And yet, without a decision to take a gruesome photograph, and then decide to publish it. I mean, credit obviously to the mother for making that difficult decision. But it’s restricted only to those who attended the funeral if not for the courage of journalists to publish the photo and bring it to the attention of the world. What do we learn from that and what’s applicable today?

SEY: Yeah, well, as a pro-life advocate, one of the things that we do, and this is controversial, even in some, some pro-life circles, but we show people what happens to babies when they're killed through abortion. We call that abortion victim photography. And the person who really is the basis for that is Emmett Till, because we recognize how when he was murdered, it wasn't initially in international news. It was when people saw that horrific picture. That's when it became international news, including reaching Ghana, all the way in West Africa, and we in knowing that the pro life movement oftentimes will show people and these are horrific photos to see but we show people aborted babies and through our research 73% of people who see these pictures, seven to 10 people will see these pictures will have more negative feelings towards abortion just because they've seen these pictures. So it's even before the arguments about abortion, that's before all the apologetics just by seeing the photos because of just how horrific they are. They become more pro-life.

BROWN: Samuel, I’d like to get your take on comments I heard last week from Vice President Kamala Harris. Here’s an excerpt of her blasting Florida’s new standards for black history.

KAMALA HARRIS: They decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.

What do you make of the Vice President’s assertion that the single reference to slaves developing skills (which btw, I don’t think is untrue) becomes the focal point of the curriculum?

SEY: Yeah, it is incredibly absurd. The reality is, and we all know this, this, the weird thing about this is that for so long, black Americans have rightly so talked about the incredible resilience and perseverance that is very evident in our community, because of the incredible adversity they have to overcome. So to then claim that that is what the curriculum is, is simply just trying to justify slavery, as they're claiming is ridiculous. They're really just saying that as horrific as slavery was, there is and we see this, of course, you know, as Christians that when there is adversity, and people overcome adversity, there is a new skills developed through that, right, which is, of course, perseverance. So, and of course, the curriculum isn't just about that at all whatsoever. But the reactions towards it have just been just been crazy. To me, it's just been shocking.

BROWN: While we’re on this subject, I want to call your attention to two videos that are making the rounds on some social media platforms. The first one is a hideous rendition of the National Anthem, performed (if you can call it that) by singer/songwriter, Jill Scott.

JILL SCOTT:  This not the land of the free, but the home of the slave. (Applause)

And the second video features a young boy reciting his doctored-up rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance.

BOY: I pledge allegiance to your flag of the United States of America. And to your republic for which it stands, one nation, under God , indivisible with liberty and justice for who? For you, for some, not for us. Not for our people. So please stop saying we’re equal with your flag of red, white and blue you beat us. You beat us until we’re black and blue. You beat us until we’re numb. You beat until we can’t even walk straight. (uh huh)

I don’t know what’s more appalling… his words or the attaboy from adults in the audience. How do you counter this kind of propaganda that’s everywhere?

SEY: Well, it's by comparing that to the black leaders from the past. It's really interesting, the more we move away from speaking of, you know, history, with Emmett Till and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris press conference, they talk about how we should learn from history. That's not really what they mean. They mean, they should use so-called history, which is really critical race theory to shame and to scare people. They want to shame Republicans, conservatives, or white people and they want to scare black people. Nevertheless, when it comes to us understanding the difference between people today, and people in the past, or when it comes to a lot of black people, the reality is this: one of my heroes is Frederick Douglass. And I always encouraged people to read what he would say. And he played a massive role in the abolition of slavery, he was one of the abolitionists. And he talks about the blessings of America's founding values. The blessings of the national anthems, the blessings of the founding fathers as well, too. And you also have Martin Luther King Jr, who said the very same thing. In fact, in his incredible I Have a Dream speech, he talks about how the Constitution and America's founding values are precious. In fact, those are the very things that emboldened him to fight for civil rights. But then the more we move away from from these men, the more people misunderstand America's core values. And it's just what I'm trying to say there is that the more we progress as a nation, in terms of an issue of racism, the more so many people through critical race, do you want to divide us? Right? These kind of rhetoric did not come from Martin Luther King Jr. He would never say things like that. He believes in of course, unifying America the same way that his hero Frederick Douglass had those same views. But now decades after people have a more pessimistic view of America than they did, even though there's less racism today than before. So it really is because of critical race theory, which of course, again is to shame, scare, and divide Americans.

