The World and Everything in It: March 21, 2025

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Free speech and the notion of multiculturalism.

Sin that disables us all.

And what an astronaut can teach us about finding contentment in the mundane

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday.

And WORLD’s arts and culture editor reviews Disney’s latest live action remake…he says it’s not the fairest of them all.

And the Great American Songbook with Bob Case. This time, the Father of the Blues.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 21st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump order on education department » President Trump says it’s time to return control over education to the states.

He signed an executive order Thursday aimed at largely dismantling the Education Department.

TRUMP:  People have wanted to do this for many, many years, for many, many decades, and I don't know, no president ever got around to doing it, but I'm getting around to doing it, so thank you very much.

Already, Education Secretary Linda McMahon earlier this month shed nearly half of the department’s workforce on orders from the president to pare down the agency.

Labor unions have slammed that decision. Executive Director of the National Education Association Kim Anderson.

ANDERSON: I see empty windows with people who should be at their desks, helping students achieve their full potential. Dedicated public servants.

But Trump says students and teachers will be better off without Uncle Sam running the show.

He has argued that the federal government’s 40-plus year foray into directing education has been a failure.

TRUMP:  States that run very well are gonna have, uh, education that, uh, will be as good as Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and those top Finland, those top countries that do so well with education.

The Education Department will still oversee things like student loans and Pell grants.

Completely eliminating the agency would require the approval of Congress, and that’s highly unlikely right now.

Ukraine latest » U.S. negotiators will continue work over the weekend on completing a ceasefire deal in Ukraine and then trying to expand it. Both Russian and Ukrainian leaders have agreed, in principle, to a limited agreement that would halt attacks on energy targets.

Meantime, European countries and others are looking ahead to a post-war Ukraine. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says plans are moving ahead for a peacekeeping force.

STARMER:  What we've managed to do is get political momentum, political alignment, if you like, with a number of countries, the so called Coalition of the Willing, um, 30 or so countries. That is good to have that level of alignment and momentum.

He says the next step “is to turn that political momentum into operational plans.”

The coalition includes dozens of European nations plus Canada and Australia.

SOUND: [Air raid sirens in Jerusalem]

Israel latest » Air raid sirens rang out in Jerusalem Thursdayafter Houthi rebels launched a missile out of Yemen. The incident took place as several Muslims were praying near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, commonly referred to as the Dome of the Rock.

AUDIO: Allahu Ackbar!

Several people near that mosque heard there shouting Allahu-Ackbar...or God is great … as the sirens sounded.

The Israeli military says the missile was intercepted.

The terror group Hamas also launched three rockets Thursday. The Israeli Air Force shot one of them down. The other two landed in empty fields.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer:

MENCER: Let me be clear Islamists, Hamas and the Houthis, guided by Iran firing rockets at civilians aiming for maximum civilian casualties, is a war crime.

All of this comes after Hamas rejected proposals to renew a ceasefire that expired more than two weeks ago, prompting renewed military assaults from Israel this week.

TESLA suspects arrested  » The Department of Justice is pursuing domestic terrorism charges against several suspects linked to attacks on Tesla properties.

Suspects in South Carolina and Colorado are accused of Molotov cocktail attacks against a Tesla charging station and dealership, along with hateful graffiti.

And a defendant in Oregon is accused of throwing Molotov cocktails and firing shots at a Tesla store.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Lavitt:

LEAVITT:  It is getting dangerous and the White House wholeheartedly condemns it. And we applaud Attorney General Pam Bondi for investigating these acts as domestic terrorism because that is what they are.

All three face federal arson charges, and two also face charges of possession of an unregistered destructive device. The DOJ says the suspects were ideologically driven.

The attorney general said let this be a warning, if you join the wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the DOJ will put you behind bars.

USDA bird flu » The USDA says it’s taking action to help prevent egg shortages in the future. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: Egg prices are down sharply. The Agriculture Department reported that as of March 14th, the cost of a dozen eggs was $4.90 … down from $8.17 just 10 days earlier.

