The World and Everything in It: June 30, 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.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: the first of four days of deep-dive coverage of the Supreme Court’s biggest decisions. We begin with a major win for parents over gender ideology disguised as tolerance.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat: Economist David Bahnsen is standing by to discuss the socialist who may soon lead America’s biggest city.

And the WORLD History Book. A famous athlete makes good on a promise to God.

HOYTE: He was always very modest about his gold medal. It didn't affect his commitment to Christ and his commitment to a life of serving.

ROUGH: It’s Monday, June 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

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

ROUGH: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Big Beautiful Bill » On Capitol Hill, the Senate could hold a final floor vote as soon as today on President Trump’s so-called “one big beautiful bill.”

The massive reconciliation bill cleared a procedural vote over the weekend.

AUDIO:  The yeas are 51, the nays are 49. The motion is agreed to.

The legislation would address the president’s top priorities, including locking in 2017 tax cuts, and more funds for border security. Republicans say the bill will grow the economy. GOP Sen. Mike Rounds:

ROUNDS:  We're reducing the expenditures at the federal level, but even more importantly, we're providing economic opportunity that will drive the economy for the next 10 years.

But at least two Senate Republicans say it does not reduce expenditures nearly enough. Rand Paul and Thom Tillis voted not to proceed with the bill. GOP leaders can afford no more than three defections on the measure.

Democrats call it a reckless giveaway to corporations. Sen. Bernie Sanders:

SANDERS: This is not a gift to the billionaire class. They paid for it.

Senate Democrats also claim it will strip funding from healthcare and other programs.

They tried to delay debate by forcing clerks to read all 940 pages of the bill out loud—but in the end, Republicans secured enough votes to keep the process moving forward.

Trump Iran nuclear / leaker » President Trump says he is confident that recent U.S. and Israeli airstrikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. He also said he does not believe that Iran’s government was able to relocate enriched uranium ahead of U.S. strikes on fortified nuclear facilities just over a week ago.

TRUMP:  You know, they moved themselves. They were all trying to live. They didn't move anything. They didn't think it was gonna be actually doable, what we did. And what we did was amazing.

But Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency is still calling for independent inspectors to be given access to Iranian nuclear sites. He said it’s critical to verify that Iran did not manage to move its enriched uranium to safety.

GROSSI:  If we don't get that verification, this will continue to be hanging, you know, over our heads as a potential problem.

U.S. diplomats are expected to hold talks this week with Iranian officials.

But according to the latest White House reports, that has not yet been scheduled.

Trump Gaza ceasefire push » President Trump is urging a ceasefire deal to halt the war in Gaza.

An Israeli official says plans are underway for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Washington in the coming weeks. And a top adviser is already heading there for discussions.

Many weary Palestinians are skeptical about the chances, as are many Israelis, after nearly two years of war that started with a Hamas terror attack.

Israel on Sunday ordered evacuations in northern areas of Gaza during intensifying military operations.

Russia-Ukraine » Meanwhile, farther north, Russia and Ukraine appear no closer to a ceasefire.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons says it’s clear that Vladimir Putin does not want peace.

COONS:  President Trump's called for a ceasefire. President Zelensky has agreed. President Putin is not agreeing. He's continuing to strike, uh, deep into Ukraine.

Russia has launched its biggest aerial attack against Ukraine over the weekend.

Ukraine’s air force says the assault involved more than 500 aerial weapons including drones and missiles. Defense systems intercepted or jammed most of the incoming threats but not all.

Officials confirmed three deaths and said another two died in Russian shelling.

New York mayor race » The race for mayor of New York City continues to draw national attention.

Self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is set to be the Democratic nominee, after an upset win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, though Cuomo is staying in the race as an independent.

Mamdani told NBC’s Meet the Press:

MAMDANI:  We live in the most expensive city in the United States of America. It's also the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and yet one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty.

Some national Democratic leaders have offered praise for his successful campaign. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries:

JEFFRIES: He outworked, he out-communicated, and he out-organized the opposition.

But they’ve stopped short of endorsing Mamdani keeping a distance from his candidacy. That is partly due to his positions on policing and on Israel

Mamdani says he plans to cap rent and open city-owned grocery stores. He also wants to boost the minimum wage to $30 per hour and raise corporate taxes.

Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, a former Democrat turned independent is instead pushing plans like lowering city taxes for low-income families.

Adams is running as a pragmatic alternative, and openly courting centrist Republican voters wary of Mamdani.

But GOP New York Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis says:

MALLIOTAKIS:  I think it is really important that Republicans, independents and common sense Democrats coalesce and unite behind one particular candidate. Right now, looking at this field, it would kind of make sense that that would be the Republican nominee, simply because you have three Democrats in there that would be splitting the vote.

Curtis Sliwa is hoping a divided field will help him become first Republican mayor of the Big Apple in two decades.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: digging into the Supreme Court decision regarding parental rights. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat with David Bahnsen.

This is The World and Everything in It.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: It’s Monday the 30th of June.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

This is the final day of our June Giving Drive; if you’ve given already, thank you! And if you’re like a journalist and you take it right down to the deadline, well, it’s very close, we’re down to the wire.

ROUGH: We are! And whether it’s deadlines or finish lines … I can say as a runner, the finish line matters. That last stride can make a big difference!

Every Supreme Court opinion we dissect, every report we bring in from the field, they depend on three things: time, skill, and tools. Those things cost money—travel miles, legal research, sound equipment, microphones, editors who polish a script so it’s clear in your earbuds at 5-AM.

EICHER: Right, so if The World and Everything in It has helped you think well about the news, today’s the last chance to say, “Keep going—do more of that.” Every gift matters … that last stride pushes high-quality, fact-based, Christ-honoring journalism into the year ahead.

ROUGH: WNG.org/JuneGivingDrive. Final day! We’d love to count you in. Let’s power through that finish line!

EICHER: First up on The World and Everything in It: Legal Docket. There is so much to cover, the final week of the Supreme Court term last week produced an enormous caseload. So many of them are of particular interest that we simply did not want to cram everything into a single day, and wind up giving you the superficial read on these cases that you can get anywhere.

We’ve divided up the work between our two main legal journalists, Jenny and Mary, and over the next four days, we’ll get everything covered without a fatiguing single day or two. So with that in mind, I’ve asked Mary Reichard to step in as well: good morning to you.

MARY REICHARD: Good morning. I like being called a legal journalist. So much better than being an illegal one.

EICHER: Tell a bit about what’s on your plate.

REICHARD: Yeah, I’m glad you did that. There were lots of opinions to read, not just in the number of cases, but the dissents and the concurrences. There’s a lot of reading between the lines, too, which I’ll say more about in a moment.

For me, I’m working on five decisions, including the birthright citizenship case, which really wasn’t about birthright citizenship, but about the separation of powers—which may in itself be of equal importance.

Then there’s the inmate on death row who wants his DNA tested. He won, but why he won is interesting. Also, a decision about the nondelegation doctrine—that’ll make your eyes glaze over—

EICHER: Yeah, but I noticed it’s about those taxes you pay on your phone bill, so that’s caught my attention!

REICHARD: Two others: One on sentencing criminal defendants and another on illegal aliens who overstay their visas.

But staying on immigration-related issues, the big “birthright citizenship” case I mentioned Trump v. CASA interpersonal sparks flew. The relationships among the justices and the Fourth of July fireworks flew early between Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Barrett utterly dismissed Justice Jackson’s bitter dissent as hypocritical—saying here’s a justice saying no one is above the law, and she ought to look in the mirror, in effect.

EICHER: Yeah, you know it’s going to be a zinger when it begins this way: Justice Jackson’s argument is, quoting here, “at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.” She went on—“Justice Jackson decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.” Continuing the quote: “Justice Jackson would do well to heed her own admonition: ‘[E]veryone, from the president on down, is bound by law.’ That goes for judges too.”

REICHARD: Hoo-boy. So I called up a friend who’s a former clerk to Justice Neil Gorsuch, someone who’s seen the Court from the inside. We’ve had him on before, Lael Weinberger, he’s now a law professor at George Mason, at the Scalia Law School. Just real quickly, here’s what he had to say about the sparks.

WEINBERGER: That line about an imperial executive doesn't justify an imperial judiciary? That is going to be a memorable encapsulation of this disagreement.

