The World and Everything in It: July 9, 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.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

The countdown to America’s 250th birthday begins, and with it conversations about what unites us in a divisive age.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday, Hunter Baker joins us to talk about it.

Also, a World Tour special report from Sweden.

And a creative way to protect airplanes from the dangers of nature.

ALTMAN: It keeps people safe, it keeps the aircraft safe, and it keeps the wildlife safe.

And Janie B. Cheaney on AI’s promoters and detractors.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, July 9th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

MAST: Up next, Mark Mellinger with today’s news.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Supreme Court okays Trump federal workforce downsizing » The Supreme Court says President Trump’s downsizing of the federal workforce can go forward for now.

In an 8-to-1 decision, the justices overrode lower court orders temporarily freezing the cuts by DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.

The lone dissenting vote came from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who warned the decision will lead to mass terminations along with -quote- “the dismantling of much of the Federal Government as Congress has created it.”

The High Court’s decision allows the White House to keep making the cuts while a U.S. district court judge continues hearing a case in which labor unions and nonprofits are suing over the downsizing.

It also comes as Congress works to pass a rescission bill codifying some of the DOGE cuts. The bill’s passed the House, but senators like Maine’s Susan Collins want changes.

COLLINS: I believe it needs some significant changes. For example, I want to strike the rescissions of funds for PEPFAR. I can’t imagine why we would want to terminate that program.

PEPFAR is short for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. George W. Bush started the program to support AIDS prevention, care, and treatment in developing countries. It’s credited with saving millions of lives.

TX flood update: Abbott visits scene » Texas’s governor says more than 160 people are now believed missing after that horrific July 4th flooding of the Guadalupe River, in the central part of the state.

During a visit to the affected area, Governor Greg Abbott said the number of missing jumped up significantly after authorities set up a hotline for families to call.

The death toll is at least 109, including more than two dozen campers and counselors from Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian camp, and Abbott says the hearts of Texans are breaking every day.

ABBOTT: Nothing is as heartwrenching as hearing the stories of what the girls around here, especially the girls at Camp Mystic, went through… to see where they lived in one moment, where they disappeared the next moment, and were gone forever.

Search and rescue crews are continuing their work, and Abbott says they won’t stop until every missing person is accounted for.

President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will visit the area Friday.

Netanyahu, Trump meet again » House Foreign Envoy Steve Witkoff says he’s hopeful there’ll be a Gaza ceasefire deal by the end of the week.

Witkoff’s comments come as President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had their second meeting in as many days, almost exclusively to discuss Gaza, according to the president.

TRUMP: Gaza is a tragic… it’s a tragedy, it’s a tragedy. And he wants to get it solved and I want to get it solved and I think the other side wants to get it solved.

The president’s envoy says negotiators meeting in Qatar have made great progress since Sunday, and he plans to join them later in the week.

The deal under discussion would be a 60-day ceasefire. It would include the release of 10 living hostages still being held by Hamas, along with nine deceased hostages.

WH Council of Economic Advisers: Import prices are down » The White House Council of Economic Advisers says the Trump tariffs aren’t causing a spike in the price of imported goods to the U.S.

During a meeting of President Trump’s Cabinet Tuesday, the Council unveiled a report claiming import prices actually fell slightly from December to May, while overall prices increased slightly.

The White House says it proves tariffs don’t cause inflation -though many economists disagree- and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the tariffs are bringing in a lot of revenue.

BESSENT: We will have taken in about $100 billion dollars in tariff income thus far this year. And that’s with the major tariff not starting till the second quarter, so we could expect that could be well over $300 billion by the end of the year.

The Fed has been taking a ‘wait and see’ approach on the tariffs’ economic impact before lowering interest rates. They’ll reconsider cutting rates again at the end of this month.

President Trump says Fed Chair Jerome Powell should resign for not lowering rates already.

Imposter uses AI to impersonate Rubio, contact foreign & U.S. officials » Someone using an AI-generated voice contacted three foreign ministers and two U.S. officials last month claiming to be Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Reuters reports the impostor contacted the foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a member of Congress over the Signal messaging app, leaving voicemails for at least two of them and sending a text message to another.

State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce

BRUCE: The State Department, of course, is aware of this incident and is currently monitoring and addressing the matter. The Department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to improve the Department's cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents.

