The World and Everything in It: July 28, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Last week, the sentencing of a killer and the searing pain of his victims’ families. One Christian lawyer says real justice requires more than punishment. It requires reform, even in how we talk:

MARTENS: One example is even how we speak about criminal defendants. Do we call them animals?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also, the Monday Moneybeat with economist David Bahnsen.

And the WORLD History Book. Today the account of a short life that cast a long shadow.

ORRICK: Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, July 28th. 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:  Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: US-EU new trade deal » A big announcement in Scotland Sunday where President Trump met with top leaders from the European Union.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen:

LEYEN:  We have a deal, uh, we have a trade deal between the two largest economies in the world, and it's a big deal. It's a huge deal.

US and European leaders agreed on a framework by which the President Trump says there will be a flat tariff on most imports from the EU.

TRUMP:  We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else will be a straight across tariff of 15%.

Some strategic products will reportedly have zero tariffs, but details are still being finalized.

Trump said under the agreement, the EU will buy more energy and military equipment from the US and invest an additional $600 billion in America — on top of existing investments.

The leaders called the deal beneficial for both sides.

Rubio on Mideast / Ukraine conflicts » Secretary of State Marco Rubio says President Trump remains focused on bringing an end to the war in Ukraine.

The most recent round of peace talks in Turkey last week between Russia and Ukraine yielded no progress toward a ceasefire.

RUBIO:  He's losing his patience. He's losing his willingness to continue to wait for the Russian side to do something here, to bring an end to this, to this war.

In the Middle East, Rubio said Sunday that he remains hopeful and optimistic … about a ceasefire in Gaza. That despite peace talks between Israel and the Hamas terror group breaking down last week.

But he added that Hamas could end the conflict at any time.

RUBIO:  There's a very simple solution to what's happening in Gaza. Release all the hostages. Lay down your arms, and the war ends.

Hamas has not been willing to release its grip on Gaza.

The US and Israel recalled their negotiators last Thursday after American officials said the terror group was showing no serious interest in peace.

Ratcliffe on Russia probe intel » CIA Director John Ratcliff says he plans to release more files tied to the Obama administration’s so-called Russia probe, which cast a cloud over President Trump’s first term.

RATCLIFFE:  What hasn't come out yet and what's going to come out is, uh, the underlying intelligence, uh, that I have spent the last few months making recommendations about final, uh, uh, declassification and sent that to the Department of Justice that will come out in the John Durham report, classified annex.

His comments follow Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of declassified documents last week. Gabbard claims the Obama administration manipulated intelligence to craft a false narrative that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in 20-16. And has referred former President Obama and several aides to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Some former intelligence officials dispute Gabbard’s claims. Obama’s office dismissed the accusations as a distraction.

Biden fitness probe » House Republicans continue to grill former Biden administration officials as part of a probe into Joe Biden’s mental acuity and fitness while in the Oval Office.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said Sunday:

COMER:  This investigation is, was Joe Biden mentally fit, uh, to make those decisions? Did Joe Biden have any idea, uh, what was being stuck in that autopen and, and his signature, uh, being forged on these documents?

Most officials called in for questioning have pleaded the Fifth. But former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain last week agreed to answer questions. And Fox News reports that he told the panel that President Biden seemed tired and ill before his disastrous presidential debate last summer. But he reportedly said he had no knowledge of Biden being given the prescription sleep drug Ambien before the debate as the former president's son Hunter Biden recently claimed.

Michigan stabbings » The suspect in a mass stabbing knife attack at a Michigan Walmart could face charges of terrorism and assault with intent to murder.

Authorities say they’re seeking those charges against the 42-year-old suspect.

Grand Traverse County Sheriff Michale Shea says the man entered the store Saturday afternoon with a folding knife.

SHEA:  Based on the information that we have at this time, it appears there were random acts that there was no, um, the victims were not predetermined.

He says the attacker stabbed eleven people, six of whom were listed in critical condition.

The victims were transported to Munson Medical Center, where Dr. Tom Schermerhorn told reporters Sunday:

SCHERERHORN:  I'm happy to report one patient has been treated and released. Now we have 10 remaining patients, two who remain in serious position, serious condition, and the others have progressed to fair condition.