That’s tomorrow!

EICHER: Mary, thanks. I’ll let you get back to it.

REICHARD: Thanks!

EICHER: Now, Jenny, what’s on your plate today is the hugely significant Mahmoud case, dealing with parental rights in public education, and that one turned on the First Amendment freedoms for parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children. But quickly, what else are you working on?

ROUGH: A Texas law that requires porn websites to verify the ages of users, a case that asks if a state can block Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, and a case brought by Christian businesses who don’t want to pay for drugs that encourage high risk sex.

EICHER: With that, let’s jump in to Mahmoud versus Taylor and we begin in a children’s storybook.

LOVE, VIOLET: Mira was magnificent.

ROUGH: The book Love, Violet is about a little girl who wants to give a valentine to her crush, another little girl classmate named Mira.

LOVE, VIOLET: Suddenly Violet’s heart thundered like a hundred galloping horses … thumpity, thumpity, thumpity. … All day long Violet’s stomach lurched. What if Mira didn’t want her valentine? What if they never adventured?

The book is written for kids between the ages 4 and 8. And it’s one of five such books at issue in the case the Supreme Court ruled on last Friday.

EICHER: Back in 2022, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland introduced storybooks with gay and transgender themes into its elementary curriculum. But a group of parents raised religious objections.

In a 6 to 3 decision, the court ruled in favor of them. It will allow parents to opt-out their kids from the LGBTQ lessons. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

ROUGH: Sahar Smith was standing outside the court the day of the decision.

SMITH: I absolutely believe that parents are the first and foremost responsible for their children’s education, not government. So I’m grateful for the opinion. … I listened to oral arguments, and the type of books being pushed on the children … robs children of their innocence.

Others feel they’ve been robbed. Mark Eckstein is a gay parent with kids in the Montgomery County school system.

ECKSTEIN: I wasn’t surprised but I was really disappointed. I get religious freedom, and I get this idea that parents want to control and have a say in the education of their child. That swings both ways. … I want my parental rights.

Montgomery County is the most religiously diverse in the nation, it’s culturally diverse, too.

ECKSTEIN: We have gay principals, here we have a council member who’s openly gay. I go in, in third grade, fourth grade, me and my husband … so the kids talk about it. So this notion that in elementary school some of the parents don’t want these themes until they go to college, it’s just wrong.

EICHER: Before analyzing the opinion, let’s recap the facts: After Montgomery County’s schools introduced the storybooks, some parents got active.

They wanted to instill different beliefs in their kids: namely, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that biological sex reflects divine creation that sex and gender are inseparable and it doesn’t change.

TRIMBLE: This right of raising your children … is dear to the heart of those of us who are Christians. But it was the Muslim community that first raised the alarm on this.

ROUGH: David Trimble is an attorney and the president of the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington.

His organization’s been involved in this case from its early days.

TRIMBLE: Before there was ever a legal case, we were on the ground working with parents.

In addition to the Muslim parents, many other parents wanted to protect their kids from classroom instruction using the books. At first, the school board said okay, you can opt-out. But with so many parents making the request, it did an about-face.

TRIMBLE:  Students were required and not given, parents were not given the option of opting their children out of exposure to these materials. And the school made the claim these books aren’t really about sex education, they’re introducing real facets of life and culture.

The school board said the books were intended to teach respect and civility.

TRIMBLE: Those are certainly social behaviors we want to teach our children, but it doesn't have to be within the fabric of progressive ideology and sex related ideology.There's different ways to teach toleration and kindness and things of that nature. And I think it's disingenuous to say that there was not an ulterior aim by the school board to advance a progressive agenda.

EICHER: Over 1,000 parents signed a petition asking the school to restore the opt-outs. But the school dug in. The Muslim parents sued, and Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox parents joined with them.

What they sought was a preliminary injunction.

HASSON: An injunction is where people come to the court and they, and basically, you say, make them stop.

Mary Hasson is a lawyer with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

HASSON: Make them stop forcing our kids to be instructed in this material. And usually in a question of a preliminary injunction, the court is supposed to look and weigh certain things. It's supposed to ask, what's the likelihood that they're going to succeed?