The State Department sent out a cable last week warning partners about fake accounts and impersonations.

IRS: Churches can endorse candidates » The IRS says churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit. WORLD’s Travis Kircher has more.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: In a joint filing Monday, the Internal Revenue Service and a group of Christian plaintiffs moved to settle a lawsuit brought last year.

Last fall two Baptist churches in Texas, the National Religious Broadcasters organization, and the Intercessors For America last fall challenged a decades-old law that bars tax-exempt nonprofits from engaging in certain political activities.

The Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954, prohibits organizations from participating in political campaigns, a restriction some say infringes on free speech rights.

In Monday’s filing, the IRS said officials have not historically enforced the ban on houses of worship, and said it would view endorsements of political candidates from the pulpit as private matters.

Meanwhile, the National Council of Nonprofits criticized the move, saying the amendment was installed to keep nonprofit organizations nonpartisan and to ensure they remained focused on their mission.

A 2024 National Association of Evangelicals survey of evangelical leaders found that 98% of respondents believe pastors should not endorse candidates in front of their congregations.

For WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: preparing to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Plus, how one small airport is making travellers safer.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 9th of July.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Washington Wednesday.

Next July 4th, 2026, America turns 250!

The semiquincentennial is shaping up to be quite a show. There’s talk of staging high-school football on the National Mall. And a full-blown UFC title match on the White House lawn, per the president.

TRUMP: We have a lot of land there … Dana [White] is going to do it … We’re going to have a UFC fight. Think of this—on the grounds of the White House. Twenty-five thousand people. That’s going to be a big deal

MAST: But there’s more at stake than spectacle. The way a country celebrates its founding reveals something deeper: about what it remembers, what it values, what it’s still fighting over.

SALAZAR: It’s important to celebrate and announce to the world what this group of Founding Fathers did 250 years ago.

EICHER: Florida Congresswoman Maria Salazar is on the America 250 Commission. She’s the daughter of Cuban exiles…and she told WORLD’s Leo Briceno she hopes more Americans come to appreciate what makes their nation unique.

SALAZAR: Others are just like people in critical race theory and all those, you know, the people born in the United States and they’re despising what the system represents. Oh, have them go to Cuba for two weeks. Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and they’ll appreciate where they were born.

Joining us now: Hunter Bake. He's a regular World Opinions contributor. He's provost and dean of faculty at North Greenville University. Hunter Baker is also author of several books on political thought, including the latest post liberal Protestants. He's a lawyer and political theorist, and we are happy to have him. Good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Thank you. Happy to be with you today.

EICHER: Hey, Hunter, let's begin with the big picture. You and I were kids back at this time for America's Bicentennial, 1976 although I was a much older kid, I have to admit so I'm expecting that your recollections are a little more informed by what you read and studied than so much by what you experienced as a young kid. But talk about the mood back then, and compare that, if you would, with today's lead up to 250.

BAKER: Yeah. Well, so first of all, I just want to say, even as a kid, a young kid, six years old, the Bicentennial looms large in my memory. And so, yeah, I've thought about it a lot as we've approached this semi, semi quincentennial.

EICHER: Rolls off the tongue.

BAKER: 250 I've seen people calling it the quarter mil. So maybe, maybe the quarter mil will catch on. But I've been thinking about it, and you know, so on one hand, you could think, well, this is so different. People are so divided now, and we've had so much political controversy and strife. 

But then I started thinking back on 1976 and what, what is 1976 Well, it's after Watergate. It's after the only president forced from office in the entire history of the country. It's after the humiliation of Vietnam and all of the difficulties that came with that. And yet the Bicentennial was able to be, I think, very effective actually, at uniting the country and attracting people's attention. It really intruded into popular culture, and I think that people who are above a certain age, like you and me, remember it fondly.

MAST: Hunter, the kickoff event was in Iowa. You're hearing a little sound from that, but President Trump was the main event. Lee Greenwood performed. We heard that plug for the UFC a few moments ago. What does all of that tell you about the cultural temperature that we can expect with this celebration?

BAKER: Well, so, I mean, look on one hand, anytime you think of something patriotic, you think of somebody non divisive or identified with unabashed patriotism, like Lee Greenwood. I don't know if anybody has ever gravy trained a single song, the same way that Lee Greenwood has, but I think that it's a good thing that you have a president who is patriotic, right? 

