The World and Everything in It: March 1, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm David Holl. And along with my wife Carol, live in Carney, Nebraska we hear the call of the sandhill cranes. Thousands arrive to feast in the wetlands and fields surrounding the Platte River before heading to their nesting grounds in the Arctic Circle. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday: It’s Women’s History Month in a culture without a clue what a woman is. And: the tragedy of, and outrage over, the death of Laken Riley.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And IVF puts pro-life politicians in a tight spot. We’ll talk it over with John Stonestreet.

Also today: Augustine and science fiction. Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino talks about how the sequel to Dune reflects a world without grace.

PAUL: He who can destroy a thing has the real control over it.

And this month’s Ask the Editor with Paul Butler.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Texas wildfire » A catastrophic wildfire tearing across the Texas Panhandle is now the second-largest in U.S. history.

President Biden told reporters:

BIDEN: We’ve already had more than 500 federal personnel here working on fire suppression. That includes the deployment of more than 100 federal firefighters, and more are on the way.

The so-called Smokehouse Creek fire started on Monday, and it has already burned well over a million acres.

For perspective, that’s an area significantly bigger than the state of Rhode Island, and it’s large enough to stretch from New York City to Philadelphia.

One Texas resident said strong winds have been picking up the ashes and blanketing other nearby areas.

RESIDENT: It was absolutely unreal. We went through, I bet, 30 miles of what I can only describe as a lunar landscape — just absolute barren desert.

The flames are ravaging homes and cattle ranches and are now to blame for at least two deaths.

Trump and Biden border visits » Meantime, in South Texas the U.S.-Mexico border was the backdrop for dueling campaign appearances by President Biden and former President Trump.

In Eagle Pass, Trump took aim at the incumbent pointing to a series of recent headlines about crimes tied to migrant suspects.

TRUMP: Migrant crime, we call it Biden migrant crime, but that’s a little bit long, so we’ll just leave it. But every time you hear the term ‘migrant crime’ you know where that comes from.

He said the president’s policies — and record levels of illegal immigration since Biden took office are the reason.

But speaking in Brownsville Texas, President Biden shifted the blame back on Republicans for rejecting a recent Senate bill.

BIDEN: Here’s what I would say to Mr. Trump: Instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me, or I’ll join you, in telling Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill.

Many Republicans say the Senate bill would not fix the border crisis and might even make it worse. A small number of House lawmakers have been working on their own plan.

Recent polls indicate border security is now a top election year issue.

Government funding bill » On Capitol Hill …

AUDIO: On this vote, the yeas are 320. The nays are 99. The bill is passed.

Members of the House passed a short-term funding bill Thursday, very short term. It will fund the government for one week, averting a partial government shutdown that would have occurred tonight.

The Senate passed the bill a short time later.

AUDIO: The yeas are 77. The nays are 13, and the bill is passed.

That buys Congress a little more time to come together on a one-year funding package.

Leaders in both chambers appear to have little appetite for an election year shutdown.

Defense Secretary Austin Testifies » Hours earlier, inside a House hearing room:

AUDIO: [Gavel strike] Committee will come to order.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee grilled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The secretary checked into a hospital in January, and transferred his command without telling the president for several days.

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers:

ROGERS: The chain of command doesn’t work when the commander in chief doesn’t know who to call. That’s why we want to know who made the decision to withhold that information from the president.

Austin said no one intentionally kept the White House in the dark adding that he takes responsibility for the lapse. But he added:

AUSTIN: At no time during my treatment or recovery were there any gaps in authorities and there was no risk to the department's command and control.

Republicans say they’re not satisfied with the findings of an internal Pentagon review, which they say holds no one accountable for the incident.

Gaza aid convoy deaths » Dozens of Palestinians are dead in Gaza City after an incident around an aid convoy on Thursday when Israeli troops opened fire, saying they were under threat.

Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder:

RYDER: The situation highlights the tragic nature of this conflict. We’re of course very sad to hear about this loss of innocent lives.

There have been conflicting reports about what happened.

Israeli Defense Forces — or IDF — says 30 humanitarian aid trucks rolled into the city with a military escort.

The trucks came under fire and stopped. IDF officials say the crowd also approached soldiers in a tank nearby, and that troops fired warning shots, but when they were threatened, they fired at the approaching Palestinians.

Samantha Power is administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development:

POWER: Desperate civilians trying to feed their starving families should not be shot at.

The Hamas-run Palestinian health ministry claims IDF troops killed more than a hundred people.

