The World and Everything in It: March 15, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is brought to you by listeners like me. I’m Isaac Naidg, and I want to thank my parents for introducing me to this program. Love you guys, and I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! So-called gender affirming medicine is shown to be unscientific, and Irish voters keep traditional family in the constitution.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that and more with author Katie McCoy on Culture Friday. Also, a movie based on the life of a man who rescued children from the Nazis.

LEADBETTER: The process takes time.

YOUNG NICKY: We don’t have time. The German army could cross the border any day.

And inspiring picture books.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 15th. 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: Schumer calls for election in Israel » Debate is heating up in Washington over Israel.

Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for new leadership at the very top of the Israeli government.

SCHUMER: I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel.

Schumer, the first Jewish majority leader in the U.S. Senate unleashed an unusually blunt attack on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said Netanyahu has lost his way deferred to extremists within his government and has been overly tolerant of civilian deaths in Gaza.

SCHUMER: Which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.

But Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Schumer is out of line.

MCCONNELL: It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel.

The White House declined to weigh in on Schumer’s remarks.

Sanders pushes 32-hour work week » Sen. Bernie Sanders says a 40-hour work week is a relic of the past. The self-proclaimed socialist says it’s time to revise the standard work week to 32 hours without any reduction in pay.

SANDERS: Many of our people are exhausted. We work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world. I think it’s time for a shortened work week.

In a Senate hearing Thursday on that proposal, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy argued that employers are already having a hard time finding enough workers to fully staff their hours of operation.

CASSIDY: It would threaten millions of small businesses operating on a razor thin margin because they’re unable to find enough workers.

Other lawmakers argued that the cost of lost productivity would ultimately be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

TikTok » The CEO of TikTok was on Capitol Hill Thursday lobbying Senators to reject a bill passed in the House the day before. That bill would force the social media app’s Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a nationwide ban of the app. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley:

HAWLEY: There needs to be a firewall between TikTok and Beijing, because the deal is, all the information TikTok gets from Americans is available to the Chinese Communist Party. That’s the problem. That’s why it’s a security threat. That’s why they want to get into our phones.

And the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner also warned of possible influence campaigns.

WARNER: A lot of young people get all their news … They could switch the algorithm a little bit, and suddenly all the TikTok videos would be promoting that Taiwan ought to be part China or that Putin’s right on getting Ukraine.

But some senators have expressed concern about running afoul of First Amendment liberties.

President Biden says he would sign the bill if it reaches his desk … despite the fact that his campaign now has its own TikTok account.

The app is already banned on federal government devices.

Harris abortion » Vice President Kamala Harris toured an abortion facility Thursday becoming the highest-ranking U.S. official ever to do so.

She toured a Minnesota Planned Parenthood as the latest stop in her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour.

Harris later spoke at a rally arguing that legal protections for unborn children are immoral.

HARRIS: How dare these elected leaders believe they are in a better position to tell women what they need.

The Biden-Harris campaign is leaning heavily into pro-abortion messaging in their reelection push.

But Kristen Day with Democrats for Life of America noted that the Planned Parenthood facility Harris visited,

KRISTEN DAY: It doesn't provide support for motherhood.

She challenged Harris to also visit a pregnancy center that—in her words “does a lot more for women in the long term.”

SOUND: [Cheering crowd]

Trump and classified documents » Onlookers cheered as former President Trump’s motorcade arrived at a federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, Thursday.

But inside the courtroom things did not go as his attorneys had hoped.

The judge in a case accusing Trump of illegally holding classified documents at his Florida home denied a motion to toss out the case.

His attorneys argued that the case should be scrapped, calling the government’s case vague and unconstitutional.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

College athletes sue NCAA over men in women’s sports » Sixteen current and former female college athletes are suing the NCAA. Former college swimmer Riley Gaines:

GAINES: The NCAA’s most basic job is to protect the fairness and safety of competition in college sports.

And the plaintiffs say the organization failed to do that by allowing men who identify as transgender to compete in women’s sports.

GAINES: What we are hoping for out of this lawsuit is, one, accountability, two, responsibility, and three, for NCAA to implement Title IX by its original intent.