In other words, the court has to ask: Are the parents likely to prevail in their argument that the school policy burdens their right to freely exercise their religion? The court thought they would.

HASSON: In the majority opinion, Justice Alito said the First Amendment protects religious freedom. And it's hard to imagine an expression of religious freedom that's greater than a parent's commitment to raise their children in their own religion. … So the state needs to respect that.

ROUGH: The court also weighed another significant aspect.

HASSON: Is the person who's seeking the injunction, in this case, the parents, are they going to suffer irreparable harm if they don't get it?

For this, the court relied heavily on a case from 1972: Wisconsin versus Yoder. Back then, the court said a law requiring school attendance until age 16 violated the religious beliefs of Amish parents. It said a high school environment would expose their kids to pressures, influences, and attitudes hostile to Amish beliefs. The court applied similar principles here.

HASSON: One of the things that Justice Alito kind of honed in on is that when you look at these books, it has normative purpose. It’s designed to help kids think a certain way, and that happens to be in direct conflict with their religious beliefs. When the state is promoting and instructing kids using materials and the discussion guides, et cetera, that are designed to shape the child's beliefs and values, and at the same time to minimize, reject, or tell them that the beliefs that they're learning at home are wrong—

EICHER: The damage that does rises to a level the law calls “irreparable harm.”

Here’s Justice Alito at oral argument talking about the message in the book Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, in which the uncle marries a man.

ALITO: The book has a clear message, and a lot of people think it's a good message, and maybe it is a good message, but it's a message that a lot of people who hold on to traditional religious beliefs don't agree with. I don't think anybody can read that and say, well, this is just telling children that there are occasions when men marry other men. Uncle Bobby gets married to his boyfriend, Jamie, and everybody's happy… 

But the school board argued the storybooks didn’t force kids to change beliefs. They simply exposed them to different beliefs. Justice Sotomayor made that point in her dissent. And also at oral argument.

SOTOMAYOR: I’m looking at the books. I’ve looked through all of them. They have two men … where they’re getting married. Is looking at the pictures, is there any affidavit from any parent, that merely looking at people getting married, holding hands, none of them are even kissing in any of these books, the most they’re doing is holding hands, that mere exposure to that is coercion?

ROUGH: But in his opinion, Justice Alito pointed out that younger kids are impressionable. They don’t tend to question authority figures, like teachers, who take up specific viewpoints.

HASSON: It's like the court finally recognized what a burden that is when your kids are in a classroom with a teacher they love, who's teaching them something deliberately that is intended, not just accidentally, but intended to undermine their beliefs because the school district has taken the viewpoint that these things are right, good, and should be celebrated.

Unlike high schoolers, elementary kids haven’t yet learned how to challenge widespread approval of certain beliefs.

EICHER: The court didn’t buy the school board’s argument that parents could put their kids in private school. Or homeschool.

Here’s what the Court did conclude: That subjecting kids to lessons that go against parents’ religious beliefs does burden their First Amendment rights. But that’s not the end of the analysis. The burden might be constitutional if it can survive strict scrutiny. It’s not easy, but not impossible, either: The school will have to show the no opt-out policy advances a compelling interest that was narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.

Alito and the majority didn’t think so. And by 6-to-3, the court granted the preliminary injunction.

ROUGH: Justice Sotomayor’s dissent raised the point that opt outs don’t work well in practice.

HASSON: One of the concerns of the dissent was, it's unworkable. So this is going have a chilling effect. In other words—

Instead of allowing opt-outs…

HASSON: They’re going to pull these books.

The opt-outs apply to the books in question and “similar books.”

Mark Eckstein … the dad with kids in the schools … says the school has already adopted a new curriculum

ECKSTEIN: We don’t use those books anymore. … They’re not banned, but they’re not used in the curriculum. We have a brand new curriculum. It’s different types of inclusion, it’s not these polarizing books. There’s a section on Sally Ride, who’s an LGBTQ American...

So what happens next? Unless the school district settles, the case will go back down to a lower court for trial, to determine whether the preliminary injunction should become permanent.