EICHER: Well, Sam, I’m glad to have you here as an American. And I’ll point out you took the long way here, from Ghana as a youngster (well, you’re still a youngster as far as I’m concerned). But from Ghana to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, then southern Ontario, the GTA, Toronto, and now Ohio. But you and I have hockey as a common interest. I would point out, despite the massive heat … we’re almost in August, which means only one thing, that we’re oh-so-close to NHL hockey camps re-opening. Hockey’s practically here, and it’s good to think about ice here in this brutal summer heat.

SEY: Oh, absolutely. My Montreal Canadiens were awful last year. So I want the new season so I can wash away the stain of last year. So yeah, I'm very excited but also really, really eager for us to be a lot better.

BROWN: I feel outnumbered here!

EICHER: WORLD Opinions commentator Samuel Sey. You can read him at wng.org/opinions, and his blog is slowtowrite.com.

Sam, thanks for your writing and for being with us today!

SEY: Thank you.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, July 28th. 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. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The movies.

The WWII drama Oppenheimer is a big hit at the box office, but lots of families are probably going to have to stay away, because it drops some content-bombs—both in language and sexual content.

BROWN: If you’re frustrated by the growing number of interesting movies that are rated R for gratuitous language, you’re not alone. WORLD Program Producer Harrison Watters has a recommendation for three older movies about innovation …along with a suggestion for families who want to watch well-made movies without the objectionable content

HARRISON WATTERS, PRODUCER: Back in April, I read an article about a handful of movies coming out about video games, shoes, and obsolete phones. I wasn’t impressed. That is, until I watched the trailers. And then, much like the early adopters, I was hooked.

MUSIC: [Benevolence]

In March, Apple TV+ released the movie Tetris, based on the true story behind one of the most successful video games in the world.

Henk Rogers is the genius behind the digital board game Go. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because it didn’t sell. But at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Henk discovers a game he can’t stop thinking about.

BANKER: Tetris? I don't get it.

ROGERS: It's a combination of Tetra Greek for four—all the game's pieces are variants of four—and tennis.

BANKER: Tennis?

ROGERS: Tennis is supposedly the Russian inventor. He, he likes tennis.

Henk knows a great idea when he sees one, and he immediately makes a plan to license the game—even if it means mortgaging his house.

There’s just one problem.

Tetris was created by a programmer in the Soviet Union.

ROGERS: It all began with a guy named Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov four years ago.

And there’s no intellectual property in Communist Russia.

So buying the rights to develop a handheld version of Tetris is going to be harder than Henk thought.

STEIN: Mr Rogers, have you ever negotiated with the Soviets? Do you know what it feels like to be in a country where everyone is watching you?

ROGERS: No.

STEIN: So don't tell me what is and what is not complicated.

The rest of the film unfolds like a spy movie, with Henk navigating politics and intrigue to land a licensing agreement.

ROGERS: I’m not going home without a deal.

Where Communist Russians and corrupt British capitalists fail, Henk’s integrity and genuine respect for Alexey Pajitnov, the Russian software designer, make all the difference.

Next in this trio of engaging stories, Amazon Studios released its movie Air in March.

Sonny Vaccaro, played by Matt Damon, is a talent scout responsible for signing athletes for Nike’s struggling basketball division. This is back when Adidas and Converse were the biggest names in basketball shoes. But Sonny aims to change that by signing one player.

VACCARO: I'm willing to bet my career on Michael Jordan.

KNIGHT: Come on, man,

VACCARO: you ask me what I do here. This is what I do.

Sonny’s boss, Phil Knight, thinks the idea goes against all conventional wisdom, especially at a time when budgets are shrinking. Why risk it all on a rookie?

Sonny also faces opposition from Michael Jordan’s agent, who tells Sonny that Michael wants to go with Adidas.

But Sonny won’t take no for an answer and so he does the unexpected. He visits Michael Jordan’s parents. Michael Jordan’s mom calls the shots and she wants more for her son than just a fat check.

DELORIS: Now I'm gonna put it to you plain once again: Michael will get $250,000 and a Mercedes Benz that will be forgotten in a year. But he gets a piece of the revenue of the shoe and all future Air Jordan shoes.

The rest of the film is focused on Nike’s quest to build the perfect shoe that will inspire Michael Jordan—and his parents—to sign a deal with Nike.