She said a central purpose of the Title IX civil rights law … was to ensure equal opportunities for women. And forcing female athletes to compete against men is the opposite of that.

Russia election » Voters are headed to the polls in Russia today to cast their ballots in the presidential election. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Today’s vote is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule by six more years.

The election takes place against the backdrop of a ruthless crackdown that has crippled independent media and prominent rights groups.

And Putin’s most notable foes are in prison, in exile, or dead.

It also comes as Moscow’s war in Ukraine enters its third year.

Russia has the advantage on the battlefield, where it is making small, if slow, gains amid a shortage of weapons and ammunition in Ukraine.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with Katie McCoy. Plus, the movie One Life.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 15th 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

It’s time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is author and speaker Katie McCoy. It's always great to see you, Katie. Good morning.

KATIE MCCOY: Good morning. Great to see you both as well.

EICHER: I want to start with the Tik Tok vote in Congress, Katie. Because as you’ll notice in our questions today, it’s about cultural pushback, and this is certainly one of them.

What I notice is there’s nothing like social media and its impact on young people that will unite our divided country. This bill requiring the platform to disconnect from the Chinese Communist Party or risk being banned passed with Republicans and Democrats and I might add a two-thirds margin required for a rushed piece of legislation. Now, it may well die in the Senate, but the same sentiment that drove the House may well show up in the upper chamber. But I wonder about this: How do you read this culturally? Why do we distrust the CCP but have a corresponding trust in American-owned big tech? What’s your read on that?

MCCOY: Well, for one thing, we have very different laws than the CCP does. There's a famous description of what a true free society is that you can go into the middle of the center of your government and criticize it openly, with no fear of retribution. We have that in America. If you're a citizen of China, you do not have that. Now, there's some valid debate about the degree to which the government should be making policy that affects access to social media, avenues of free speech, and then also business. But if you're just a casual observer of the news, you know that this is not just an ordinary business, because this is not just a typical foreign relations dilemma. The Chinese Communist Party, lest we forget the big balloon that happened not too long ago, flying over most of our country. And so I think, on the one hand, this shows that Americans are waking up to a very real and present danger that we have in terms of our national security. So I am personally glad to see this now. One of the craziest things that came out in this debate about whether or not to mandate that TikTok divest from China was you had teenagers contacting their congressional representatives threatening suicide if you took TikTok away, and I think that might be the greater reflection of where we are as a society. And it's like this 0 to 10. People use this almost as this threat or weapon in order to shape policy, how they want it to go. I think that might be one of the most alarming reflections of our society in this whole TikTok debate.

BROWN: Katie, I want to go back almost one year ago. It was very early in the presidential campaign season, candidates were throwing their hats into the ring. Right here on Culture Friday, I asked you about the kind of questions you thought the listener should be asking the candidates regarding sexuality and gender.

How you answered was short of prophetic. Let's listen.

MCCOY: If parents wanted to turn the tide of all of this in one election cycle, they would ask every candidate to make a statement on where they fall on WPATH standards of care.

Well, that was in June of 2023. Then last week leaked documents surfaced revealing what you and doctors have been saying all along about so-called gender affirming medicine for kids: the science is far from settled and families have been lied to.

This could be a time to say, I told you so, but it isn't, is it?

MCCOY: Oh no, this is a time to celebrate the fact that information is finding its way out. Thank God for whistleblowers who are working in these organizations in these clinics, who are shedding light on what we all knew, but may not have been able to prove. Now WPATH, which again stands for a World Professional Association for Transgender Health, is considered this standard of care for transgender medical treatments. And they are in many ways setting the conversation for public policy. You will find no few representatives of our current presidential administration endorsing and supporting what is in WPATH and WPATH's "research," and I say that with air quotes, "research" is dubious at best and predatory at worst. And one of the things that we're seeing with this elite document is just how activistic this organization is. This isn't about data and health. If it was about data and health, we will be following many European countries in reversing course. This is about ideology. This is about the belief that we have the ability to determine for ourselves the limits of our lives, the boundaries of our existence, with or without nature, and certainly without God.