But the USDA wants to try and head off future outbreaks of the bird flu, which was blamed for shortages and skyrocketing prices.

The department plans to invest up to $100 million additional dollars … on things like research for therapies … and potential vaccines against the flu in poultry.

This step builds on a $1 billion effort kicked off last month, focused on biosecurity and supporting farmers.

The bird flu has has wiped out nearly 170 million birds since 20-22

The USDA also plans to start importing more eggs from South Korea. The Trump administration is already importing eggs from Turkey and Brazil in an effort to drive down prices.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Collin Garbarino reviews Disney’s new version of Snow White.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 21st of March.

This is WORLD Radio and we’re so glad to have you along today. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Time now for 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.

MAST: John, Australia’s government has been contending with new speech laws that have proved to be quite controversial. This week conservative news magazine The Spectator asked the question, “Did multiculturalism cost Australia free speech?”

It highlighted recent comments by the premier of New South Wales Chris Minns, heard here on Sky News:

CHRIS MINNS, NEW SOUTH WALES PREMIER: I recognise and I've fully said from the beginning that we don't have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States and the reason for that is that we want to hold together our multicultural community and have people live in peace free from the kind of vilification and hatred that we do see around the world.

So John, what do you think about how multiculturalism affects free speech, and vice versa?

STONESTREET: I mean, multiculturalism has to be defined. If by that we mean individuals who represent various places, various homelands, various backgrounds, that’s one thing. Multiculturalism, often, for example, includes the LGBTQ movement, and that's not the same thing as being from a particular ethnic, national or cultural background at all. That’s a lifestyle choice that one makes and then superimposes on the rest of life and imposes on individuals. And that now has become a priority. And then that has basically created an enormous conflict in Western cultures based on taking something, calling it an identity when it actually is not.

And free speech, in and of itself, needs to be defined. What do we mean by that? Speech is not unlimited in our rights to say things. We can’t say things in such a way to cause direct harm, but then we have to define harm, because disagreeing with someone sometimes is called harm. So these things have to be rightly understood, rightly defined and then rightly ordered. And when that happens, I think both a diversity of cultural backgrounds and speech can bring good to people. We can enrich each other’s lives by being sharpened by ideas that are different than our own, by being forced to defend the things that we value, and also by being exposed to the way other people express the image of God that God has put in all people from all times and all places. Maybe this is a little idealistic, but I think it comes across as idealistic because we’re so far down this hyper extending what we mean by multiculturalism and then adding other concepts like wokeness and intersectionality and all the other things which basically prioritize a particular set of cultures and a particular set of moral values over others.

BROWN: John, you mentioned the image of God in your response to Lindsay’s question. The Imago Dei is at the heart of a recent Breakpoint article I read on Disability Awareness Month, which is this month.

You’re talking about so much more than an annual observance aren’t you?

STONESTREET: I oftentimes will ask students, how many of you know someone with a disability or have a disability, and if anyone doesn't raise their hand, I remind them that in the Biblical framing of things, all of us are disabled. We’re disabled by human sin that infected a world that was made very good according to the language of Genesis, and in various ways, has fallen. And because we have a sense of what we have fallen from, we have a sense of always interacting to some degree with a world that has been fractured, that is fallen in various ways, and individuals that are too. And that takes the form of sin, that takes the form of just frustration and futility when you have good intentions in sending an email, and it gets read all the wrong ways, or all the other ways we experience of fall.

And it also takes the form of disability that can be inflicted either in some sort of long term way, at birth, genetically, or for some other reason, or because of an act of evil, or an act of, you know, what’s called Natural Evil. Think of cancers or things like that that can cause long term impairment, either, you know, mentally or physically. It’s a corruption. It’s a twistedness. It’s taking something that is good, and it’s good because God made it that way. And that assumption is how we have to begin looking at all individuals, that they are made in the image and likeness of God. The dignity and worth and value is secure and it’s inherent. It’s not acquired. It’s not attained. It’s not assigned by cultural values. It is something that exists and of every single person and a world that recognizes that dignity and value is a better one.

