The World and Everything in It: March 14, 2025

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday … a new paint job for Black Lives Matter Plaza … a proposed workforce reduction for the Department of Education … and the big abuse scandal among Southern Baptists … that wasn’t.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by for Culture Friday.

And later …

DAFFY: Why thith is jutht the opportunity we’ve been waiting for! Whoo hoo!

Looney Tunes makes its cinematic debut.

And metaphor meets malaprop—because when it comes to Word Play, you’ll always find George Grant burning both ends of the midnight oil.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 14th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Schumer to advance funding bill » At the Capitol, senators up against a midnight deadline to pass a government funding bill to avert a government shutdown.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday he's ready to start the process today of considering a Republican-led stopgap spending bill.

Democrats had been holding out … demanding language to limit the power of DOGE, led by Elon Musk, to audit government spending.

PUTIN: [Speaking Russian]

Ukraine: Russia response » Russia’s Vladimir Putin says he agrees in principle with a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.

PUTIN: [Speaking Russian]

But he said certain provisions still need to be ironed out … and more discussions are needed, including with President Trump.

At the White House, Trump welcomed Putin’s response, expressing guarded optimism …

TRUMP:   He put out a very promising statement, but it wasn't complete. And yeah, I'd love to meet with him or talk to him. But we have to get it over with fast.

Ukraine has already accepted the proposal from the U.S.

Putin said he wants to ensure that Ukraine does not use a ceasefire as a chance to rearm … and he added that there must be a mechanism in place to control any breaches of the truce.

NATO chief at White House » President Trump spoke as he hosted NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House.

Rutte praised President Trump for motivating other members of the alliance to step up defense spending. He said what we’ve seen in recent weeks is—quote—“staggering.”

RUTTE:  The Europeans committing to a package of 800 billion defense spending. The Germans now potentially up to half a trillion extra in defense spending. And then, of course, you had Keir Starmer here, the British Prime Minister and others, all committing to much higher defense spending.

Trump on Greenland » During the meeting, President Trump again expressed his desire to make Greenland a U.S. territory.

TRUMP:  We really need Greenland for national security. It's very important. You know, we have a couple of bases on Greenland already. And we have quite a few soldiers. And maybe you'll see more and more soldiers go there. I don't know.

The president questioned whether the autonomous territory is rightly a part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Trade war » Trump also said Thursday that the U.S. is—quote—“not going to bend” on new trade tariffs. He argued that America has been ripped off by friend and foe alike in lopsided trade arrangements.

And he threatened a 200% tariff on imports of European wine and spirits … in response to the EU’s proposed 50% tax on U.S. whiskey.

That rattled Wall Street, sparking a selloff. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says … this is about the big picture.

BESSENT:  I'm less concerned about the short term. I think we've had a big unwind and the tariffs, we've got strategic industries we've got to have. We want to protect the American worker that a lot of these trade deals haven't been fair.

Trump officials say the economy is heading in the right direction.

The White House is distributing a fact sheet highlighting the fact that inflation cooled in February for the first time in five months. And the average price of things like eggs and gas are dropping.  

EPA Regulation Rollback » EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says his agency is about to drop the ax on dozens of Biden-era rules.

ZELDEN:  Today, I'm pleased to make the largest deregulatory announcement in U. S. history.

Zeldin says his team plans to roll back 31 regulations that restrict power plants, oil and gas production, manufacturing, and more …

ZELDEN:  EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars.

Democrats call the rollbacks reckless and insist that they’ll cost Americans and the world far more in the long run.

SOUND: [Airstrike aftermath]

Israeli airstrike » Syrians inspected the damage on Thursday … after an Israeli airstrike hit a residential building on the outskirts of Damascus. Three people were reportedly injured.

SYRIAN RESIDENT: [Speaking Arabic]

One member of the terror group Islamic Jihad in Syria … says the strike hit the home of one of his group's members. He called the action blatant Israeli aggression…

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the home was actually the Damascus headquarters of Islamic Jihad.