The sheriff added that citizens stepped in and helped to subdue the attacker until police arrived.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: a Christian perspective on reforming the criminal justice system. Plus, David Bahnsen talks about rebate checks and other financial news of the week.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 28th day of July, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Last Wednesday, families of murder victims in Idaho delivered impact statements filled with heartbreak and resolve.

The man who murdered four University of Idaho students sat stone-faced in court as he listened for about two hours.

The students’ names: Madison Mogen , Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, and Kaylee Goncalves—

Here’s Xana Kernodle’s stepfather, Randy Davis:

DAVIS: Oh man, you’re going to hell. I know people believe in other stuff. You’re evil. There’s no place for you in heaven. You took our children.

Cara Northington, Xana’s mother:

NORTHINGTON: Jesus has allowed me to forgive you for murdering my daughter without you even being sorry. You have accepted a deal that will prevent you from receiving the death penalty. Nothing man can do to you can ever compare to the wrath of God.

Kristi Goncalves, Kaylee’s mother:

KRISTI GONCALVES: I live with a constant ache, with birthdays that are now memorials, with holidays that feel hollow, with empty chairs that scream louder than words ever could.

Kaylee’s sister, Alivea:

ALIVEA GONCALVES: I won't stand here and give you what you want. I won't offer you tears. I won't offer you trembling. Disappointments like you thrive on pain, on fear and on the illusion of power, and I won’t feed your beast…..Instead I will call you what you are: sociopath, psychopath, murderer. You aren’t special, or deep. Not mysterious or exceptional. Don’t ever get it twisted again.

BROWN: Victim impact statements are a relatively recent development, a part of the victims' rights movement starting in the 1970s. 

Back to this case, families were angry not only at the man himself, but also with the plea deal he got. 

Kaylee Gonzalves’ brother Steve at a press conference later:

STEVE GONCALVES: Families are left feeling unheard. Justice is negotiated down through plea deals, and the public is left with unanswered questions.

Sentencing once again fails to reflect the severity of the act, and the emotional fallout has landed again on the shoulders of the victims’ families who have been left out unheard and grieving— not just a horrific loss, but a system that continues to bypass them.

District Court Judge Steven Hippler sentenced the killer to four consecutive life terms without parole.

REICHARD: But beneath all this lies another tension, rooted in how our criminal justice system works. 

To unpack this, I turned to Matthew Martens. He’s a trial lawyer, a former prosecutor, a seminary graduate, and author of the book Reforming Criminal Justice: A Christian Proposal. He says many aspects of our criminal justice system are broken. That includes plea bargaining. 

In the Idaho killer’s case, guilt was obvious. A plea deal did save time and money, but those aren’t the elements of true justice.

MARTENS: Plea bargaining operates by either diminishing the seriousness of what somebody has done, letting them plead to something that is less serious, that tells a lie about what the criminal has done, that says it's less serious than it is, or it threatens them with punishment that is more serious than they deserve. That's the only way that you get 97% of people to plead guilty in a country where we twice in the Constitution, guarantee the right to a jury trial. If you're constitutionally guaranteed to a right to a jury trial, we got to get people to give up that right. And the way, or one of the ways that we get people to give up that right is either offering them a punishment that's less than they deserve, or threatening them with a punishment that's greater than they deserve. And in either respect, we should all hate that because it's telling a lie about the wrong that someone's done.

Did you catch what he said? Plea deals are not rare. They are the norm. Most criminal cases are resolved this way.

Martens traces the problem back to another systemic issue: pretrial detention.

MARTENS: Sitting here today, this morning, 500,000 people in America are being held prior to trial, not because they're terrorists or serial killers, which I think we could all could understand in those circumstances why somebody might be held, but something like two thirds of those cases are property offenses, traffic offenses and drug possession….at the same time that we're punishing people before they ever get a chance to prove their guilt or innocence, and all of that is used as leverage to get people to plead because if you've already served three months, six months waiting for your trial, and the prosecutor comes to you and says you can plead guilty time served, you're out today, or you can sit around waiting for another year for your trial. Most sensible people would say, I'm not going to sit around for another year. I'll just take my time and be done. I’ve already served it.

BROWN: Martens points out another flaw: prosecutorial discretion. Something the brother of Kaylee Goncalves talked about earlier. Martens ties that discretion to a deeper breakdown in respect for the law itself.