But for this case, the writing is on the wall. Here’s David Trimble again:

TRIMBLE: It really reinforces … you know, parental rights and religious freedom, their right to raise their children within their own faith tradition, teaching them their fundamental traditional values, is protected by the Constitution.

He adds this:

TRIMBLE: Look, if one group loses religious freedom, it affects us all. And religious freedom is something that is a precious and inalienable right granted to us by God. And we want to protect it for every person. It's rooted in our human dignity and that's for all of us.

And that’s today’s Legal Docket. More tomorrow.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER,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, Nick, Good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, let’s start with something we’ve never discussed before: the likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. You know the city well, and what we’re seeing is a candidate who’s not only openly socialist, but also promoting a suite of policies that would have been considered fringe not long ago—things like expanded rent control, government-run grocery stores, and free public transit.

The theory seems to be that the wealthy will foot the bill. I don’t want to be glib about it, but I do think this moment creates a good opportunity to talk about the economic implications of these ideas, especially rent control. So wherever you want to begin, I’d love to hear your perspective.

BAHNSEN: Well, look, on the political side, it will be interesting to see what does happen. There’s a pretty massive movement to try to avoid this disaster. Mathematically, if there were only one other candidate running against this gentleman, he would have no chance of winning. But there’s also now something that there wasn’t in the time of the primary, which is a lot of time and a lot of seriousness to actually draw attention to the very things you’re talking about—his policies and his record, things he believes—which would be totally unelectable in normal circumstances.

Nobody in the primary—Governor Cuomo and his campaign foolishly didn’t take him seriously—and that’s what happened. So I don’t know that it’s a political fait accompli, but I think the odds are that he could end up being the candidate.

I think the opportunity to talk about the economic side of it is very helpful. You know, a lot of the things you mentioned are not things he, as mayor, would have the authority to do. Some of them are in the gubernatorial jurisdiction. Some would require a whole city council vote. Nevertheless, just the basic idea of price controls—I didn’t support it when President Trump said he wanted to do it with prescription drugs. I didn’t support it when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris said they wanted to do it with mortgages. I don’t support it with Josh Hawley and Bernie Sanders saying they want to do it with credit card interest. I don’t support the mayor of New York saying he wants to do it with chicken and rice from a street cart.

All of these things come from the same economic fallacy, which is the belief that a disinterested third party should set prices in the name of some sort of social justice, and that that will work better than buyers and sellers freely transacting—who do have what we call skin in the game.

Nick, I’m very sorry to say this: nobody should fool themselves into saying that this is just the crazy ideas of a 33-year-old socialist candidate. This is becoming bipartisan—that the government saying what groceries should cost is a good idea. I’m against it at every level of government because I believe that, time and time and time again, history has shown—even things like rent control—we’re in desperate need of new housing product, and you disincentivize the construction of new product when you regulate price controls before a hammer has ever even been pulled out of the toolbox.

That’s the issue at play. You distort the market and you end up making worse the very problem you say you’re there to solve.

EICHER: Let’s dig into rent control specifically. Housing affordability is a huge issue in New York, and everyone knows how punishing the market is there—prices are just sky-high. The city already has a rent control regime in place, and as I understand it, Mamdani wants to go even further with it, not scale it back.

Can you walk us through how rent control actually functions, economically? What happens—just in layman’s terms—when government steps in to cap what landlords can charge? What are the downstream effects?

BAHNSEN: So, to take what could be a very complicated question and try to make it as simple as possible: the issue in New York is there’s actually two different things—there’s rent control and there’s rent stabilization. The problem with that is it fails to understand the economics of supply and demand, which is a basic law of economics.

The thing that pushes prices down is either lower demand or higher supply. Well, contrary to what a lot of people believe about New York City, it is an incredibly desirable place to live—jobs, the culture, the history. There’s just a lot that brings people to a city like New York. Media, technology, finance have chosen to make New York a significant hub for a reason. There’s literally millions of people that work there.

So the question, Nick, is what is going to drive prices lower when demand is not going to come down? It’s obviously supply. There are two curves. There is a great step in the right direction, because they’re overbuilt in a lot of office and hospitality. So there’s been a big movement to convert certain hotel properties and offices to housing.