Netanyahu said of the reason for the strike … that Israel has a clear policy—quote—“whoever attacks us or plans to attack us, we strike them.”

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig have to save the world in a new movie from Looney Tunes. Collin Garbarino has a review.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 14th of March.

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.

It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet … president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, let’s start with the Southern Baptist Convention—and the big sexual-abuse investigation. The Nashville Tennessean reports this week that a two-and-a-half-year federal investigation into alleged abuse has ended without additional criminal charges. Former SBC pastor Matt Queen pled guilty—but not for abuse. His crime was to lie to the FBI about document destruction. Meanwhile, our friend, journalist Megan Basham, says this outcome simply shows there was no “abuse apocalypse” in the SBC, contra the reports, that the crisis was overstated. What’s your take on all this?

STONESTREET: Well, I do think the sense in which this crisis was overstated is as if there was something about the Southern Baptist convention that made it unique among all the other institutions made and populated by fallen humans.

The guilt that was assumed on behalf of the Southern Baptist convention, was directly connected with their advancement of certain ideas. These ideas that were assumed by critics to be harmful then was necessarily used as obvious proof that you were going to uncover something dramatic and drastic here.

It’s the game plan we see from the left by and large, and this time it was a game plan that was employed by left and left-of-center Christians.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been incidents of abuse in Southern Baptist churches, of course; that there haven’t been cover-ups, of course. But the scale that suddenly this was going to be something that was found that was unprecedented in human history made an assumption that really is a critical-theory assumption: that if you’re on the wrong side of these ideas, then you’re going to be guilty—because your ideas are really that bad. Your ideas politically supporting particular candidates or a view of women in ministry or any one of these things that were kind of all strung together and used essentially as the justification to go after this sort of thing.

I think this whole investigation and this whole story points to two things. Number one is that Christians really do self-flagellate. We do.

We have an awareness of our sin and we talk about that, and we want to hold our own institutions accountable. Human nature shows that as long as we do that well and a lot of times we don’t do that well and when individuals have unaccountable positions of authority and power, they will try to protect that. All that’s part of the story, but it’s all part of the human condition, nothing unique there for Southern Baptist.

But the other thing is that there’s something built into Christians and Christian communities where we are willing to admit fault. You don’t have that sort of same thing—and I’m using that on a very grand scale—you don’t have that at the same degree when it comes to something like public schools, when it comes to something like government overreach or government abuse and corruption. It’s not built into the ideas and then for built into the system.

So this isn’t unlike the nation of Canada going on this huge hunt for mass graves at religious schools who were coopted by the government to take care of native children, and none were found. The reputational hit is hard in those cases. It’s hard to recover what everyone then assumes happened.

But of course, Christians believe that humans are made in the image of likeness of God and every single one is infinitely valuable, so the reputation of a denomination is still worth questioning for the sake of children.

I know there’s a lot there and a little bit of time, but to me, all of those things seem to be huge factors.

BROWN: Over in Washington, D.C., city workers have painted over the giant “Black Lives Matter” lettering on what used to be known as BLM Plaza. The organization’s X account posted, “Painting over a street won’t change a [blank] thing.” That’s a cryptic comment. Are they saying a coat of paint won’t stop them … or are they saying the original BLM paint job didn’t change anything? It’s an odd thing to say.

STONESTREET: Well, yeah. I’m wondering which way that was intended as well. Like in the sense of painting over this won’t stop the movement or painting over this, you know, won’t do a thing to overturn the corruption that has been exposed in the BLM organization.

That, again, gets to the heart of why this framework, this critical-theory mood, this critical-theory framework is such a terrible framework for determinant morality.

If you assume that because of anything other than the human condition and human character that moral guilt should be assigned, you’re going to misread the situation. So we have an organization that could do no wrong because they had claimed the oppressed status doing an awful lot of things wrong—and getting really rich by doing an awful lot of things wrong. We also have the corruption that it brought to things like education, to things like corporate America, and we have seen in the last several months, a dramatic departure from those things.

