The World and Everything in It - June 15, 2021

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Your steak dinner costs a lot more now but cattle producers aren’t getting paid more. We’ll find out why.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also Israel has new leadership after 12 years with Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm. Who’s in charge now?

Plus The Olasky Interview. Today, a conversation with novelist Sarah Hulse on well written characters.

And the lessons of summer camp, for the adults in charge.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, June 15th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Now the news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Biden warns Russia ahead of meeting with Putin » President Biden issued a warning to Moscow on Monday as he prepares to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week.

BIDEN: I’m not looking for conflict with Russia, but that we will respond if Russia continues its harmful activities. And we will not fail to defend the transatlantic alliance or stand up for democratic values.

The president heard there speaking in Brussels during his first NATO summit as commander in chief. He talked about the importance of upholding NATO's Article 5, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on them all.

Biden and Putin are slated to meet face to face tomorrow in Geneva. President Biden is likely to voice disapproval of the Kremlin’s crackdown on Putin’s political opponents, particularly the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and the outlawing of Navalny’s organizations.

But in an interview Monday, Putin criticized the United States, claiming those arrested for rioting at the U.S. Capitol in January are being subjected to “persecution for political opinions.”

NATO designates China a global security challenge » Meantime, NATO leaders called out China on Monday, declaring the communist country a constant security challenge to that alliance.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added…

STOLTENBERG: Leaders agreed that we need to address said challenges together as an alliance and that we need to engage with China to defend our security interests.

NATO said the Chinese are working to undermine global order. That message was in sync with President Biden’s warnings about China’s trade, military and human rights practices.

The 30 heads of state and government avoided calling China a rival. But they did sound alarms about the communist government’s “coercive policies” its use of disinformation, and the way it’s modernizing its armed forces.

NATO leaders also voiced concerns about Russia. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said—her words—“when you look at the cyber threats, the hybrid threats, when you look at the cooperation between Russia and China, you can’t just ignore China.”

But she added that it was important to “find the right balance” as China is also a partner on many issues.

Top national security official at DOJ resigns amid controversy » The Justice Department’s top national security official is resigning after revelations that the department secretly seized records from Democrats and members of the media. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: John Demers is expected to leave the Department of Justice by the end of next week. He is one of the few Trump appointees to stay on under the Biden administration.

A source told the Associated Press that Demers had planned for weeks to leave the department by the end of June. But his departure comes amid questions about what he knew about the DOJ’s efforts to secretly seize the phone data from House Democrats and reporters as part of investigations into media leaks.

The department's inspector general has already launched an investigation.

News emerged last week that the Justice Department had secretly subpoenaed Apple for metadata from House Intel Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and another Democratic member in 2018.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the DOJ will tighten its rules around obtaining records from members of Congress.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Heat wave slams western U.S. » Forecasters are warning of dangerous, record-high temperatures across much of the West this week.

Mark Chenard with the National Weather Service says records will likely fall from the southern border all the way up to Montana. He said just as impressive as the stifling heat is the expected length of the heat wave.

CHENARD: It’s not just one day of records, but it’s several days in a row of near-record to record temperatures across the region.

Phoenix is expected to hit 118 degrees, Las Vegas 116. And Needles, Calif., south of Vegas could hit 121 degrees.

The heat wave comes even as the official start of summer is still five days away.

Novavax: Study shows new COVID-19 vaccine save, effective » Another COVID-19 vaccine could hit the market soon. A major vaccine maker says its shots are proving to be highly effective against the disease, including variants. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has that story.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Novavax announced Monday that a North American study of nearly 30,000 people has shown the two-shot vaccine to be safe and about 90 percent effective overall. That would put it roughly on par with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

The United States now has more than enough doses to go around. But globally the need for more shots remains critical.

And the Novavax vaccine, which is easy to store and ship, could play a big role in boosting supplies in poor parts of the world.