BROWN: Katie, let me follow up quickly. While we're talking about transgender services, you know, it's striking in the UK, the National Health Service this week banned puberty blockers at gender identity clinics. Pretty significant development.

MCCOY: Yeah, this is huge. The United Kingdom has been slowly reversing course for a number of years. We saw it begin to chip away after Keira Bell first won her lawsuit against her doctors, and then the Tavistock clinic shut down. And now as more and more data comes in, countries in Europe are halting so many of these treatments that they had rushed children into doing. And the reason they did in the United Kingdom was, they said the data does not support that this is helping. But then you have to ask helping what? Helping these teen mental health crises? And that is because overwhelmingly, when a child, a teenager begins to talk about gender dysphoria is more often than not a symptom of something else that is going on. And that can simply be you have a vulnerable teen that is highly suggestible and going on social media, and hearing things like if you don't enjoy puberty, you must be born in the wrong body. Who enjoyed puberty? No one. And so these stories are reinforcing, again. Common sense, what we have known for so long, that what these children need is psychological care, emotional care, spiritual care, but we don't need to alter how God designed our bodies to be. And by the way, puberty blockers have been billed as safe, effective, fully reversible, and they are anything but. They are having devastating long term effects that we still don't even fully know. I think 20 years from now, we will look back and rightly call it medical experimentation on children.

EICHER: I’d like to stay in the UK for this pushback question: In Ireland, voters rejected an invitation to redefine the family, saying no to a referendum on a constitutional change of language centering marriage and the status of women within families. One target was a provision referring to the primacy of the family as the “fundamental unit” of society that possesses “inalienable” rights that are prior to the laws written by political bodies. And the second referred to the woman as an essential contributor to the common good through her role as a caregiver.

So this seemed ripe for change, given less than 10 years ago Ireland legalized same-sex marriage and about six years ago liberalized abortion laws. But the change failed, and I wonder what you read into that, not as an Irish political scientist but as a reader of cultural trends? Do we have another instance of pushback here?

MCCOY: I think now average everyday citizens are wising up to the effects of ideas that have been introduced to society for about 20 to 30 years. The pushback in Ireland, it reminds me of the full effects of a manifesto that was written back in the 1990s. And it was a group of activists who talked about how we have, human beings have the right to total self-determination, to sexual definition, and gender identity, and family equality. That phrase family equality is very important. And we see it even in places like California law and family law in some of these more liberal societies. Another thing, I wonder if I were citizens had seen is this correlation between parental rights and the definition of a family. We're seeing that here in our country as well. If you decouple biological sex from family terms or family ties, like mother or father, then you can define a family however you want to. And if the state can then determine what the definition of a family is, the state can also determine whether one is a fit parent or not, not based on anything to do with one's biological tie to one's children, but simply which birthing person you came from. Which individual sired you. And Stella Morabito is a brilliant thinker. She's been talking about this for over 10 years, and she really was prophetic talking about the connection between the desexing of society and removing these biological terms from family relationships and the effects that it can have. So this is very interesting to see that Ireland really is reversing course, on some pretty progressive ideas.

EICHER: All right. Katie McCoy is an author and speaker. Her most recent book is titled, To be a woman, the confusion over female identity and how Christians can respond. Katie, it's always great to talk and we will catch you next time.

MCCOY: Sounds great.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 15. 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. Looking closely at the calendar and pulling out my momma Myrna hat.

Talking directly now to college students and recent grads. We are accepting applications for this year’s WORLD Journalism Institute College Course at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Nick will be there, so will I, May 16th - June 1st, helping to teach you, college student/recent grad how to tell stories informed by a Biblical foundation.

The deadline to apply is in two weeks. It’s not the kind of application you want to race through.

So, get started and apply by March 29th at WJI.WORLD.

EICHER: And I happen to know we’re filling up. So if you’re feeling a nudge toward a career in journalism, it’s a terrific course, and I’d urge you not to delay.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: it’s time to check in with what’s happening at the movies.

Last weekend was the busiest that movie theaters have been so far in 2024. Kung Fu Panda 4 took the top spot with an opening that attracted all ages, and Dune: Part Two stayed strong in its second week at number two.