Just this week, Chase Bank announced that they are no longer going to be canceling organizations that are deemed to be on the wrong side of some of these issues. So good for them to make that change. We’ve talked about how Target changed their DEI policies and all the other things that are associated with this.

In a sense, I guess that statement that painting over this street in DC really won’t change a thing because it won’t change the actual human condition. But hopefully it is a mark that some things have changed, which is the tyranny of this really bad idea.

EICHER: Before we go, I want to talk about the U.S. Department of Education. It just announced layoffs affecting nearly half the workforce—part of President Trump’s stated plan eventually to close the department. Education Secretary Linda McMahon says it’ll free up resources for students and teachers—but union officials complain this undermines public education. John, what do you think? Is the Education Department fixable? Should it be scaled back or even shut down completely, as the president wants—and if so, what happens next?

STONESTREET: Well, I think it is endable and I think that’s really where this is headed. Whether it’s reformable in between now and then is going to be another question.

But really, what you have is this sense—and that’s the outrage that you’re hearing in response—you’re not really hearing any outrage based on facts or evidence. You’re hearing excuses.

The New York Times covered this in a podcast this week about, you know, the history of the Department of Education. It was so selective and it really just missed the fundamental point, which was this was an experiment started by President Carter and it has failed.

But part of this is this kind of cultural narrative that you’re never supposed to critique anyone associated with education. You’re never supposed to look and say, “this isn’t working.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because it is an odd reality, especially when it comes to teachers. We’re all supposed to assume that all teachers have the best interests of the students at heart and in mind, that they’re really good at their job, that they’re victims of low pay and high hours and hard work, and all that sort of stuff.

You know, I think that we went through this phase when I was a kid where we started to say, you know what, everyone needs a participation trophy and the teachers started to believe this about themselves—and that should never be challenged. Look, I have family members that are educators and a lot of them do great jobs. (All my family members do great jobs. Let me tell you that.)

But I’m just going to tell you this. There’s a lot of educators that aren’t good at their job. And some of it’s not their fault.

It’s because they went to college and university and they learned how to do quote unquote education from people who didn’t know themselves how to do education that taught them instead how to do experimental social conditioning on children and that’s what they’ve been playing out.

The whole thing is built on this thing that I think at the end of the day, the secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s trying to undo, which is that this is fundamentally the government’s responsibility and the parents aren’t welcome or they’re only welcome on our terms.

That gets it completely backwards.

Children belong to parents. Sometimes parents don’t show up. Sometimes parents don’t do a good job. Sometimes parents don’t teach their kids to behave. That makes it really hard for the teachers in the classroom still doesn’t change that all things considered equal.

It’s the government that’s been invited into this process and probably doesn’t belong. Local officials have more of a place there certainly than federal officials, but it’s not the parents who are the unwelcome guest here. You’ve got to flip that whole mentality completely around and hopefully that will be at the heart at some level of the sort of control that the Department of Ed wields—and, by the way, it’ll go a long way to accomplishing the goal of cutting out government corruption and especially government waste. Clearly this has not been a successful experiment since President Carter imagined it.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 14th. 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: classic cartoon characters on the big screen.

EICHER: Looney Tunes has been delighting audiences for almost a century … with slapstick violence and witty repartee.

I am one of the generations of Americans who grew up on these animated classics, so it’s a little surprising that the franchise has never produced a fully animated feature film that was more than just a compilation.

BROWN: This weekend, that changes. Arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino now on the new film The Day the Earth Blew Up.

COLLIN GARBARINO: When I was young, Looney Tunes and its carrot-chomping hero Bugs Bunny, seemed like the faster, brasher alternative to Disney’s Mickey Mouse and friends. I could expect break-neck chases and falling anvils served up with plenty of sass.