But the company has been plagued by shortages of raw-materials, which has slowed down production. It now plans to seek authorization for the shots in America, Europe and elsewhere by the end of September. By that point, Novavax expects to be producing 100 million doses a month.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: manipulation in the meat market.

Plus, lessons learned at cousin camp.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 15th of June, 2021.

You’re listening to The World and Everything in It and we thank you for joining us today. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up, those steaks on your grill.

They’ll cost you a lot more these days. Overall grocery prices are going up, and the price of beef in particular. Up 10 percent over last year. Half of that spike came between March and April of this year.

Then a major disruption over Memorial Day weekend. Cyber attackers forced the largest meat processor in the world to shut down nine plants in the United States. The price of beef went up another percentage point.

REICHARD: But while beef prices increase in stores, that’s not making its way all the way down to the cattle producers.

That’s a pattern some say has to change. WORLD’S Sarah Schweinsberg reports.

AUDIO: [Sound from Don’s Meats]

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Don’s Meats sells almost every cut of beef, pork, and poultry available. Lance Lasater manages the butcher shop in Syracuse, Utah.

He says since March meat prices have been rising—especially beef.

LASATER: T-Bone steak right now, probably, you're gonna be around anywhere from depending on the week. I don't know $12 to $15 a pound. Normally, we have them like anywhere from like $8 to $10 a pound. A brisket we sold briskets you know, a couple months ago for like $3.49 to $3.99 a pound. And right now they're $5.49 to $5.99.

Lasater worries that if prices keep going up, customers will stop buying.

LASATER: I just can't see this stuff getting much higher. And, you know, you know, eventually it will hurt. I’ve never seen anything like it.

While customers are still buying, cattle producers like Scott Varilek say they should be taking home a bigger chunk of the profit.

Varilek is a futures commodity broker in Sioux Center, Iowa. He also has 200 feedlot cattle he sells for slaughter. Right now, he’s looking to get out of the business.

VARILEK: Taking too many losses, years of losses, it just kind of adds up. It'll weed me out of wanting to feed cattle on the side.

Varilek says the cost of feeding cattle keeps rising while the profit he makes from the sale of his cattle keeps shrinking, despite high retail beef prices.

Right now, cattle producers take home 40 percent of the retail value of one animal. Six years ago, they took home 60 percent.

Varilek knows other producers who are also struggling to make ends meet on those slimmer profit margins.

VARILEK: We're desperate. We're up against a wall and we see it with our customers too, what they're fighting.

Cattle producers blame many of their troubles on the four big meatpacking plants: JBS, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef.

Together, these four process 80 percent of all the cattle slaughtered in the United States. That market dominance makes them the key middlemen.

They buy cattle from producers and eventually sell it to restaurants and supermarkets that sell it to consumers.

Some ranchers and cattle producers say because just four companies control so much of the market, they can demand unfair, low prices.

GRIFFITH: There's a lot of sellers of cattle but not many buyers of those cattle and then there's a lot of buyers of, but not many sellers of beef.

Andrew Griffith is a livestock economist at the University of Tennessee. He says over the last five years, cattle prices have disconnected from consumer demand for beef.

GRIFFITH: Prior to 2014, as box beef prices went up, then you would see finished cattle prices increase. Or if if box beef prices went down, you'd see finished cattle prices go down. But that has not been the case the past four or five years. And so that has a lot of cattle producers concerned about it.

So what’s changed? Matt Teagarden is the CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association. He says both domestic and international demand for beef has grown—especially in China.

TEAGARDEN: Consumers want beef here as restaurants reopen, that demand is strong, retail demand has been strong… Our export markets are really strong as well.

As demand for beef increases, ranchers have grown their herds. But meat packing plants haven’t expanded their ability to process more cattle. So no matter how much more demand there is for beef, the supply remains steady. That severs the supply and demand pricing relationship.

Meatpacking plants say they haven’t expanded operations because it’s expensive, and they already struggle to find enough workers.

Teagarden says labor and capacity issues have caused a bottle neck that’s been exaggerated by one-off events like COVID-19, bad winter storms in Texas this year, and the JBS cyberattack.