Then there are things like this—where he, what he’s suggesting, this would-be mayor—is not just maintaining the rent controls that are in place on legacy properties but forcing rent control on all new property construction, which would kill new property construction. It would kill new conversions. That’s why the real estate sector is up in arms about this gentleman, because you really would hurt the cause of lower rent.

Now, ironically, he may end up being able to help the cause by hurting demand. But eroding demand as a way of getting rents down has not been a very successful strategy in Portland, Oregon, as of late—or in Detroit, Michigan, you know, over 10 years ago.

I think the basic economics, apart from the New York example of rent controls, which were tried nationally—wage controls, price controls—the Nixon administration caused it. It was a disaster in the 1970s. European countries have tried it. There’s no credible economist that believes this works economically, for the very fact that it manipulates the supply.

What is the reason we want to bring prices down? Because they’re high. Well, what also happens when there’s high prices? It attracts a lot of people that want to swim in that pool. You mean, if I have apartment buildings, there’s good prices there, so it incentivizes more production.

Similarly, when you go, “Well, eggs are too high” or “certain grocery items”—he wants the city to actually run grocery stores. City-owned and managed grocery stores. This is Soviet-style, Cuba-style economics.

Why do we not believe in the city running a grocery store? Because the city isn’t any good at it. When you don’t have a profit motive, you end up with very bad delivery of goods and services, and ultimately set taxpayer money on fire.

EICHER: Let me bring up one detail I heard about Mamdani’s grocery store plan. He’s proposed that these city-run stores wouldn’t have to pay taxes, which he frames as a cost-saving measure that would allow them to undercut private competitors.

Is there any economic case to be made for that? In other words, if the city eliminates some of its own costs, could it actually deliver cheaper food? Or is that just wishful thinking?

BAHNSEN: Well, first of all, let’s say it did work. Where’s the city going to replace that revenue? The city’s running major deficits anyway. You’re talking about sales tax—7, 8, 9 percent on certain products—so where are they going to replace the revenue?

But then, if the margins are super tight and you now have these two competing forces—on one hand, there’s lower sales tax; on the other, there’s substantially worse experience going to the store: worse employees, worse service, worse innovation—why not do that in every sector, if the city was qualified to do it?

The reason that we don’t want city-run grocery stores is because the city has a very few things it’s supposed to do. Most of us don’t believe they always do those things great. The subways are not run well. The MTA, the transportation function…

Whenever—like in California—they would talk about “Let’s have the state run banks and get in the mortgage business.” Why do I want a group that is running tens of billions of dollars of deficits, and messed up the delivery of unemployment checks to millions of people, and has more cybersecurity fraud done against it than any private business I’ve ever seen—why do I want them running a bank?

It would be very similar. Like, I run a financial services firm, and I do not run an art gallery. The greatest argument against me running an art gallery would be if I ever tried to do it.

EICHER: 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, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, June 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough. Last July we marked the hundredth anniversary of Eric Liddell’s gold medal performance in the 1924 Olympic Summer Games. This remarkable moment was memorialized in the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire.

EICHER: Today we revisit his remarkable life to mark another centennial: this one not on the track, but on the mission field. In 1925, Eric Liddell left behind athletic fame and set off for China as a missionary. He would serve there faithfully until his death in 1945.

Here is WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: On June 29th, 1925, Eric Liddell was heading back to China. He’d been born there, the son of missionaries. But left the country for boarding school at age six. Eric spent nearly all his youth separated from his parents, seeing them only occasionally when they’d return home on furlough.

Liddell loved athletics and made a name for himself on the rugby field and the track. He was fast, one of Scotland’s fastest. He earned a spot on the 1924 Olympic team where he won a gold medal…in an event that was not his best as he refused to run his preferred race on a Sunday.

About a year earlier, Liddell had quietly prayed—telling God that he wanted to serve him…but lacked a clear idea of how…or where. He became a “Christian campaigner”—or travelling evangelist—and his athletic reputation was good for drawing a crowd.

After the Olympic Games he continued speaking but started to contemplate returning to China…as a teacher.

PATRICIA RUSSELL:  He went with the London Missionary Society …on a four year contract, I guess, to teach science and mathematics.

Patricia Russell is Eric Liddell’s eldest daughter.