Most of the Looney Tunes shorts I watched had been created decades before, but I didn’t really notice because they possessed a timeless quality. Now, Warner Bros. Animation is offering a new spin on those old classics. The Day the Earth Blew Up stars Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. It’s an engaging 91-minute homage to the science-fiction B-movies of the 1950s.

The film begins with the odd couple Porky and Daffy living in a dilapidated farmhouse.

PORKY PIG: Today’s our annual home standards review.

DAFFY DUCK: Ah, yes… The good old annual home standards review. What is that again?

PORKY PIG: [sigh]

The two friends are struggling to bring their home up to code to avoid its condemnation by the city, and while Porky is a conscientious sort of fellow who works with a plan.

DAFFY DUCK: And me… I’m just plain loony.

His looniness put their home improvements in jeopardy.

The situation becomes even more dire when a UFO crashes into their home, destroying the roof. With a city-imposed deadline looming, Porky and Daffy need a new roof fast, but they can’t afford to hire a roofer. They need some quick cash to save their home.

PORKY PIG: There is one thing we can do.

DAFFY DUCK: Wait for a stimulus check?

PORKY PIG: No. Get a job.

DAFFY DUCK: A job? You mean like work?

Their quest for gainful employment has its share of hiccups—most of which are brought on by Daffy’s erratic behavior. But things begin looking up for the pals when they meet a new friend.

PETUNIA PIG: Hi. I’m Petunia Pig. Nice to meet you.

DAFFY DUCK: That indecisive scatter brains over there is my BFF Porky Pig.

PORKY PIG: Uh, hi.

Petunia Pig is a scientist at the local gum factory, and she gets Porky and Daffy jobs on the production floor.

This zany adventure kicks into high gear when Daffy discovers an alien plot at the gum factory to turn the world’s population into mindless zombies. Will Daffy and Porky be able to save the world by thwarting an extraterrestrial mastermind? Or will the unpredictable Daffy gum it up again?

ALIEN: Someone stop that loony duck!

It might seem odd that Looney Tunes’ first 100 percent animated theatrical feature-length film doesn’t include the franchise’s signature character Bugs Bunny, but the film wasn’t originally intended for cinemas. Warner Bros. Animation originally developed The Day the Earth Blew Up as fodder for the Max streaming service. But parent company Warner Bros. Discovery started prioritizing profits over subscriber growth, which led to the film’s theatrical release.

DAFFY DUCK: Why this is just the opportunity we’ve been waiting for! Whoo hoo!

There’s a risk in taking Looney Tunes characters whose natural habitat is the 10-minute sketch and asking them to carry a feature length film. But the filmmakers of The Day the Earth Blew Up managed to craft a story that doesn’t wear thin, while cramming in the slapstick gags and action sequences set to music that audiences have come to expect.

The movie is rated PG for the kinds of things that have characterized Looney Tunes throughout its 95 years: cartoon violence and rude humor. Characters get pummeled, launched, run over, and exploded. There’s also a number of jokes involving derrières. And Daffy engages in some unintentional double entendre that feels like a 21st-century update meant to replace the kinds of mildly risqué moments that sometimes popped up in the classic cartoons.

What hasn’t been updated is the visual style, which takes its inspiration from the Golden Age of Warner Bros. Animation. The Day the Earth Blew Up proves that what was once old has become new again. Its 2D hand-drawn style manages to feel both refreshing and nostalgic at the same time.

PORKY PIG: Daffy, I need you to go down there and fix this.

DAFFY DUCK: But Porky, you know I can’t. I always make things worse.

PORKY PIG: And that’s exactly what we need.

The film isn’t merely pleasant to look at. It has a genuinely appealing story. We sympathize with Porky who desperately looks for ways to minimize Daffy’s chaos—and who also hopes to impress the lovely Petunia. But we also sympathize with Daffy who’s hurt when he discovers how others view him. The relational arc, coupled with an out-of-this-world plot twist make The Day the Earth Blew Up a madcap good time.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

It’s that time of year again … when we start accepting applications to our annual WORLD Journalism Institute program for college students and recent graduates interested in journalism careers.