TEAGARDEN: Which again, created a backlog of cattle and those challenges continue today in terms of getting cattle through those plants. And that's contributed to this, this disparity between beef prices and cattle prices.

Lawmakers have proposed a couple possibilities to deal with that disparity.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Democratic Senator Jon Tester of Montana have introduced one bill. It would require meat packers to buy at least half their weekly cattle from smaller producers on the open cash market.

Right now, meat packing plants buy most of their cattle from large feedlots under private contracts.

The Biden administration has also said it’s considering using its regulatory powers to reduce the influence large slaughterhouses have in the beef market. That could mean breaking up the large meatpacking companies or limiting their ability to acquire any more market share.

But not all cattle producers support those moves.

David Trowbridge manages a 7,500 head feedlot in Tabor, Iowa. He says something’s got to change, but the government could just make things worse.

TROWBRIDGE: We've seen government involvement in agriculture as far as crops. There are very few people that are fans of that happening in the beef industry.

Jason Hitch and his brother operate a 100,000 head feedlot in Guymon, Oklahoma. He’s also a little government-wary. He says what the government could do is actually cut regulations around meatpacking plants.

HITCH: Part of the reason there's not new packinghouses is all the regulations and the difficulty of dealing with it. The government could do many things to encourage the development of new packers or to expand it.

But others, like Scott Varilek in Sioux Center, Iowa say the big four’s market dominance makes government intervention at some level necessary. Or else, for many, it will be too late.

VARILEK: Voluntary sounds fine. And maybe we would love to have it that way. But it just doesn't seem like that's going to change anything. And we would continue on the same path that we're on heading towards the family feed yards exiting the business.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg in Syracuse, Utah.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG: Well, now that I’ve told you the story, I want to add a few words about the story.

I’m a reporter and so for me, getting into the field is the only way to do the job, I need to see the story before I can say the story.

And where we go matters.

So much national journalism is centered on Washington. Understandably, I guess, in a sense. Washington is certainly where some of the drama and power may be.

But many times the bigger story is in places like Iowa, Oklahoma, Utah. Not Washington.

Point is, you’ve got to get around and I just want to thank you for making it possible for me to get around, to travel to where the news is, and bring stories like these back to you.

If you’ve supported WORLD’s June Giving Drive already, thanks for doing that.

If you haven’t, I’m so glad you’re listening, because right now when you give, the impact is doubled.

Some generous families offered to match all gifts dollar for dollar through close of business today. So today’s a great day to make your gift.

Just visit WNG.org/donate to support our June Giving Drive. WNG.org/donate and thank you!

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up: a political shakeup in Israel.

Israel’s parliament approved a new coalition government on Sunday. That ended Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as the country’s prime minister. It also ended two years of political gridlock. But analysts warn this new era of cooperation might be short-lived.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Joining us now to help explain why is Jonathan Schanzer. He is the senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, welcome back!

JONATHAN SCHANZER, GUEST: Thank you.

REICHARD: This is a very diverse coalition, made up of eight political parties! I’d like to start by asking you to put that in perspective for a U.S. audience. If this was happening in Washington, who would this new government include?

SCHANZER: Yeah, the equivalent in Washington would be something along the lines of a party led by Donald Trump, a party led by Bernie Sanders, as well as a party led by Joe Biden, and maybe throw in Rand Paul there as well. This is really a cocktail of parties that really don't agree with one another about almost anything. The one thing that really did seem to bind them was their desire to remove Benjamin Netanyahu from power. So I think they all banded together with the very clear objective of just removing the man who had sat at the top for—in their view—far too long.

REICHARD: The man at the top of this new government is Naftali Bennett. Tell us a little bit about him and his political position.