You know, whatever else you want to say about the parties and the divisions between them, I think that Donald Trump does love America. I think that he is a, he is a creature of this country. I mean, in certain ways, he embodies certain things about this country. But I think that he is very excited about being the person who is the president at the time of the 250th anniversary. And I think that they're going to make a huge attempt, you know, you're looking at somebody who was on prime time NBC for, I think a dozen years, you're going to see a major attempt made to to sort of capture the cultural imagination of Americans with this celebration

EICHER: Hunter, you know, in the several months leading up, speaking of President Trump, leading up to his victory in 2024 this really was a feature of the outgoing Biden administration. There was this sense after he won in 2020 a lot of American history was being rewritten, diversity, equity and inclusion. That was all the rage critical theory in the schools. You had the 1619 project, and clearly there was a lot of pushback to that, and Trump rode that to his second term, his current term. But that stuff didn't just go away. How divided do you think we are today? We talked about how divided we were in the 70s, but how divided do you think we are today?

BAKER: Well, as somebody who has spent his career teaching political science courses at different levels, the one thing that has come back to me again and again is that we suffer from division, that really, we lack something to really pull us together. When I was young, I think there was a major effort made to convince me of the value of the American experiment. I think that probably the Cold War was the driving force there. 

But to convince me that the United States was worth fighting for, worth preserving, that freedom was worth having, and we need something like. At now, right? And it doesn't mean sort of being bubble headed and pretending that the United States was always a fairy tale. That's not the case. I mean, you can read Alexis de Tocqueville and his famous book, Democracy in America. It celebrates this country. It celebrates, celebrates democracy. But he also, even then, is noting the treatment of the slaves and the treatment of the Native Americans and some of the flaws of democracy and how Americans can mistake being in the majority for being right. 

It's not a perfect country, but at the same time, it's an important country, and it's a country that has done a lot for the development of democracy and for belief in constitutional law and and one thing that I think that we can emphasize, and everybody should be able to agree with, is that this country played a decisive role in the 20th century, without the United States in the 20th century, it's not entirely clear that totalitarians of different stripes, whether Nazis or Soviets, would not have prevailed. So I think that the world does owe a debt to United States as as really a force for freedom in the last century.

EICHER: Now, that sounds like something that you have written about, which is the notion of America as a moral project. And maybe I'm just trying to get back to this question of division. What happens when we don't agree on what the moral foundation is?

BAKER: Yeah, we have to have the ability to work through it. I mean, one of the things that was so frightening about 2020 is that it felt less like we were having a discussion and more like we were having a witch hunt of some kind, right? You know that we're sort of in some sort of a post rational phase where, you know, numbers or power, cultural sway seemed decisive. 

And I think that what we have to get back to is an understanding that politics between free people requires a degree of civic virtue and patience and reasoning and working through things. One of the worst things about this period that we kind of went through was a disregard for free speech. No, the you know, the answer for bad speech is more speech and good speech, but, but it's not. It's not to to ban speech or outlaw speech, which is sort of what started to happen. And so I think that we have an opportunity to sort of recover from that kind of disastrous period and rebuild our commitment to the virtues and habits that are necessary for a constructive democracy.

MAST: Hunter, you teach a lot of young Americans, what do you hope that Americans, and particularly young Americans, will take away from the 250th celebration? Is there still a shared story to be told here, and how do you see that unfolding?

BAKER: Yeah I think that this is an opportunity to try to bring back civics. It seems to me, just kind of observing. I think that young people know less about civics than they did 25, 3040, years ago. I think that, I think that there was an effort in the past to inculcate an understanding of our system and its virtues and how to participate in it, much more so than now. 

I love that old Norman Rockwell painting the Freedom of Speech. If you've ever seen it, there's this, he's like a factory worker. He's at some kind of town meeting at night, probably held in a school room, and he's he's got on his leather jacket from work, and he looks like a more handsome Abraham Lincoln, and he's standing up to speak to the gathered assembly, and everyone is perfectly attentive. They're all looking at him, waiting to hear what he's going to say. I want to recover that right? I want to I want to get back to that sense of the value of talking and listening to each other and trying to work through our problems. And I want young people to understand how special that is, because a lot of people will never have that opportunity in the country in which they live, but they've always had.