That’s not the way that it’s been throughout most of human history, which is one of the many reasons that the idea, the doctrine that humans are made in God’s image, has been so revolutionary. It’s been perhaps the most publicly consequential theological point of Christianity that has changed the world in terms of cultures and civilizations, other than just the hope of forgiveness in Christ.

At the Colson Center–and this is something that’s near and dear to our hearts–we have long had the privilege and honor of working with one of the most lovely and delightful and loving people that I know, and that’s Joni Eareckson Tada, whose life has been dedicated to advancing this idea, as well as sharing the gospel with individuals and families and providing assistance to those who have disability. Of course, her own story is one of those stories of dealing with disability in that same sort of way. It’s a remarkable story where you can actually look and think to yourself, “Man, the world will be a worse place without Joni Eareckson Tada in it.” It’s not just this is a community of individuals that need us. We need them, and we need them to remind ourselves of what it means to love and care, what it means to accept the truth about reality that we’re made in the image of God and yet disabled in a fallen world in various ways. And it’s also close to our hearts because of Chuck Colson. This was something that was near and dear to his heart, upholding human dignity, but particularly for this group, which he foresaw would be particularly vulnerable and historically have been particularly vulnerable to discrimination and worse. The first group of people that were targeted by the Nazis, by the Third Reich, were communities with disability. They were taken out into the woods by the hundreds and shot. And because they were referred to or understood to be useless eaters, to use the phrase that they used, it’s horrific. It’s awful. That is an idea that has never gone away in human history, and is only countered if you have a better idea, a bigger idea, about human value and human dignity. And that’s the image of God.

MAST: John, before we let you go, I want to shout out NASA astronaut, Butch Wilmore, back home now after spending nine long months in space. Before returning to Earth in a Space X capsule, he was asked by a network reporter about his take away from his time in space. Here’s what he had to say.

WILMORE: My feeling on all of this goes back to my faith. It’s bound in my Lord and Savior, Christ. He is working out His plan and purposes for His glory throughout all of humanity and how that plays into our lives is significant and important and however that plays out, I am content because I understand that. I understand that He’s at work in all things. Some things are for the good. Go to Hebrews chapter 11. Some things look to us to be not so good, but it’s all working out for His good for those that will believe. And that’s the answer.

John, would that have been the first thing out of your mouth?

STONESTREET: I don’t claim to be nearly as spiritual as some of these things, which are really remarkable when you hear something like this coming off this sort of experience. I mean, we’ve all who follow Christ hopefully have read Paul’s lines about contentment and being content in every situation. And it’s probably among the easiest parts of Scripture to read out loud and the hardest to actually live out when you’re in that sort of a situation, when you’re dealing with such huge disappointment, when you’re forced to live, for example, just in the mundane of everyday life. It’s interesting, this is a lesson that is easy to say, hard to live.

I’m sure it was difficult, day in and day out to think that way. I mean, you remember when we first heard about this story and how long they were going to be stuck up there. I just think that is remarkable. I had a friend last night stuck on a snowy interstate for four hours, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, that would drive me crazy.” That’s four hours. This has been, I mean, how long up in space, in a cramped place, and not having good food or anything? This is one of the lessons that Christians are given in Scripture to learn that God is in control of our days. We make decisions attempting to be faithful to His plan. We have ideas of what success will be, what impact or influence or significance will be, and a lot of times that’s not it at all.

And I love that he used the words like “significance” and “importance,” because another day up there must have seemed quite mundane. I think there's something really spiritual about the mundane and finding that contentment. I’ve been fascinated by that idea for a long time, and I have no idea how to live it. Literally living out the sorts of things that Paul talks about in Philippians and what he talks about in Hebrews 11, about trusting the Lord, trusting the Lord’s plan, even when things seem to be going south. Easier said than done, but it’s awesome to see it, you know, on this kind of a stage.