SCHANZER: Sure, Bennett actually has had a fairly successful career as a warfighter in the IDF. He also has made a fair amount of money over the years in the high tech sector. He was one of the people that Netanyahu had groomed early on in his political career. The two of them ultimately, obviously, began to be at odds with one another. Now, Bennett, I would say, is actually probably further to the right than Netanyahu is. He is a religious Jew. I think this is actually the first prime minister who will wear a kippah head covering. No other prime minister before him has been as religious as he has. And he's a friend of the settler movement. He's opposed to Palestinian statehood. He's deeply opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. He’s as right wing as probably anybody could be in that position. But what's really interesting is that he has entered into a deal with Yair Lapid, who is a center left politician whose views on these issues are maybe not diametrically opposed, but they are really seen as opposites by the Israeli public.

REICHARD: This coalition has a very narrow majority. If just one party backs out, it would topple the government. And given its diversity, there’s not a lot of agreement on some really critical issues. So I’d like to get your take on likely policy positions, starting with Israel’s relationship with the United States. How will this new government affect that?

SCHANZER: Well, I don't think the policies are going to be terribly different from Netanyahu’s policies. I think what will be interesting, though, is to have a new face, representing the Israeli government. As you probably recall, Netanyahu did not have the best relationship with the Obama administration and that has been recalled by the Biden team, many of whom served under Obama. So there was some tension there. It'll be very interesting to see whether Bennett is more warmly welcomed. Of course, that remains to be seen.

REICHARD: New leader Naphtali Bennett as you mentioned is a religious Jew, in favor of settlement. What about the Palestinian question? Do you foresee any change from Israel in that realm?

SCHANZER: Look, I think that right now, the Israelis would rather leave that alone. Obviously, the recent war in Gaza probably put it on the front burner a little bit more. But at the end of the day, you have a really difficult situation with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip. So there's really nothing that Israel can do on that front. In other words, this is a terrorist organization that's not interested in negotiating. So that removes one out of the two Palestinian territories from negotiation. In the West Bank, you have a more pragmatic government, but there you have the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. He is now 16 years into a four year term. I don't believe that Bennett will willingly enter into negotiations with the Palestinians unless there was a new leader. And I think even then he would be dragged kicking and screaming into those negotiations, given that they are not likely to bear fruit anytime soon.

REICHARD: How about with Israel’s stance against Iran and other hostile nations in the region?

SCHANZER: So it was interesting, but Bennett spoke before the Knesset—Israel's legislature—on Sunday. And when going through the foreign policy objectives of this new government, he made it very clear that he was not going to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The Israelis cannot tell the United States what to do. But the Israelis have made it clear to the U.S.—specifically Biden administration officials—that they are going to pursue what Israeli analysts call the War Between Wars. And this has been a quiet shadow campaign that the Israelis have engaged in over the last couple of years where they have been striking Iranian assets in Syria with impunity, and preventing the smuggling of certain weapons or technology across the region. The Israelis have also been targeting Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf and in other spots around the Middle East. They have launched a cyber campaign to undermine Iranian assets in the country, as well as we believe potentially targets against drone factories and other military assets. And so I don't really see a significant departure from this. It will undoubtedly stoke some tensions between Israel and Washington. But at the end of the day, both countries are sovereign, and they can pursue their own foreign policies and I expect that there will be two different tracks taken, while the U.S. continues to probe the Iranians for the potential to enter back into that deeply flawed nuclear deal.

REICHARD: And finally, I’d like to ask about the Abraham Accords, the peace deals Israel signed last year with several Arab nations. Do you think this new government might encourage other countries to sign on?

SCHANZER: I think they certainly will. You know, I think the real question really is whether the Bennett government, this government that's just been formed, whether the Arab states believe it has staying power, whether it's going to stick around. In other words, these countries are all run by autocrats and these autocrats appreciated the fact that Netanyahu had been in power for 12 years. He sort of reminded them of themselves. I think the key here, by the way, is for the Israelis to convey that it's not the leadership that matters, but the system. And the system will honor these agreements. And that's what I hope the Israelis will emphasize in the discussions to come.

REICHARD: Jonathan Schanzer is an expert on Israel and the Middle East with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thanks so much for joining us today!