Unlike Tetris, the protagonist of Air doesn’t seem to have much to fight for apart from his crazy idea. He’s not married, and his outlook on life doesn’t change much by the end of the story.

There’s also some hindsight bias throughout the movie. We all know that Michael Jordan ends up becoming one of the greatest basketball players in history, but the characters couldn’t have known that at the time. The cult of personality here is pretty strong. But so is the business savvy of a mom orchestrating her son’s financial future…and that isn’t just hot air.

Finally, BlackBerry, released in May. This movie tells a very different kind of innovation story—the tragedy of a brilliant idea that ends up in the dustbin of history.

EXEC: Well it’s definitely the world’s largest pager.

LAZARIDIS: Uh, no. It’s actually the world’s smallest email terminal.

The story begins with computer geeks Doug Fregin and Mike Lazaridis racing to a meeting to sell their newest idea to businessman Jim Basillie.

FREGIN: Picture a cell phone and an email machine. All in one thing. There is a free wireless internet signal all across North America and nobody has figured out how to use it.

Doug and Mike do know how to use it. And their innovation…combined with Jim’s ruthless business savvy…leads to the massive success of one of the first mass appeal smartphones. But that success doesn’t last.

JOBS: We’re calling it iPhone [Applause]

Behind BlackBerry’s demise at the hands of Apple is a debate about integrity as an inventor.

LAZIRIDIS: I'll do it perfectly or I don't do it,

BALSILLIE: Mike, are you familiar with the saying, perfect is the enemy of good?

LAZIRIDIS: Well, good enough is the enemy of humanity.

Tetris, Air, and BlackBerry each raise questions about what is worth sacrificing for success. Jim tells Mike that the more painful the sacrifice, the greater you’ll be. Only in his case, he’s talking about putting friends on the altar of financial success. In Air, Sonny doesn’t have much to lose, but his colleagues do.

STRASSNER: The judge in the divorce, she just gave me Sundays. You get to be a dad for four hours every Sunday at the park. It’s the only time I see Avery. I just want Avery to love me and I want my job. And I think that you may have been a little bit cavalier about the risks and about taking us all with you.

And the goal here, as in BlackBerry, is ultimately to make money. In Tetris, however, Henk is willing to put himself on the line and take risks on behalf of his wife and kids and friends. And he does so with integrity.

Now a quick caveat before you go stream one of these movies. All three films earned an R rating for excessive foul language. And that’s unfortunate, because the content is fairly clean otherwise. So I would recommend using a content filtering service like VidAngel or ClearPlay so that you can enjoy the lightbulb moments without getting burned.

I’m Harrison Watters.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next, listener feedback for the month of July. We begin today with a few corrections.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: During this month’s Ask the Editor we said that 2023 was the first celebration of Juneteenth as a Federal Holiday. Listener Melanie Barker works for the government and wrote in to correct us. Juneteenth has been a federally recognized holiday since 2021.

EICHER: Next, in setting up Word Play last week, I said incorrectly that George Grant invented the word “obsologism.” He did not. George assures us that although I hadn’t heard it before, he had. Indeed, he came across the word recently in a book by Isaac Watts who wrote during the 17th and 18th centuries.

So obsologism is an obsologism, that is, obsolete word, and not a newly minted neologism, as I said it was.

Clear?

BROWN: Over the last couple weeks we’ve included a few audio companion pieces in conjunction with WORLD Magazine feature stories—one on immigration and the other on military recruiting woes. We mistakenly identified those as coming from the July 12th issue of the magazine. Which is odd, as several listeners concluded. Because there is no July 12th issue!

Nope, we hid them in the July 29th issue. Now the wild goose chase is over. Sorry about that.

EICHER: And now for some feedback about the program:

Quite a few listeners, Myrna, enjoyed your artist profile this month.

JEAN MANINGER: Hello, this is a long time listener, Jean Manninger. I was so thrilled to hear Myrna Brown segment with Wendell Kimbrell on the July 14th show. I've been a fan of his for over 10 years and his voice and style of songwriting have been a balm to my soul so many times. He is definitely a gifted, unique creator of worship music, unlike anybody else out there. And I'm so glad your listeners now have somebody new to add to their playlist. Thank you again.

Well, Myrna, we also got a lot of great feedback after your interview last week with Erin Friday—the California mom fighting the transgender movement in her state. Pastor Jim Ammerman from Philadelphia said he was glad to hear from a non-Christian who opposes gender ideology. Quoting from his letter:

It is very constructive to hear from “allies” who agree about important issues, even though they disagree about ultimate issues. This builds bridges in so many ways. Treating outsiders with respect shows that we care about them and are willing to listen.