EICHER: If you have a young person in your home interested in journalism this is a great opportunity to see what it’s like … two weeks to learn first hand from our reporters and editors how we approach covering the news professionally … how we do sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth.

Thanks to generous donors, we offer this program without charge to the students.

BROWN: Without charge, but not without challenge. This is a competitive program and it’s not easy to get in. Once you do get in … it just gets harder. But … no pain, no gain.

The course runs from May 15th through May 31st on the campus of Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa … we always have more applicants than we have classroom space … and the deadline is just two weeks away. Friday, March 28th. The process does require a bit of writing, so don’t put it off … apply today at WJI.WORLD. We’ll also put a link in today’s transcript and show notes as well.

EICHER: So grab the bull by the horns—or better yet, in the spirit of Word Play this month, grab the headline by the deadline! Here’s George Grant.

GEORGE GRANT: A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that compares one thing to another for rhetorical effect. Metaphors provide literary descriptions, can serve as figures of speech, and sometimes end up as tropes, idioms, and cliches.

A malaphor is a blend of malapropism and metaphor. It is when we use two or more unrelated metaphors into a single muddled, nonsensical, or garbled expression—usually with comical effect. Formally known as a catachresis or eggcorn, a malaphor is what we more commonly call a mixed idiom or a mixed metaphor. Examples abound:

“Every cloud has a silver spoon in its mouth;” “He was watching me like I was a hawk;” “It’s like looking for a needle in a hayride;” “It’s time to step up to the plate and lay your cards on the table;” “That train has left the frying pan;” “Take the moral high horse;” and “When the going gets tough, the early bird gets the worm.”

Some malaphors almost sound right: “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it;” “You can’t teach an old leopard new spots;” “You could have knocked me over with a fender;” “Get all your ducks on the same page;” “Burn the midnight oil from both ends;” “The price of eggs has become a hot potato;” and, “He has a heart as big as gold.” A high school coach solemnly charged his team to “Line up in a circle.”

The baseball legend, Yori Berra, was famously inclined to utter an entire catalog of malaphors: “Baseball is ninety percent half mental;” “Pair ‘em up in threes;” “I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia—let them walk to school like I did;” “When you come to a fork in the road, take it;” “A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore;” And, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

Even rhetorically adept politicians can sometimes lapse into malaphors. Barack Obama famously quipped, “He is green behind the ears when it comes to foreign policy.” Senator Alan Simpson decried the lack of a budget deal between Congress and the President saying, “They’ve dug their won snare.” Tennessee State Senator Stacey Campfield quipped that a common sense proposal was “hardly rocket surgery.” Alabama State Representative John Rogers, declared, “We’ll be here until the cows come home from Capistrano.” Jean Quan, the mayor of Oakland, modestly declared, “I don’t want to toot my own hat.”

Sometimes malaphors are deliberately used for rhetorical effect: Incumbent Texas Governor Ann Richards declared that her opponent, George W. Bush, was “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” And Ronald Reagan declared that House Speaker Tip O’Neil was “a wolf in cheap clothing.”

It is always wise to keep an eye on potential malaphors with an ear to the ground and a finger on the pulse of your audience. Do you follow where I’m coming from?

I’m George Grant.

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

Mary Reichard, Lindsay Mast, George Grant, Colin Garbarino, John Stonestreet, Cal Thomas, Leah Savas, Travis Kircher, Daniel Darling, Todd Vician, Onize Oduah, Carolina Lumetta, Leo Briceno, Jenny Rough, Emma Perley, Andrew Walker and David Bahnsen.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, and Christina Grube.

And thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early … Carl Peetz and Benj Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Harrison Watters is Washington producer, senior producer Kristen Flavin is features editor, Paul Butler executive producer, and Les Sillars editor-in-chief.

The World and Everything in It is a production of WORLD Radio—where we bring you Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears us up; God is our salvation.” —Psalm 68:19.

And don’t forget to gather with your brothers and sisters in Christ this weekend. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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