SCHANZER: Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s never too late to make a lifetime commitment.

Just ask John Shults and Joy Morrow-Nulton. Not even dating during Covid could keep them apart.

John’s son Pete told television station WBTV:

SHULTS: Perseverance. They would call everyday. They’d find a way to get together. But they did whatever it took.

The two had a lot in common. Both of them twice widowed. Both of them active in their churches. They liked the same music of the 1940s, especially Perry Como. And each the same age: 95!

And they each found life without a companion to be empty.

John asked Joy several times if she’d marry him. She finally said yes when she realized how much she missed him when snow days kept them apart.

And so on May 22nd, in front of 50 guests, they tied the knot.

JOY: Until death do us part.

As Joy later put it: “Nobody starts life at 95. But we did!”

PASTOR: I declare you husband and wife!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: The Olasky Interview. 

Today, a conversation with novelist Sarah Hulse, author of Black River and Eden Mine—two books Marvin Olasky recommends for their refreshing realism and Christian worldview.

MARVIN OLASKY: I have not heard of you before, except some reviewer mentioned Black River. And I went and got that. And I should say—embarrassing, though it is—I'm a fan. Good stuff. And I was thinking earlier today: “Well, why?” They remind me so much of the classic-late westerns. Another embarrassing thing, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on western movies, many, many years ago. They just struck me a lot like some of the John Ford movies in some ways. Anthony Mann...does that resonate with you at all?

SARAH HULSE: Definitely. I sometimes have been telling people, you know, one of my ways of getting through the pandemic has been working my way through the complete DVD set of Rawhide.

OLASKY: Okay.

HULSE: I think The Man who shot Liberty Valance is an amazing movie. Right. Right. So I certainly, you know, I do think that's definitely an influence.

OLASKY: Secondly, through and through, they seem so God haunted. It seems that your characters, and perhaps you yourself are wrestling with some very basic and crucial questions.

HULSE: Yes, I think I'm interested, I think in the ways in which some of the seemingly simple things about faith and Christianity are difficult for some people in practice. I think that's, you know, definitely obviously a sort of direct concern in Black River. But I, you know, I kind of love that tension that, you know, we can distill the gospel down into a few words, right? We can look at John 3:16, or the Roman road, or some of these places. And in that sense, it's very simple. But actually, playing that out in reality in real life for some people doesn't feel that simple. And so I think that's true for a lot of my characters. And I kind of enjoy writing fiction that engages with maybe the messier and more difficult side of that.

OLASKY: The third thing that interested me was writing is 10% writing and 90% rewriting...

HULSE: Yeah, I said literally, with those percentages, that exact thing to my students.

OLASKY: So your books are so interwoven. And from my vantage point, it doesn't seem there's anything accidental in there. If that's true, what I'd like to do, and haven't really done this with other people, but I would actually like you to read a few passages that I've picked up, just paragraphs, and I'd like to then ask you, why is it? Okay, let's go to Black River and go to the bottom of page 63.

HULSE: “When they are first married, Claire closes her eyes for grace. Her family never prayed. So she studies her husband, and does as he does, eyes closed, head bowed, fingers intertwined. Though Claire does not believe in God, she loves her husband's efforts at faith. He keeps a Bible on their bedside table and reads from it most nights before turning out the light. He told her once while they were lying beside each other in the dark, that the stories in its pages never seem quite the way he remembers them from church.”

OLASKY: Now, why is that last sentence? Again, I'm assuming that there's nothing accidental in your writing. Why that?

HULSE: I think this is maybe an early acknowledgement in the novel, again, that Wes has more faith than he realizes. And this is something that, of course, becomes very important at the end of the novel. And I think this also draws an early distinction between perhaps the the more maybe performative elements of faith and practice and the more personal elements. I think this is where we see Wes, even if he doesn't realize it fully at this point in time, maybe internalizing some of these stories and processing them and understanding them in ways that go beyond simply being receptive to what someone else like a pastor tells him about them.