MARTENS: The reality is that we've made so many things crimes and we have under devoted resources to law enforcement that there's no prosecutorial office in the country that could or would prosecute everything that's a violation of the law. And so the result of that is we become a nation of men and not of laws. That what gets prosecuted is in the discretion of the prosecutor, as opposed to determined by what the law makes a crime.

REICHARD: Martens recounts the story of Clarence Gideon back in the 1960s, convicted without a lawyer representing him. The Supreme Court ruled he had a right to a lawyer on the government’s dime. And when he finally did have representation, his conviction was thrown out. A corrective course was set:

MARTENS: As the court said that absent that right, the right to be heard in your defense, would be meaningless if it did not include the right to be heard by counsel, as the court went on to explain, because in that circumstance, even if you're innocent, you might not know how to establish your innocence in a world where the rules are complex around the introduction of evidence and the conduct of trials.

BROWN: And that, Martens argues, is what a commitment to accuracy looks like. One tool of biblical justice.

MARTENS: The idea of accuracy is about protecting victims. That no one is loved by a system that punishes the wrong person. The person who has been victimized is being lied to, told that their crime has been vindicated when, in fact, the real perpetrator walks free…. And it's also not loving the perpetrator, because we're looking at him or her and saying, it wasn't that bad what you did, and they're not hearing the corrective word that they need to hear…But the point is ultimately to love. It’s not to extract a pound of flesh. It’s to rebuke, to correct the wrongdoer. Ultimately, hopefully with the goal that they will change. Now I’m not naive. I recognize that a lot of people won’t take the correction of the system and won’t change…but our obligation as Christians is to love and to love all our neighbors.

REICHARD: He summarizes the tools of a just system into five “buckets,” so to speak: accuracy, due process, impartiality, proportionality, and accountability. Too much to unpack here…but his book lays out how our current system falls short in all five.

So, what’s the solution? Martens says we need to look back to the vision of the Founders, with what they had in mind when they enshrined the right to a jury trial in both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

BROWN: Martens argues for a return to public trials, decided by impartial jurors, and much fewer backroom negotiations by overwhelmed prosecutors.

Not least, reform also begins with language and the way we speak. He urges Christians to reject dehumanizing rhetoric, even in response to unspeakable crimes.

MARTENS: I think just one example is even how we speak about criminal defendants. Do we call them animals? I know that that's easy to do when we're angry about how a crime is about a horrific crime has been committed, but I believe what we're commanded to do as Christians is to see all people as humans, imagers of God, deserving of our love, and then accurately speak about what that love entails and for the wrong that they've done.

REICHARD: And about the broader debate over “social justice?” Martens rejects progressive ideology, but he does see a biblical obligation to address systemic wrongs.

MARTENS: Our society could organize itself in a way that didn't really punish me for robbing you, and that's what I'm referring to as a social injustice, where we as a society organize how we operate our society in an unjust way. So to take an example, our country doesn't criminalize in most states the murder of unborn children. So someone who participates in an abortion has committed an individual injustice against that unborn child, but our society at writ large has committed a social injustice by organizing ourselves, by defining our laws in a way that doesn't punish that wrong. And so I'm trying to distinguish between wrongs I do one on one with another person or another person does to me, as opposed to the injustices our society does as in the way we organize our laws and the way our laws are enforced.

At the heart of Martens’ proposal to reform our criminal justice system is a simple yet profound question:

Are we telling the truth?

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It, the Monday Moneybeat.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. Good morning to you, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Mary, Good to be with you.

REICHARD: President Trump said on Friday he’s considering rebate checks for Americans—funded by the billions of dollars in tariff revenue he says is coming in. The idea plays into his bigger political message: that tariffs protect American jobs and rebuild U.S. manufacturing.

But that’s where things get complicated. Because David you’ve pointed out that U.S. manufacturing output is actually strong—even 50 percent higher than it was thirty years ago. The number of manufacturing jobs has dropped significantly, and that seems to hit at the concerns the president is tapping. Why is there so much confusion between output and employment in this space? (Where do you think is the disconnect?)

BAHNSEN: I think the heart of the matter is that we're able to make more with less, and the reason for that is technology. The reason for that is enhanced productivity. It's a more efficient system and world that we live in, and the output now is able to grow without more people involved.