Also, I think it’s worth mentioning how many people have visited space and come back with a testimony of God on their lips. There’s been very few exceptions, one being the Russian cosmonaut who said I didn't see God in kind of a cynical sort of way. But most of the others, I think there’s obviously something about being up close and personal to this to the heavens that declare the glory of God. So that seems to be a constant theme, at least.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Friday, March 21st.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Another Disney remake of an animated classic.

MAST: Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White has been plagued with problems from the very beginning. First, the pandemic delayed production.

Then came bad publicity. There were backlashes over casting decisions. Backlashes over how the film would represent the Seven Dwarfs. And backlashes over controversial statements made by the star Rachel Zegler.

Then on top of everything else, writers and actors strikes delayed the film for another year.

BROWN: So, in light of all the controversies and delays, is Disney’s Snow White worth the wait? Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to let us know.

MAGIC MIRROR: A lovely maiden I now behold… Snow White is more fair than thee.

EVIL QUEEN: No!

COLLIN GARBARINO: Disney has been mining its classic intellectual property faster than the Seven Dwarfs can dig gemstones out of a mountain. In the last 10 years, the studio has produced more than a dozen live-action adaptations based on their animated classics. And out of all those films, it’s safe to say this new Snow White is the absolute worst.

In fact, it’s so bad that I’m at a loss for where to begin.

EVIL QUEEN: You know… I really don’t remember you being this… opinionated.

Much of the first half of the movie follows the familiar story from the 1937 cartoon. The evil queen becomes jealous of Snow White when the magic mirror suggests that perhaps Snow White has grown to be the fairest of them all. The evil queen tells the huntsman to take the girl out into the forest and kill her. But he has pity on her, and she flees into the forest where she meets up with seven idiosyncratic dwarfs. So far so good.

But then this movie starts to chart its own path. You see, this version of Snow White is something of a girlboss. Her father raised her to be a leader, and she’s not going to stand aside and let her kingdom suffer under the tyranny of her evil stepmother.

EVIL QUEEN: Fearless, fair, brave, true. How quaint.

There’s no prince charming in this story. Instead, Snow White meets another band of allies in the forest because seven eccentric dwarfs wasn’t enough. She finds seven equally eccentric bandits, led by a Robin Hood–like character, who help her save the kingdom.

Now, I’m not opposed to changing up the story some. In fact, I dislike the remakes that indulge in shot-for-shot recreations of the originals. But if you’re going to depart from the classic story, you had better make sure that the new story is good. This live-action Snow White is merely a disjointed pile of cliches.

SNOW WHITE: I feel they need some kindness.

The plot points are nonsensical. The dialogue is cringe inducing. And the action scenes are pathetic. Even the sets and costumes look cheap.

And Disney’s attempts to update this film for a modern audience turn an already troubled production into an absolute dumpster fire. You see, before the evil queen showed up, Snow White lived in a perfect utopian socialist kingdom. Wait! How can you have a king in a socialist paradise where everyone shares?! Nevermind those pesky questions! What’s important is that “the bounty of the land belongs to all who tend it.” Snow White exhibits such naivety that it almost makes you want to root for the evil queen.

SNOW WHITE: When I was young, my parents and I would pick apples. We’d take them and make pies, and go out into the village…

EVIL QUEEN: Pie? Pies are luxuries. They don’t need luxuries.

But I suppose Disney thought this movie would be empowering. Snow White teaches those she meets to stand up and use their voices. Tyranny can’t withstand a people united under the righteous cause of socialism! Especially since the evil queen only seems to have about 12 palace guards. With a budget of 270 million dollars, you would think the filmmakers could have afforded a few more.

If the preachy politics weren’t bad enough, the hypocrisy gets pretty thick too. In the original cartoon, Snow White tidied up the dwarfs’ cottage as a thank you for letting her stay. Housework is obviously beneath a modern Snow White. She’s a freeloader who gets the hardworking dwarfs to clean up their own mess. From an economic standpoint, her exploitation of these seven marginalized dwarfs isn't much different from the queen’s extraction of wealth from the kingdom.