OLASKY: Okay. That seems also very much like the classic Western hero, who actually knows more than he may think he knows and comes to, in a way, he may not be sure that he will come through. How much of that character reflects you in some ways?

HULSE: Well, it's interesting in a number of ways, you know, it was my first novel. I wrote it when I was in my 20s. And a lot of the questions I got asked after it was published were really about how did you as a 20-something woman write about this 60 year old man? And of course, that's what fiction writers do. Right? We put ourselves in someone else's shoes. But in some ways, you know, I understand Wes very well, I have certain personality traits that I understand about him is his tendency to want sort of a rulebook for things and to follow those. You know, I can empathize with that a lot. And I think many people can, you know. Wes takes it to extremes. At the time, I was writing Black River, I was in graduate school when I drafted it. And then I worked on it for about a year after graduating. I was attending churches, part of me wasn't entirely sure why. And it's something that became more important to my own life over the course of writing the novel. And I became a Christian while writing the novel. So some of that is certainly I wouldn't say his face journey really reflects mine, but it certainly I can understand the experience of of having a journey as an adult, I think.

REICHARD: That’s Sarah Hulse talking with Marvin Olasky. To read more of their interview, we’ve posted a link in today’s transcript at worldandeverything.org.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, June 15th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It turns out grandmothers with an open mind can learn a lot while hosting summer camp for the cousins. Here’s WORLD commentator Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: Cousin camps, I’ve decided, are the invention of some grandma who lives in a state with low humidity. Ours started out like most things in our family—with a group text. Here’s what we want to do, are you good with that, when can we plan it—yada, yada, yada. Somehow it did happen, though. Now, we’re four years running. All I can say is it helps to have a young aunt in the mix.

We did our big kick-off downtown at the pizza place because statistics show that the most successful ventures involving children start out with pizza. Well, I think I read that somewhere. Anyway, I, of course, did not order enough of the pineapple-topped version. “Never do,” our firstborn noted, just before he and his wife took off for Florida, sans their progeny.
Next we campers headed to the local splash pad. For those of you who parented before splash pads became the rage, think “glorified sprinkler.” Best of all, think “glorified sprinkler at somebody else’s house.” The whole scene was great—the older kids turning it off and on, off and on. So about a half-hour into it I’m thinking, “Hey, we’ve got this under control. Swim diapers, sunscreen, head count.” Then some random dad sitting under the pavilion had to go and say it, that phrase that trailed me for years: “You sure do have your hands full.”

Now, most people would probably consider that a gesture of empathy. But I’m thinking, is he a) mad because we wiped out the concession stand, b) concerned about population control, or c) referring to how I handled that discipline issue five minutes ago?

I smiled and offered his daughter some Cheez-Its.

The days following were a blur. I sent pictures of cousin camp highlights to my friends: The kids playing in the creek, riding on a cow safari, roasting marshmallows. I told them I did not, however, photograph the meltdowns and the diaper malfunction at Dairy Queen.

“Thanks for keeping it real,” one shot back.

The sweetest picture I took was at dusk outside on the patio. The kids were squirming around a table while Boss, as they call my husband, told them a Bible story. That group silhouette against the sunset made all the planning and corralling and noise worthwhile.

By Sunday we were down to just a pair of darlings. My husband made me ration Tic-Tacs on the way to church because he feared the worst.

“A sugar high from a single Tic-Tac?” I questioned.

“Yes, when you’re 2-feet tall,” he said.

Later, sitting in the pew of second chances, I had time to consider cousin camp and all it brought out—not in my grands, but in me. I’m still fixated when I should be flexible. I don’t smile enough. I fail to marvel. I find it hard to stop and blow bubbles.

Will I ever learn?

Maybe. Cousin camps, from what I can tell, are fairly educational.

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Afghanistan. U.S. troops are pulling out and the Taliban is preparing to take over. We’ll talk about that with WORLD’s Mindy Belz.

And, a story from another one of our World Journalism Institute students.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Go now in grace and peace.

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.