Israel says only 10 people were shot by IDF soldiers and that most of the deaths were the result of pushing, trampling, and being run over by trucks.

PUTIN: [Speaking Russian]

Putin nuclear war threat » Vladimir Putin is once again threatening nuclear war. In a national address Thursday, he said if NATO moves Western troops into Ukraine, it could trigger a nuclear holocaust.

That comes after French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday he has not — and NATO should not — rule out sending military personnel to Kyiv to help with non-combat roles.

U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby told reporters:

KIRBY: President Biden has been crystal clear since the beginning of this conflict: There’ll be no U.S. troops on the ground in a combat role there in Ukraine.

Numerous other NATO leaders and member nations have said much the same.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Dune: Part Two.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 1st of March, 2024.

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

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

Time now for Culture Friday, and joining us is John Stonestreet. He’s president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning to you, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning. 

BROWN: Well, John, you may not realize it, but it's Women's History Month, 1st of March. So let me be the first to say Happy Women's History Month to you.

STONESTREET: Well, thanks. I’m a fan of women.

EICHER: To those who celebrate. Yes, yes.

BROWN: But you know, I went around the internet and found all kinds of curious misunderstandings. Here we go: A call to honor trans women during women's history month; another site giving us the first ever black trans woman elected to public office, the first Native American trans woman, etc, etc. There's so much of this that I wonder whether it's worth the effort, because we can't agree on the answer to the question, what is a woman? But for real, are we heroic just to insist on honoring the stories and contributions of XX chromosome persons?

STONESTREET: Well, I think we shouldn’t throw away Women’s History Month just because we live in a cultural moment that strangely doesn’t seem to know what a woman is. And of course, what we have seen then, is the great irony, the tragic irony that in the name of honoring and elevating women, but doing it in such a way to basically subjectivize womanhood to just nothing more than experience. Well, then women’s spaces have been lost, women’s privacy’s have been lost, women’s opportunities have been lost.

And it’s one of the best lines by the way, from Eric Metaxas in the opening of his book, Seven Women, in which he walks through their stories and says, look, a lot of times we talk about women being great, because they act like men. But the idea here is is whether we’re not able to recognize it or not, whether we’re so kind of ideologically blinded or not, whether we’re just denying what is true or not, God created his image, male and female. And so when women are built into reality, we might deny it over and over and over, but when you see it, you know it. And that was what he said, in a sense, at the opening of his book Seven Women. And I’ll give you one more reason it’s worthy is because Christianity was the leading voice in acknowledging the rights, the dignity, the goodness in and of who women are.

You know, this is very different than, you know, various thinkers throughout history who basically said women are, you know, not fully developed men, or women are, you know, lesser than in kind of the human value scale. Of course, Christianity, women are the first to see the risen Jesus. We were just reading in our family the other day about the woman who had the years-long issue with her health and the flow of blood and, and the honor and dignity that Jesus shows her. This is really unparalleled in ancient cultures. And what’s great about it is it’s not this kind of pseudo pro-woman feminism that purports to be pro-woman, but then turns around and actually lays the tracks for ideas that are going to undermine the dignity of women. Jesus is the one who was at creation. Jesus is the one who was there when Adam was put to sleep. Jesus is the one who was there with the Father. And God, you know, pronounced what he made not just good, but very good.

So yeah, we should keep doing—I don’t know if we need to do it this month, we should probably do it more than that, right. But yeah, we shouldn’t give it up just because the world has lost track of what a woman is.

That’s right. I love good thing, “When a man has found a wife, he has found a good thing.” That’s what the Bible says. Right? That’s right. I agree.

BROWN: Well, I’m sure you heard the story of Laken Riley. She’s the 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was murdered, allegedly, by an illegal immigrant. I tell you, the story is such a heartbreak and such an outrage if everything checks out.

But the New York Times did report the alleged perpetrator had in fact been caught and released, presumably for later asylum processing. Evidently, he’d gotten into trouble with the law in New York and in Georgia, where he ended up, but nothing happened until he—and I have to keep saying this—allegedly committed murder.

Now, John, this young lady’s story is going to be Exhibit A on border policy for sure. But is there a way to talk about the tragedy apart from border politics? Are there other issues Christians ought to be concerned about here, or is it right to make this about the border?