BROWN: But if you’re not interested in big splashy sequels, arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino says there’s an excellent, heartfelt film debuting in theaters this weekend.

COLLIN GARBARINO: One Life is an excellent new movie based on the true story of Nicholas Winton—a man who worked tirelessly to find British foster homes for thousands of children who were put at risk by Hitler’s invasions.

YOUNG NICKY: What’s this?

DOREEN: The fuhrer's travel plans in black and white. He’s got his sights set on half of Europe. It’s just a question of when.

In March of 1938, Nazi Germany rolled into Austria. Later that year, under the guise of pan-Germanism, it took the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler then began eyeing the rest of the country.

These invasions and annexations caused a surge of refugees, many of them Jewish. As the great European powers sat back and watched, a few individuals decided they needed to step in to help. British stock broker Nicholas Winton, called Nicky by his friends, was one of them.

HANA: Your first time in Czechoslovakia?

YOUNG NICKY: Yes, yes, yes, it is.

HANA: Shame you didn’t come sooner when there was more of it.

Late in 1938, Nicky travels from London to Prague to spend a week volunteering with the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia. He’s horrified by the refugees’ living conditions, and he’s scared of what will happen to them if Germany invades. He’s especially worried about the children.

YOUNG NICKY: The children. We have to move them.

DOREEN: Says the man who arrived yesterday.

YOUNG NICKY: Well, I’m not suggesting it’s going to be easy.

DOREEN: A mass transit of children. Without money or visas…

YOUNG NICKY: We’ll find a way.

The film deftly moves back and forth between the events of 1938 and 1988 when an elderly Nicky comes to terms with his role in the war. Johnny Flynn plays the young Nicky, full of energy and idealism, and Anthony Hopkins the older Nicky, melancholic and self-effacing despite his heroic efforts 50 years before.

OLD NICKY: Tell me something. Do you ever think about the children and what happened to them?

This historical film about tragedy and memory is rated PG, so there’s not much to object to. This isn’t a typical war movie. There’s not a lot of action, though director James Hawes manages to build plenty of tension.

And since this isn’t a typical war movie, young Nicky isn’t a typical war hero. He’s just a stock broker, not a soldier, and his greatest gift is his ability to do paperwork. But a knack for paperwork is just the kind of gift that’s most needed when working with the British immigration office. Nicky’s mundane talent and his sense of justice allow him to cut through bureaucratic entanglements to get visas for children in need.

LEADBETTER: The process takes time.

YOUNG NICKY: We don’t have time. The German army could cross the border any day.

Early in the film, we see the younger Nicky run out of chocolate as he’s trying to win the trust of the refugee children. The scene foreshadows the fact that despite his best efforts, Nicky won’t be able to help everyone. This inability still haunts the older Nicky, and Anthony Hopkins delivers another brilliant performance as a regretful man who’s dedicated his life to service but can’t escape the specter that he could have done more.

AUDIO: [Screaming and whistles blowing]

The tense moments take place in the scenes set in 1938 and ’39, but the film’s emotional punch comes during the scenes set in 1988. The elderly Nicky doesn’t want accolades for saving Jewish children from the Nazis. But he’s found his old scrap book that preserves the memory of those he rescued, and he wants to make sure they’re not forgotten.

GRETE: And you’ve got to find the right home for that. Somewhere it will be appreciated.

When word of Nicholas Winton’s achievements came to light in 1988, he became something of a celebrity in Britain. And even though I knew how the story would unfold, I still wept freely during the film’s climax. There’s something truly beautiful that happens when an otherwise ordinary person uses an ordinary gift for an extraordinary purpose.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, March 15th. 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. Coming up next on The World and Everything in it: small books about the greatest story.

WORLD Magazine recently published its Children’s Book of the Year issue. It’s chock full of fun books for kids.

MACHOWSKI: I think when you're writing for children, you start with wanting to communicate biblical truth accurately. And then what I like to do with my books is add fictional stories around that truth that can draw the children's interest into learning about the truth.