And along those lines, there's a significantly declined appetite for manufacturing, jobs, services. Jobs have been much more attractive, and in a lot of ways, as I've studied this historically, Mary, what's happened in manufacturing is very similar to what manufacturing itself did to agriculture, is it surpassed it as a contributor to economic growth and surpassed it in terms of the attractiveness of job opportunities. We actually have 500,000 open jobs in factories, but not a lot of people that want to fill those.

The issue on the rebate check rhetoric. There is no rebate check to offer anyone from tariff revenue because we are running $2 trillion annual deficits that are about to go higher. Baked into the new big, beautiful bill in the CBO projections is a significant amount of tariff revenue. And so the idea that we would be giving money back to taxpayers is simply a cash advance on the credit card.

Ultimately, the various rationales that have been offered for tariffs that they are a revenue generator, or that they will protect us jobs, which, of course, if they were doing that, it would mean they weren't a revenue generator, because we wouldn't be importing from overseas, or that they have to do a national security or other issues. There's a lot of different rationales, and each one can be kind of gone through one by one, but they can't all be the rationale at once. Some of them are quite contradictory, and so certainly the revenue issue and the idea of giving money back to taxpayers, it fits into some of the populist ideas that are in vogue right now. But it is not going to happen, and it most certainly shouldn't happen.

REICHARD: You pointed out we have a lot of open jobs in manufacturing—but they’re not being filled. So you argue that the real problem isn’t a lack of jobs, but a mismatch between what people want and what’s available. What would you say is the future of work in America?

BAHNSEN: You're very right that there is a mismatch of jobs available and what people are looking for. There's also, though further complicating it, a mismatch of skills that I'm sure we could find 500,000 people that would take a job in a factory, but not 500,000 whose skills and training qualifies them for that job.

And one of the things that I just think has become so abundantly obvious, I can't believe it is not a bipartisan, piping-hot priority for public policy, is to stop with these college degree requirements for some of these jobs and certifications and trainings, and really advocate much more for a vocational training situation where there are various jobs and certifications and and training requirements that could get filled outside of the university system.

And why, if we're going to be giving taxpayer dollars in student debt for people to go take sociology classes at a state university, I don't understand why that same program wouldn't be applied to not only the welders and electricians and other things that frankly, there is a lot of job demand for, but why it wouldn't apply to these unique factory and high tech manufacturing jobs. that's That's where America shines. Those are higher paying jobs, though there is demand there, but we need to fill that gap, and I am at a loss as to why this is not a bigger priority for the American public.

REICHARD: David, you’ve said that top-down government planning will not solve our labor challenges like these—but rather market forces. And, this is what has my attention, even deeper than that, spiritual health. That’s not something we usually hear in economic conversations, although we do hear it a lot from you. Say more about that.

BAHNSEN: Well, the reason you hear a lot about it from me is not just merely me sprinkling my personal faith convictions into the arenas that I work in and care about, like finance or economics, or policy, but because I don't believe that we can address these issues apart from a worldview that has a coherence to it. And I don't understand economics apart from some of these spiritual truths that guide economics and that teach us and inform us what we need to know about them.

So to the extent that I believe work is a byproduct of the way that God created mankind, that we possess certain attributes as a result of being an image bearer of God—made with dignity and his image and likeness—therefore, that informs my view of mankind as a producer, as a productive creature. And I think that economics is best understood when we know these things about the human person.

The convictions I have about work are ethical, they are theological, but they are creational. And all of those things together formulate the economic understanding of man, and therefore the economic understanding of work.

So I believe a very secular and unChristian idea is that mankind needs to work to provide and then would work as little as possible. That the work is there just to meet the basic needs and and once those needs are met, that this idea of what they call Homo economicus man, that we're then going to really search for the thing that would enable us to then go find the most pleasure in recreation and leisure. I believe it's theologically flawed. It fails to understand the fulfillment mankind gets, the flourishing made possible by work, by productivity.

REICHARD: All right, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer at The Bahnsen Group. He writes regularly for WORLD Opinions, and at dividend-cafe.com. David, thank you so much. We’ll see you next week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Mary.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, July 28th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Today, we spotlight one of Cambridge’s most celebrated voices from the 1600s: the “orator.”

Being “the orator” was a big deal in the 1600’s. This person crafted and delivered speeches at major events. Think royal visits, even the King of England!

REICHARD: But only on his deathbed did this particular orator reveal a quieter calling, one that’s brought comfort to the brokenhearted for more than 400 years.

Here’s WORLD’s Caleb Welde. 