STONESTREET: Well, you know, it’s hard, because we don’t want to instrumentalize any life. We don’t want to actually take and basically care about the incredible loss that this family now is experiencing just because it serves a political and ideological goal. And I think that is the danger for those on the right that are using this. At the same time, I mean, look, we talked about this several weeks ago about immigration policy, about the crisis at the southern border, and about how, in the name of tolerance and diversity and acceptance and even to hyper-import kind of Christian language, Biblical language that’s oftentimes thrown into this about welcoming the sojourner and all this sort of stuff, when we take some of these verses, in my opinion, largely out of context as a way of justifying kind of policy initiatives that have basically proven to be ineffective, that in and of itself becomes cruel.

In other words, I remember this great line from the late great philosopher Ron Nash, when he was dealing specifically with charity from a Christian worldview. And he says, you know, “We have to help the poor, not only with our hearts, but with our heads.” And whenever we do policy that impacts real lives, it has to be done with our hearts, and it also has to be done with our heads. And when you have policies that don’t actually acknowledge the fallenness of the human condition, the vulnerabilities of a system that then can be taken advantage of by people with bad intention, and that people do have bad intention, even if they belong to one of these so-called marginalized groups.

See, that’s what’s happened is this critical theory mood has made us essentially put people into categories, and then assume that people are inherently good or inherently evil based on those categories, rather than what we actually know about the human condition. And then when you see that happen on scale, like we see with the crisis at the southern border, and then these sorts of consequences are going to come of that. So I think it’s legitimate to talk about the fact that this is one that shouldn't have happened. It shouldn’t have happened if we had common sense policies. It doesn't mean that even if we did, there wouldn't have been something like this slip through the cracks and a horrible tragedy, evil happens, and you can’t do the kind of the one-to-one transactional view. But at the same time, it is absolutely valid to say that this is a policy born of a wrong understanding of the human condition. And you see the consequences in the real world. Because even if you deny what’s true, we still do have a real world out there, and this is a story of that.

EICHER: Well, John, I was a listener last week, and (*sneeze* God bless you), I resonated with your comments on in vitro fertilization, IVF, right after that monumental decision in the Alabama Supreme Court. And as you know, developments have come in fast and furious. And I’d like to have a follow up with you. But let me first remind the listener today what you said last week talking about the conflict, this ruling called attention to where IVF is concerned, you said, “If you’re saying that this is a child, and therefore these individuals who destroyed it are guilty, you got to do something with the ones who put them in the freezer in the first place.”

And this is exactly what’s making politicians run for the tall grass, run for the hills, whatever you like, and pro-abortion politicians, they are in hot pursuit, because the consistent pro-life view on this, on IVF, is not where you're going to find the political majorities. Even the broad majorities for at least some restrictions on abortion availability, the same folks are not necessarily with you on IVF.

Case in point, by Friday afternoon, you had former President Trump on social media saying we’ve got to carve out IVF. We’ve got to keep that legal. The Republican Party putting out talking points for its candidates warning them, make sure you say we’re in favor of a fix for IVF. And then the Democrats, they’re coming back and saying, “Just a minute, you want to protect life at conception, you want to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is the logical conclusion. If you want to protect IVF you got to bring back Roe.”

Now all of this is to say there’s a lot of educational work, a lot of persuasion still to do here for the pro life movement, because it’s way out of step with public opinion. And we’re hearing that.

STONESTREET: No, and of course that shouldn't surprise us whenever we find ourselves against public opinion in a culture like ours that has detached from God, detached from morality, detached from kind of the only source for human dignity, in which sex and marriage and childbirth are really treated as activities of adult happiness, as opposed to anything kind of inherently connected to the way God designed and purposed us as individuals. Now look, there are ways to create embryos to in vitro fertilization that do not lead to “excess embryos.” But let's just stop for a second and say, we now use the phrase “excess embryos.” Can you imagine using the phrase excess toddlers, within a family, so we have to do something about them? The fact of the matter is what the judge has said is that these embryos have to count as people. This has created a conflict in the law, and it has revealed the conflict that is at the heart of conservative politics when it comes to abortion. But you know, look, Nick, you know, we’re all wondering — anybody that is paying close attention, including with President Trump running for office and others — we’re all wondering, what does it mean, really, that they are pro-life? The policies from President Trump during his first tenure as president, were pro-life. The results were pro life, the protection of preborn lives. That’s good news. He waffled on this almost immediately when it came to the IVF. So the question is, is there a grounds for consistency here? And the fundamental question is not clear for those who have seen this as more of an issue of political expedience than one of principle. As I said, last week, I’m thankful that this conflict is now in the law, and it will have to be dealt with to some degree, right? It’s better than when we pretend like there's not a conflict. This was a decision that’s better than no decision. But it’s going to create some legal issues in Alabama, and hopefully beyond that. We’re going to have to go through it. This cat's out of the bag. To say like, “Well, we we can’t put a stop to it.” I mean, if freezing embryos is like employing prison camps, can you imagine after World War Two, we would just say “Oh, you know, the Japanese internment camps, I know, they may be a bad idea, but let’s go on with them?” No, we’d never say that, right? We're lacking that sort of ethical clarity about that fundamental question. What is it that we are destroying? What is it, the lives that we’re killing?