EICHER: While we have you…some news out of Washington that’s causing consternation in some corners of the Republican party. Last week, the Pentagon paused some air defense weapons deliveries to Ukraine, saying American stockpiles are getting low. Then this week, President Trump reversed that decision and said the U.S. would continue sending Ukraine weapons. Now, many in the Republican base are split on aid to Ukraine, and the President’s pivot here to continue that aid. What’s your read?

BAKER: Yes. Well, so first of all, why the consternation?

Well, I think the reason for that is that Trump has really sold himself as a different U.S. President. For a long time, we’ve sort of been the global policeman, the provider of global defense. A lot of other countries, particularly the NATO countries, have been able to free ride on American efforts.

A big part of what Trump has done is to say to the European countries, we’re not going to do that anymore, right? We are—the American people are not going to bear the burden of your defense to the same degree that they have in the past. Therefore, you cannot count on us to always intervene. Your problems are going to be, to a larger degree, your problems.

So for Trump to say, “I’m not going to pause the weapons, I’m going to get more involved,” that seems like a divergence from that policy to some degree.

But the other side of it is that Trump is the consummate dealmaker and negotiator. I think that his interpretation of the situation is, A) he may feel that Ukraine has got to have this in order not to lose, but B) he may feel that his own negotiating stance with regard to Putin is stronger if Putin cannot accurately predict what he’s going to do.

I think that’s part of what’s going on here, too. It’s: “You know, Vladimir Putin, you can’t take me for granted. You can’t just assume you know what I’m going to do.”

MAST: Another story in the news…For months, the Department of Justice has promised to release files on Jeffrey Epstein…the business mogul charged with trafficking young women to powerful men around the world. You’ll remember he died in prison in 2019… under mysterious circumstances waiting for his trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

The DOJ promised to release thousands of files, but now this week is saying there is no client list and nothing to see here.

Hunter, what do you make of this? We don’t know about what’s in the DOJ’s filing cabinets, but we can see the political pressures of the moment.

BAKER: First of all, I would not put myself forward as the person who automatically knows what exactly has happened here. I think it’s impossible to know what exactly has happened.

As we’ve watched it unfold, it does remind me of the fact that a lot of politics is about sort of an economy of attention—getting ears and eyeballs and minds paying attention to something.

It has been useful to build up this idea of a conspiracy, you know, a conspiracy involving billionaires and very shady conduct. So I think that to some extent what may have happened is—maybe like Geraldo Rivera and Al Capone’s vault—you build up this big thing, and then when we finally see what’s behind the door, there’s nothing there.

I think that we may need to be ready for the fact that that could be what’s going on here.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is a political scientist and academic and contributor to world opinions. It's great to catch up with you. Thanks so much.

BAKER: Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next: a World Tour special report.

Sweden is known for IKEA, cinnamon buns, and neutrality. But these days, it’s also making headlines for something else: a sharp increase in violent crime.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: In 2022 a conservative government came to power after nearly a century of progressive control. Immigration reform is high on the agenda, but the crisis goes deeper than border policy.

Europe Reporter Jenny Lind Schmitt has the story.

NEWS COVERAGE MONTAGE

JENNY LIND SCHMIT: Sweden has a growing problem with violent crime. In January alone, there were 30 gang-related explosions reported in the country. Fatal shootings doubled from 2013 to 2024, and people are starting to refer to Stockholm as the “murder capital of Europe.”

STOCKHOLM RESIDENT

The most recent mass shooting was in April in Uppsala. This woman lives in the residential neighborhood where the shooting occurred. She says she fears someday soon she could be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The most disturbing part is the involvement of children in the violence. In 2024, 120 children under 15 were accused of committing or participating in murders. Most of the children came from a disadvantaged, immigrant background.

In this documentary, a gang leader called Mr. Syndicate explains.

DOCUMENTARY CLIP: We never thought we were included. We never thought we were a part of this society…

Audio courtesy of 3Cat.

… They didn’t want us to integrate with the Swedish people. They put us in a corner here and we take the lowest possible jobs, either that or you start with the criminal activities.