RUSSELL: It was sort of to see if he was a good person to be a missionary. I mean, everybody's not missionary stuff…

It turned out that Eric Liddell was “missionary stuff.” An excellent teacher, and preacher…still using athletics for outreach.

RUSSELL: And then at the end of six years, he went back to Edinburgh on furlough, and … he became the Reverend Eric Liddell, and …when that was finished, he went back as a missionary.

Liddell married another missionary and they served together in Northern China. They lived in the city of Tientsin, with Eric making frequent trips into the countryside for weeks at a time. They enjoyed life in the city and soon had expanded their family with the arrival of two daughters.

Then, war broke out between China and Japan in 1937:

NEWSREEL: Shanghai has fallen to Japan…

As the war dragged on, the Liddells returned home for furlough and struggled with what to do next. Eric decided to send his pregnant wife and children to Canada while he returned to China where things progressively got worse. He and his brother Rob worked in a missionary hospital in the rural countryside.

In 1943 the Japanese took over the mission station. Liddell was sent back to Tientsin and placed under house arrest. Eventually he was interned at the Weihsien Internment Camp—joining many other missionaries, businessmen, and other expats…1800 in total.

The former Olympian, science teacher, and evangelistic campaigner soon jumped into a new role: helping with the children…

92 year old John Hoyt was one of those kids:

JOHN HOYT: We kids loved him very much because he was so involved with us and with our activities, sports activities in particular.

He was committed to redeeming the time. … He was always keeping people's morale up and particularly with the kids because we were basically orphans. We didn't have our mums and dads with us.

Eric Liddell had had the world on a string after his 1924 gold medal victory…yet he offered a simple prayer asking God to use him…

Liddell’s daughter Patricia takes great comfort in knowing how God answered that prayer…

RUSSELL: Why wasn't he with us? Why wasn't he there? And then you hear their story and how he helped them and made such a difference to them. He was there for those children that had nobody. He was supposed to be there.

So many of his various life experiences suddenly came into focus in the cramped Japanese prisoner camp.

John Hoyt once again.

HOYT: He was always very modest about his gold medal. He really didn't want to push that. … I mean, it was by the grace of God he did what he did… but it didn't affect his spiritual life. His commitment to Christ and commitment basically to others, to a life of serving.

Life in the camp was hard, though not unbearable like the military prisoner of war camps to the south. But death was common—from exposure, illness, and malnutrition. In the winter of 1944 Eric Liddell got sick. Very sick. He succumbed to his illness on February 21st, 1945.

HOYT: It affected everyone because people loved him and just was amazed at his life and his modesty about what he had done in his athletics and his commitment for the people... But I think the whole camp mourned for him when he died because he had left such a mark.

Patricia Russell still remembers the day she learned of her father’s death.

RUSSELL: I was in grade four. I was nine, nearly 10, and we'd had a race, and I came first and I thought Daddy will be so pleased with me… So I came rushing home, and that's where my grandmother lived. … and I came in, I thought, gee, the house is quiet. There are people there…and there was mother sitting on the edge of the bed and Maureen and Heather weeping. What? They said: “Daddy's died.” Yeah, all these years, 80 years since then, but you know, for my mother, that was terrible.

When asked how he would sum up Eric Liddell’s life, John Hoyt returns to one of his favorite scenes from Chariots of Fire…

MOVIE CLIP: I feel God’s pleasure when I run…

HOYT: And I think that was sort of the way he lived—to feel God's pleasure in all that he did. And so the running was sort of incidental in a way... It was more to live for God's pleasure and show Christ's love to other people.

Eric Liddell was buried in the garden behind a Japanese officers’ quarters. A small wooden cross marked his grave. In 1991 the University of Edinburgh erected a memorial headstone at the former site of the internment camp. The inscription reads from Isaiah: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and
not be weary.”

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Mary Reichard returns with more analysis of last week’s Supreme Court decisions. And, a conversation with members of CrossPointe Community Church—where a security team stopped a gunman before he could harm the congregation. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

JENNY ROUGH, HOST: And I’m Jenny Rough.

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 Book of Revelation says: “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.’” —Revelations 19:6

Go now in grace and peace.

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