EICHER: All right, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, thanks. I hope you have a great weekend. 

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 1st. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: one of the most anticipated sequels of 2024 makes its way into theaters this weekend.

When the film Dune came out in 2021, it was held out as one of the best science-fiction epics of all time. The movie grossed more than 400 million dollars worldwide.

EICHER: That was a pretty impressive feat considering theaters were still in the grips of the pandemic and Warner Bros. put the film on its streaming service the same day it came out in theaters.

The movie wowed critics and fans and ended on a bit of a cliff hanger—building some high expectations. Does the second installment meet them?

Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: It’s time for Dune fans’ long awaited return to the desert planet Arrakis.

Dune: Part Two arrives in theaters this weekend, concluding Denis Villeneuve’s screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic science-fiction novel.

In the last movie, House Atreides had been all but wiped out by the evil Harkonnens who desire to control the universe’s most valuable commodity… spice, the psychotropic dust that makes interstellar travel possible.

Dune: Part Two picks up where the last movie left off. Paul and his mother, the Lady Jessica, have fled into Arrakis’s desert wasteland hoping to find sanctuary with the planet’s native inhabitants known as Fremen.

STILGAR: Don’t try to impress anyone. You are brave. We all know that.

The desert is a harsh place. Besides the scorching heat and lack of water, enormous sandworms swallow humans and vehicles whole. Paul and Jessica must learn the ways of the Fremen to survive, and the first third of the movie depicts their attempts to gain acceptance by these fiercely independent people.

STILGAR: Nothing fancy.

PAUL: Nothing fancy.

STILGAR: I am serious. Nothing fancy, or you will shame my teaching.

PAUL: I won’t shame you. I understand.

When the wicked Harrkonens try to wipe out the planet’s Fremen population, Paul rallies his new allies to exact revenge for the fall of House Atreides.

PAUL: May thy knife chip and shatter.

Most of the cast returns for this sequel. Timothee Chalamet plays Paul as a young man who grows into his role as a reluctant messiah. Rebecca Ferguson is Paul’s calculating mother who wants to see him fulfill his destiny more than he does. Javier Bardem plays Stilgar, one of the Fremen leaders, and he brings some surprising comic relief to an otherwise somber franchise. Zendaya, as Paul's love interest, gets much more screen time than she did in the first installment.

CHANI: Here. We’re equal. Men and women alike. What we do, we do for the benefit of all.

PAUL: Well, I’d very much like to be equal to you.

We also get some newcomers in this film. Austin Butler joins the film as Feyd-Rautha, the talented, yet depraved scion of House Harkonnen. Christopher Walken plays the desperate emperor of the universe, and Florence Pugh his enigmatic daughter.

PRINCESS IRULAN: What if Paul Atreides were still alive?

MOTHER MOHAIM: Enough. This must not come out. Even to your father’s ears.

Dune: Part Two is rated PG-13. Like the first installment, this is a war movie, so there’s plenty of violence… much of it up close and personal. And the bad language is pretty mild compared to other PG-13 movies. Part Two includes a little more sensuality than the first film, but Villeneuve shows some restraint. We see two lovers lying together, but they’re only filmed from the neck up.

SHISHAKLI: Hey, Muad'Dib. [speaking Fremen]

I have a few minor quibbles with the film. Since these movies take place over a matter of months rather than years, Villeneuve showed his willingness to depart from the novel. To be honest, I wish he had departed a little more. Dune 2 is two hours and 45 minutes long, and I think Villeneuve could have improved the pacing by cutting Austin Butler’s character from the story. I know Dune purists will find that suggestion heretical, but it would have made for a more cohesive movie. On the whole though, I think Dune: Part Two is a worthy follow up to the first movie, which was probably the best film of 2021. Villeneuve is actually planning a third installment based on the second novel in the series to complete Paul’s story.

STILGAR: Shai-Hulud decides today if you become Fremen. Or if you die.