EMILY WHITTEN: That’s author Marty Machowski. He writes books for families and children like Angels on Your Side. That book is about a young boy named Logan who sleeps over at his grandparents’ house for the first time. A terrible thunderstorm frightens Logan during the night, and he calls out for his grandpa. Kristin Chapman edits the children’s book page for WORLD Magazine, and she reads a passage from the book here.

CHAPMAN: But always remember, you don't have to be afraid. God's got his angels watching over you. Angels? They aren't real, are they? Logan asked. Of course they're real.

Grandpa tells Logan stories from the Old Testament about how God used angels to protect His people. Boys ages 6-10 may especially like the story because the 3D illustrations feel a bit like a superhero comic book. The angels look more like warriors than cherubs, and the book even includes two pairs of 3D glasses that make the pages really pop.

MACHOWSKI: So anything to get the kids interested, and in the book, I'm all for, because I know they're going to get a message that can transform their lives.

Machowski didn’t plan to become a children’s author. It all started when he wrote a Sunday school curriculum for his church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. Several weeks after Marty gave them the curriculum, the children’s ministry leaders at the church came to him with good news and bad news:

MACHOWSKI: Well, the good news is everybody loves this curriculum. I said, okay great. I said, what's the bad news? They said we just finished week number six. There's two more lessons left, so you better get started writing.

Machowski soon tried his hand at books like The Ology, a devotional for families. He’s also written more story-based books like The Treasure. To get in enough writing each day, he says he starts typing away at around 5:30 am. Waking up early isn’t the hardest part of the process. For Machowski, the real challenge is having his work edited. But it’s all worth it, knowing that God’s word is being hidden in the hearts of both children and parents.

MACHOWSKI: And so it's such a joy to provide resources for parents that contain the nuggets of truth and the gospel of truth that can remain resident within their children and sprout by the work of the Spirit as God in his providence declares it to be so.

Kristin Chapman is one of those parents. In addition to being an editor for WORLD, she’s a mom of three teenagers. About twelve years ago, she discovered Marty Machowski’s devotional books called Long Story Short and Old Story New. She says that Machowski’s curriculum helped her establish some vital homeschooling habits.

CHAPMAN: You can really see he has a heart for the family. He has a heart for helping parents to create these rhythms and routines of family devotional time.

Chapman likes Machowski’s books, but she knows that some families might not like the transformer-like illustrations in Angels on Your Side. The book also implies that every Christian has his own guardian angel–which may or may not be the best interpretation of Matthew 18.

CHAPMAN: And I think that the book acts as a springboard from which families can then have those deeper conversations. Not everyone is going to perhaps agree with Marty's interpretation of all the Bible verses here, but again, this is an opportunity for families to discuss these topics of faith together and to study the scriptures.

Whether it’s with 3D glasses or fictional characters, Machowski keeps looking for new ways to help families explore the Scriptures. He says he’s almost finished with a children’s commentary on the book of Romans. It’s written from the perspective of a former Gladiator who was shipwrecked with Paul.

If you need a gift idea for the kids in your life this Easter, you might check out Marty Machowski’s work. His recent book The Treasure is a good place for many families to start. And then there’s Angels on Your Side, one of WORLD’s runners up for Picture Book of the Year. Machowski says he hopes that story and its illustrations help kids’ see angels as messengers of God’s strength.

MACHOWSKI: The illustrator, Rommel Ruiz, came back and said, you know, when I think of angels, I think of God's superheroes. What if we made them kind of like superheroes? And I said, yeah, that would be great. I think that would be the kind of image that I'm trying to convey, that these are God's mighty forces.

I’m Emily Whitten.

BROWN: Reviewer Bekah McCallum contributed to this review. And don’t forget, you can find more Easter gift book ideas at wng.org. Just go to the Children’s Books page, which we’ll link in our transcript.

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

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Emma Perley, Mary Muncy, Leah Savas, Daniel Darling, Onize Ohikere, Kim Henderson, Leo Briceno, Cal Thomas, Katie McCoy, Collin Garbarino, and Emily Whitten.

Also, a new voice on the program this week: World Opinions Commentator, Katelyn Walls Shelton.

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, 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.

The Bible says, “So you shall remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God.” —Numbers 15:40, 41

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.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.