BROWN: Next, Whitney Williams’s commentary on sunscreen made an impression on a listener in Hawaii who knows just how important sunscreen is. She said, thanks for the encouragement to give each other grace when it comes to life and parenthood. And thanks for the authentic words. She signs off: Mahalo! Which is Hawaiian for “thank you.”

Finally this morning, Chal Knox tells us he started listening to the program after a friend shared the podcast with him about three years ago. He says he’s been hooked ever since. He likes our Legal Docket coverage and the Monday Moneybeat. And adds that he became a first-time donor this year. So thanks for that!

EICHER: And thanks to everyone who gave this year. The final numbers are in and we have once again met our goal and ended the fiscal year strong. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon, and we couldn’t do them without your faithful support. Thanks so much.

BROWN: Well that’s it for this month’s Listener Feedback. Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in. 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.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is July 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, Commentator Steve West on becoming a grandparent for the first time, and how he’s seeing God’s handiwork in new ways.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: “I just became a grandparent” is one of those phrases likely to bring a smile to even those with melancholy dispositions. Since my granddaughter was born five weeks ago, I’ve been saying that to shop clerks, servers, repairmen, and other strangers, and so far it hasn’t failed to elicit a smile.

But there is a wistful sense that I’ve suddenly crossed an age horizon from whence I will not return. I have to get used to being referred to by an as yet undetermined name common to grandpaternity. It’s as if overnight I’ve been launched into my twilight years. After all, there’s one thing my own grandparents seemed to have in common: They were old, or at least I thought so when I was a child.

Yes, this new chapter of life has been accompanied by a wave of nostalgic memories. A carefree childhood roaming the streets and unfenced backyards of our suburban neighborhood, playing kickball, building forts, and pretending to be superheroes. Freedom provided by a 1972 Camaro that would take my teenage friends and me anywhere we wanted to go. And even that first year of college the sense that home was always there to return to, where my clothes would be laundered and I would be fed, and where I was loved.

But memory is selective, one of the problems with nostalgic longing. My idyllic childhood was interrupted by race riots in our southern city and fights at school. When I was eight, my mother left our family, though she returned to my father some months later and remained. Since then, my parents have flown to the Lord, and there’s no longer any home to return to.

The Bible doesn’t commend nostalgic longing. Lot’s wife, fleeing for her life, looked back on life in Sodom with longing for what had been, and was turned into a pillar of salt. Scripture does tell us to remember, but always for its impact on life in the present. For the Jews, that was the Exodus, the story of how God brought them out of Egypt. Or how the Lord restored them to the Promised Land after seven decades in captivity. For Christ-followers, remembering is coupled with gratitude for God’s faithfulness—not a longing to go back to even the good that has been.

Brooding over this epiphany, I look up and on a shelf in my office amongst a collection of record albums is one purchased 50 years ago when I was 14, titled Another Side of Bob Dylan. It features the song “My Back Pages,” the meaning of which was a subject of fascination to me as a teenager. Dylan wasn’t a Christian when he wrote the song… and his lyrics are often pretty cryptic. But one line resonates with me these days: “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

As a Christian, those words remind me that life isn’t lived in our back pages, but in the eternal youth of now and the hope of what is to come. My growing delight in Christ makes me long for the future—for the songs to be sung, words to be written, and work to be done. And in my granddaughter’s eyes—in the wonder she will help me see again—I’m getting younger.

MY BACK PAGES SONG: Ah, but I was so much older then, I am younger than that now.

I’m Steve West.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Mary Reichard, Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Onize Ohikere, Addie Offereins, Todd Vician, Janie B. Cheaney, Alex Carmenaty, Jeff Palomino, Cal Thomas, Samuel Sey, and Steve West.

And two new voices on the program: Associate Correspondent Clara York and WORLD Opinions Contributor Carl Trueman.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And thanks to 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 production team includes Kristen Flavin, Benj Eicher, Emily Whitten, Lillian Hamman, Mary Muncy and Bekah McCallum.

Anna Johansen Brown is features editor, and Paul Butler is executive producer.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of Glory may come in.

Psalm chapter 24 verses 8 and 9.

Do not miss the chance to worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords with your brothers and sisters in Christ in church this weekend. And we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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