Under Swedish law, youth under 15 cannot be convicted of or punished for serious crimes, including murder. That’s made vulnerable kids easy targets for gang leaders. They promise fast money and recruit children as young as 11 for contract killing. If the perpetrators are caught, and they’re under 15—the age of criminal responsibility—the consequences will be very light.

The cause for the violence is a complex intersection of crime gangs, drug trafficking, immigration, and Sweden’s relaxed social policies and citizenship laws. But that’s about to change.

Per Ewert is director of the Clapham Institute, Sweden’s leading Christian think tank.

PER EWERT: We have had severe problems in Sweden with crime, organized crime, gang criminality, and a lot of these have been connected with a failed integration project. And all parties realize this.

In January, the government proposed new tighter rules for acquiring citizenship.

Sweden has had one of Europe’s easiest citizenship processes. Along with the country’s generous welfare state, that has made it a top destination for refugees coming to Europe. In the migrant crisis of 20-15 and 20-16, Sweden welcomed more people per capita than any other European country. That influx put a strain on the nation’s social fabric.

Now, as part of the effort to combat organized crime and tighten controls, applicants must live in the country eight years, instead of five, and prove financial self-sufficiency and mastery of the Swedish language. Previously there were no language or financial requirements.

As part of the same proposal, the government wants to change the constitution to be able to revoke citizenship for people involved in gang-related crime.

EWERT: So if people commit these kinds of serious crime that threaten the system of society itself, it is suggested that such citizenship should be removed and they could be moved back to the nation where they actually have a citizenship.…

Ewert says that the proposal has backing across political parties in Sweden.

The government says it’s one step in slowing the crime bosses who direct the gangs from aboard, while taking advantage of their naturalized Swedish citizenship.

Here is Sweden’s Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer from earlier this year.

GUNNAR STRÖMMER: A challenge in Sweden not the least: We have 600 Swedish criminals outside our borders in 57 different countries orchestrating very severe organized crime in Sweden.

Ewert says that the hegemony in Swedish society and politics after World War Two created the stable and wealthy country Sweden has been known to be. But progressivism and the loosening ties of the church in society opened the door to policies that allowed for the current problems.

Some on Sweden’s right condemn all forms of immigration, arguing that immigrants bring violence with them. But others say organized crime gangs have existed in Sweden for a long time. Now they’re taking advantage of the disaffected children of immigrants. That means the solution is more complex than just stopping immigration.

Audio here courtesy of Unreported World.

CLIP: They try to blame it on immigration. But it is actually those who were born in Sweden who are more criminal. There are many vulnerable areas where youth haven’t received a proper upbringing and I blame this mistake on the Swedish government. And police harassment makes those in the suburbs feel like outsiders.

Meanwhile, the incessant violence could have an unexpected consequence. Along with other upheavals in Swedish society, the violence is pushing people to ask big questions about values and the meaning of life. The consequences of a godless social policy are showing. And Ewert says that can open doors for the gospel.

The divide between an open and closed door immigration policy runs through Sweden’s churches too. But Ewert sees how the influence of some immigrants into the country is positive and can help the Swedish evangelical church remain biblically sound.

EWERT: Yes, there are several dimensions to this and I think most conservative or evangelical Christians also see the need for input from migrating churches and migrating people to influence the very liberal Swedish mindset because most people who are Christians who come from other nations, they tend to be more conservative in their views.

Reporting for WORLD Tour Special Report, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Yesterday we had competitive parallel parking in Portland. Today

it’s competitive public-transit piloting in Poland. The National Tram-Driving Championship!

Drivers faced ten precision challenges behind the wheel of massive public transit trains. Events included everything from delicate stops to full-on tram bowling. That’s right, just as you might imagine.

Here’s one driver describing the difficulty.

FEMALE TRAM DRIVER: (Speaking in Polish)

Here’s my rough translation: "You want good follow-through, you’ve got to use the train to nudge a bowling ball just so to knock down all the pins, but the key is you’ve gotta not crash." Or words to that effect. My Polish is a little rusty.

The competition is meant to raise the profile of transit driving, and this thing is global! Two drivers earned an invite to the World Championship in Vienna this fall. So here’s hoping they can navigate those confusing foreign transit systems.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday July 9th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST:And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Clear to land.

Airplane bird strikes have become more common over the past two decades. The most famous one became a movie.

EICHER: The 2016 film Sully told a story with a happy ending.