CALEB WELDE: George Herbert knows he’s on his deathbed. He asks a friend if he’ll look at his poems. Herbert says the poems are, “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul.”

Life hasn’t been easy. Hebert’s father died when he was three. His mom remarried when he was sixteen, but by then Herbert was leaving for Cambridge. He graduated with a Bachelors, then a Masters, then settled into life on campus as a Fellow. He was offered the orator position at twenty-seven.

Herbert was initially thrilled to be orator. He wrote it was “the finest place in the University.” a job that would “please a young man well.”

But five years into the position something changed.

ORRICK: I have uh, I have the quote here.

Jim Orrick is a pastor, professor, and author of, A Year with George Herbert. He’s reading Herbert’s later thoughts on those orator days.

ORRICK: I can now behold the court with an impartial eye and see plainly that it is made up of fraud, titles and flattery and many other such empty, imaginary and painted pleasures, pleasures that are so empty.

When Herbert entered Cambridge, he’d wanted to become an Anglican priest. He recommitted his efforts at thirty-one. When King James died, Herbert delegated the honor of giving his funeral oration to someone else.

Herbert’s recommitment marked the beginning of –in the words of one scholar– the blackest years of Herbert’s life.

ORRICK: I think all of his adult life he was sick.

1626 stands out. He endured a prolonged fever that would mysteriously come and go. His mother died the next year. They’d always been close.

ORRICK: There were times when he was given to very deep, dark despair.

Herbert also struggled financially during those years. He stayed with friends and relatives until 1629 when he married. The couple moved to a small village in the English countryside. Here, Herbert was finally ordained as a priest. Professor Orrick actually visited his church.

ORRICK: I don't see how that little building could have held more than 30 people if they were packed in there and here is one of the most talented men in the world who is devoted his efforts in to pastoring a tiny group of people in a little-known town.

Herbert pastored that church for three years. And then he died of tuberculosis at thirty-nine.

When Herbert was seventeen before the fame, fortune, and heartbreaks. He lamented “the vanity of those many love poems that are daily writ consecrated to Venus.” Herbert vowed, “my poor abilities in poetry shall be all and ever consecrated to God’s glory.” After Herbert death, his friend does publish his poems under the title, “The Temple.”

PIPER: It is no office, art or news, nor the exchange nor busy Hall, but, it is that which, while I use, I am with thee.

John Piper wrote about Herbert in his 2014 book, “Seeing Beauty and Saying Beautifully.”

PIPER: Writing poems for George Herbert was NOT the recording of an experience with God. It was the HAVING of an experience with God.

Hungry souls can sense real experience with the real God. In Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis says of all the authors he read during his pre-Christian days,

ORRICK: The most alarming of all was George Herbert.

Jim Orrick again, reading from Lewis’ memoir.

ORRICK: Here was a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment.

But Herbert wasn’t just realistic– Lewis could also sense his joy.

Literary critic Samuel Coleridge was another drawn to the beauty of Holiness captured in Herbert’s poetry. He wrote a friend “I find more substantial comfort now in the Pious George Herbert’s “Temple” than in all the poetry since Milton.”

Coleridge spent most of his adult life addicted to opiates. Perhaps he related to Herbert’s poem titled Love, Three.

ORRICK: Let my shame go where it doth deserve. And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame? My dear, then I will serve. So he's still arguing with love! I don't deserve to be here, I've messed up the gifts that you've given to me, and love continues to insist you are a guest who's worthy to be here. And finally, love says you must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat. So I did sit and eat.

Herbert likely had no idea some of the greatest orators would one day savor his work. Preachers like Charles Spurgeon, who wrote, “I love George Herbert from my very soul.” The marathon preacher would finally relax on Sunday afternoons to his wife reading Herbert.

MUSIC: Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life

Christians have also been singing Herbert’s verses for at least three centuries.

Herbert kept that vow he made at seventeen where he promised his “poor abilities” would ever and always be consecrated to God.

PIPER: Of the 167 poems in the Temple, not one is written about a human being, or in honor of a human being.

The subject of every poem in “The Temple” is God.

PIPER: Shall I write and not of thee? through whom my fingers bend to hold my quill? Shall they not do the right of all the creatures, both in sea and land, only to man. Thou hast made known thy ways and put the pen alone into his hand and made him Secretary of thy praise.

For WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde.

CLOSING

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