Dune is an epic adventure, but it’s also a morality tale. It’s about the dangers of co-opting religion for political power. Paul is destined to become the Fremen messiah, but he knows the prophecies he’s fulfilling are political fictions. He hates what he’s becoming, but he becomes it anyway. How else can he stop the Harkonnens?

I doubt Frank Herbert had Augustine of Hippo in mind when he wrote Dune, but the book’s themes resemble the fifth-century Christian bishop’s critique of a world without grace. In Dune, the elites manipulate the common man with their prophecies. Ancient Rome was the same way with the educated classes promoting a civic religion to help control the population. Augustine also says the Romans didn’t possess real virtue. Rather they possessed splendid vices that kept even worse wickedness in check. Paul Atreides is cut of the same cloth. He must embrace his role as a dark messiah to thwart the even greater wickedness of the Harkonnens. In a world without grace, vengeance is possible, but redemption is not.

PAUL: He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday March 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, Ask the Editor. Today, a few recent observations from listeners about the way we talk. Here is WORLD Radio Executive Producer Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: A number of emails we couldn’t squeeze into last week’s Listener Feedback segment all include variations on a perennial complaint: people talk funny. It’s true. We do.

Sometimes our elocution missteps stem from how we were raised. Perhaps you grew up like me thinking “snuck” was the proper past-tense form of the word “sneak.” It wasn’t until college when I met the woman who is now my wife that I learned that there were two types of people in the world—those who sneaked by—and those who didn’t. Whew! Glad I snuck into her life!

Well, here at WORLD we refer to the AP style guide as a starting point for questions like these, and AP says “the preferred past tense of sneak is sneaked.” Adding: “Do not use the colloquial snuck.” So as an editor, I do what I can to make sure those don’t sneak through.

The online Merriam Webster dictionary isn’t quite as hard-nosed about it. It explains: “snuck began to be used as an alternative past tense form in the 1800s, and is now very common.” Essentially saying: “get over it. People use it.”

So that brings me to last month’s emails. One listener pointed out a recent diction violation when one of our reporters mispronounced “realtors” and “realty”—inserting an additional vowel in both words. After hearing from quite a number of listeners, our reporter said she was glad to finally learn the proper pronunciation of those words she had said incorrectly for much of her life. I confessed to her that I still struggle with the word “nuclear.” Even when I try to say it correctly, it comes out like I’ve got marbles in my mouth—which some of you have written in to point out. So I try to use “atomic” whenever I can to avoid the word altogether.

But sometimes the pronunciation issues are less cut and dry.

Even though I was born in the second month of the year, I’m glad to see “February” in the rear view mirror. It’s a tough one to say. Some people say “Feb-u-ary” others say “February.” One listener insisted that we eliminate the sloppy pronunciation that she hears.

Let me just say, if these sorts of variations in our speech from time to time bother you or distract you, I’m sorry about that. But here’s where we come down. We agree with the saying that comes from our voice coach Jessica Hansen. There are lots of different flowers in the garden. Not everyone needs to say everything exactly the same way. Let each flower bloom. We try to have lots of grace and make room for regionalisms, common usages, and physical limitations.

My wife and I had a question we’d ask our kids when they were younger, and I think it’s a good reminder here, “Is it more important to be right, or to be loving?” Of course those aren’t the only two options. We can be both, but that’s the point. Be right, and be loving.

Jesus was full of grace and truth. As His followers with His Spirit within us, let us be characterized by that as well. And let me suggest that as Solomon reminds us in Proverbs 19:11, it’s ok to overlook an offense once in a while. Resist the temptation to go nuke-u-ler and correct everyone when they say something that you know isn’t quite right.

In the meantime, we’ll also strive to be as accurate as possible.

For WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

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

Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Emma Perley, Mary Reichard, Leah Savas, Bonnie Pritchett, Daniel Darling, Leo Briceno, Hunter Baker, Onize Ohikere, Andrew Walker, Clara York, Mary Muncy, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Special thanks to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Kent Covington, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

Thanks also to our breaking news interns: Tobin Jacobson, Johanna Huebscher, and Alex Carmenaty.

And the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producer is Harrison Watters.

Our Senior producer is Kristen Flavin and Paul Butler is Executive producer.

Additional production assistance from Benj Eicher, Lillian Hamman, Carolina Lumetta, Emily Whitten, and Bekah McCallum.

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

Jesus said, “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” —Luke chapter 21 verses 27 and 28.

Worship with brothers and sisters in Christ in Church this weekend, and Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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