A US Airways jet took off from LaGuardia in New York. It hit a flock of Canada geese, disabling both engines and forcing an emergency landing in the Hudson River. All 155 passengers and crew survived.

Airlines report thousands of bird strikes near runways each year. And they can pose a serious risk to planes and the passengers in them.

One airport is working to reduce that risk in an unconventional way.

MAST: Outside West Virginia International Yeager Airport near Charleston, you can hear the sounds of all sorts of things that fly.

SOUND: [Birds]

The kind that God made…

SOUND: [Plane taking off]

And the kind that He allowed man to make.

In the middle of it all are a few others tasked with helping both the birds and the planes do what they’re supposed to do.

AUDIO: Alright, Herc… [Sound of birds]

CHRIS KEYSER: The stuff that we use it wasn't really working, like the pyrotechnic things, know, like stuff you shoot in the air and stuff like that.

That’s Chris Keyser. He’s the airport’s wildlife specialist.

Wildlife strikes–particularly bird strikes-pose a real threat to planes and passengers. In 2023, U.S. airports reported more than 19,000 bird strikes. The FAA projected that cost at $450 million dollars and 60,000 hours of aircraft downtime.

Airports employ a wide variety of tactics to deter animals–things like decoys, falconry, model aircrafts. But those don’t always work.

KEYSER: They get used to those sounds. They also get used to these fake coyotes and things like that. They get used to them because they never move. And birds and animals, they’re frightened of predators.

So Yeager Airport tried something new: a dog. It isn’t the first to do so but a few years ago Keyser says the airport director wanted to give it a try. She knew Keyser had experience with animals, so she offered him a change in role: from airport manager to animal handler.

KEYSER: I said, did I do something wrong as far as being a manager? She says, no, this is an upgrade, Chris. So give you a day or two to think about it. And I thought about it and I said, sign me up.

Enter a black-and-grey border collie named Hercules. His job: to herd and chase birds away from planes without killing them.

AUDIO: [Chris training Hercules]

KEYSER: Hercules is fantastic. He's one in a million dogs. I'll say it a hundred times.

Keyser starts the morning by greeting and feeding Hercules. And if the control tower calls, they’re ready.

KEYSER: The tower will holler down sometimes, Hey, we got birds out there. And soon as Hercules hears the birds over the radio, he knows the towers need some help to run them all. And so he gets excited and starts to bark and I say, “Let's go. You ready?” He just starts barking and carrying on. He's fired up and ready to run.

The airport where Hercules chases birds is nestled in the Appalachian mountains, near the Elk and Kanawha Rivers. There’s a lot of wildlife. Sparrows, vultures, killdeer, even geese. Rainy days are the busiest days—that’s when the worms come out.

KEYSER: Always call it buffet day. And it's like they can come in and just have a day and our day, our day becomes a lot of work that we might put in six, seven miles, maybe plus that day.

That kind of mileage doesn’t seem to phase border collies.

ALTMAN: They need a job to do and they will go stir crazy if you don't give them a job to do.

Karina Altman is the Zoo Content Manager with the apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis. She says the use of border collies to herd animals away from airports is a smart way to steward creation.

ALTMAN: They are bred to work, they are bred to run, they are bred to think, they are often regarded as the most intelligent dog breed. Border Collies have so much energy. So giving them this huge space to run around, it keeps the wildlife away without killing the wildlife. And so it keeps people safe, it keeps the aircraft safe, and it keeps the wildlife safe. So it's a good compromise.

But Hercules is eight years old–and slowing down a bit.

KEYSER: At one time, he could run speeds about 35 miles an hour. He's about 20 right now.

So now his job includes training his newer, younger coworker: Another border collie named Ned.

KEYSER: Ned has picked up on what he does and he watches Herc work and now he's picked up the same skill level that he has so he knows not to go on the runway and when I holler for Herc, Ned pulls away from the runway. So he's doing the same thing.

But the pair aren’t one-trick collies. On slower days you may find them inside…

SOUND: [Passengers giggling]

…welcoming passengers and posing for social media.

KEYSER: A lot of times you see somebody sad or crying, they might be worrying about flying out of here. And a lot of times they say, I'll put Herc up beside them, next thing you know the tears just go away. So it makes a difference in somebody's day.

Passenger Janet Spry sits next to Hercules, accepting every slurpy kiss he gives her:

SPRY: I know the hard work he does, but he's such a wonderful ambassador for just here. He just makes you feel really good.

For Chris Keyser, it’s work that is fulfilling:

KEYSER: It's been the best decision I ever made. just working with these dogs, it just makes you feel good every day. And I just love my job.

And it’s important.

KEYSER: It could be that one bird for that day, if you're not hitting that plane, can make a difference in somebody's flight. And I like to try to make the difference for somebody's life that flies in and out of here or a plane to be safe, make his place where it needs to go.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. WORLD Commentator Janie B. Cheaney says it's right to be concerned about artificial intelligence but some of the rhetoric is likely overstated.

JANIE B. CHEANEY,: Since the debut of Open Source’s ChatGPT in 2023, Large Language Models have made themselves at home everywhere, perhaps most concerningly in education. A New Yorker headline blared last spring: “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way through College.” AI cheating is almost impossible to detect, since a Large Language Model can write plausible-sounding papers in any style, including that of a reasonably bright freshman. Even AI defenders have concerns. Are we merely outsourcing menial tasks, or outsourcing thought itself?

On May 15th, The Free Press hosted a formal debate on a similar question: “Will the truth survive Artificial Intelligence?” Barry Weiss moderated the debate:

WEISS: Artificial Intelligence is already completely transforming our world practitioners and experts alike have compared AI to the advent of electricity and of fire itself…

Arguing for the affirmative were Aravind Srinivas, CEO of the Large Language Model Perplexity, and Dr. Fei-Fei Li, regarded as “the godmother of AI” for her work in computer image recognition. In opposition were computer scientist Jaron Lanier and tech journalist Nicolas Carr.

Early in the evening 68% of the tech-friendly audience registered in the affirmative that truth would survive AI. Then the debate began.

Surprisingly, the core arguments on both sides were built not on costs vs. benefits, but on faith. Faith in humanity. The affirmative team argued that humans are truth-seekers; technology helps us search for answers. It’s a helper, not a master. Dr. Li concluded her opening remarks this way.

LI: There is no independent machine values. Machine values are human values. So what AI does to truth is up to us, not AI.

But Jaron Lanier countered that’s the problem. Computer science is currently obsessed with passing the Turing test—making machines that imitate humans so well we can’t tell the difference. He insisted “we’re fooling ourselves.”

LANIER: Why should we put money and time into trying to fool people? People are easy to fool?

The Silicon-Valley business model is built on third parties paying developers to capture the attention of users and fool them, too.

Nicholas Carr worried about AI’s effect on education. If we want to know what Large Language Models are doing to truth-seekers, look at your average college student feeding a detailed prompt to ChatGPT and cranking out a B+ essay. Synthesizing information is an automatic function, but it isn’t real knowledge. “By automating learning,” he insisted, “we lose learning.”

CARR: So you get this illusion of thinking you know something without going through the hard work of actually learning it…

Srinivas replied that he’d anticipated all the opposing arguments. How? By asking Perplexity. What’s more, since debate isn’t his strong suit, Perplexity had supplied effective responses for him.

SRINIVAS: This is actually my first ever proper debate so I have no position to be even sitting here… but with the help of AI, I can… you know?

A ripple of startled laughter brought him up short. Perhaps in that moment Srinivas realized he’d just proved the opposition’s point. And possibly lost the debate—by evening’s end, 23% of the audience had shifted to the negative.

Meanwhile, tech marches on. Biological science is all atwitter over another kind of Turing test: the possibility of “Bodyoids,” or human bodies grown from stem cells. They would have only enough brain function to keep their organs alive, as an “ethically sourced,” never-ending supply of spare parts.

If a thing can be done, it will be done, always with unintended consequences. Yet here’s a spoiler alert: Truth will survive Artificial Intelligence. So will love, because Truth and Love exist outside the human realm. If scary times are ahead, we can hold firmly to Truth, hope in Love, rest our faith outside ourselves, and allow no machine to think for us.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: a Georgia woman was kept alive until her baby could be safely delivered—exposing a potential conflict between end of life wishes and heart-beat laws. And, WORLD music critic Arsenio Ortesa has a review of a new bluegrass project that defies labels. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. 

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