Despite all these problems, this musical does contain a couple of entertaining original songs.

MUSIC: [“PRINCESS PROBLEMS”]

But even these catchy songs feel tonally out of place in this laughably bad disaster of a movie. I keep wondering, how on earth the studio let this film devolve into the mess it’s become. Perhaps the most charitable thing I can say about Disney’s Snow White is that it might be so bad it’s good. The entire movie is one big unintentional joke, and I must admit that the sheer stupidity of it all gave me a good chuckle.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Friday, March 21st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, our next installment of The Great American Songbook with Bob Case. Today, an introduction, to the Father of the Blues.

BOB CASE: There are so many wonderful African American composers included in the Great American Songbook, that trying to identify the most influential is next to impossible.

Some of the artists in the running would include the famous Duke Ellington, the Big Band leader, best known for “It Don’t mean a Thing…”.

MUSIC: [IT DON’T MEAN A THING (IF IT AIN’T GOT THAT SWING) by Duke Ellington]

Then there’s James P. Johnson…credited with writing the theme song for the 1920s: “The Charleston.”

MUSIC: [THE CHARLESTON by James P. Johnson]

American poet and African royalty, Andy Razaf, wrote over 500 songs…his best known piece is “Ain't Misbehavin'.”

MUSIC: [AIN’T MISBEHAVIN’ sung by Fats Waller]

Scott Joplin—the “King of Rag”—wrote the piano standard “Maple Leaf Rag.”

MUSIC: [MAPLE LEAF RAG by Scott Joplin]

And there are others, but I think that many of these artists would agree with me, that the most significant black composer in the Great American Songbook is W.C. Handy: “The Father of the Blues.”

MUSIC: [JOE TURNER BLUES by W.C. Handy]

It might be unfair to Mr. Handy to identify him as the most influential “black” composer of his generation. He didn’t want to be known as a “black composer”…rather, he wanted to be recognized as a great “American composer.” He loved the marches of John Philip Sousa.

MUSIC: [STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER by John Philip Sousa]

Mr. Handy was born in 1873 in Florence, Alabama…only eight years after the end of the Civil War. He lived until I was in high school in 1958.

His conservative Methodist clergyman father did not approve of secular music. Despite this, W.C. bought a guitar when he was a teenager. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked: “What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?”

Rev. Handy made Willy take the guitar back to the store and exchange it for a dictionary. However, young Bill’s maternal grandmother—equally devout as her grandson—noticed Bill’s big ears and encouraged him to learn and play all kinds of music. She interpreted his physical traits as a sign from God that he was to be a musician.

His first break came in 1909…when a Memphis Democrat mayoral candidate named Edward Crump asked W.C. to write a campaign song—hoping to cater to the black population. Mr. Handy did—naming it after “Crump.” After the successful election, Handy changed the name of the campaign song to “Memphis Blues” … his first international hit.

MUSIC: [MEMPHIS BLUES by W.C. Handy]

“Memphis Blues” introduced “blues” to the American Songbook canon. Years later, Handy said the song set a new fashion in American popular music and contributed to the rise of jazz, swing and even the boogie-woogie.

Five years later, Handy published his masterpiece, “St. Louis Blues” in 1914. The song is, by far, the most recorded “blues” in the history of popular music.

MUSIC: [ST. LOUIS BLUES by W.C. Handy]

When England’s ill-fated Prince George married Greece’s Princess Marina in 1934 they danced to the “St. Louis Blues” at their wedding. England’s late Queen Elizabeth once singled it out as one of her favorite songs.

Ethiopia even used it as a war song to provide inspiration when the country was invaded by Italy in 1935.

A couple of years after the “St. Louis Blues”, in l916, Handy wrote his third “blues” standard, “Beale Street Blues.”

MUSIC: [BEALE STREET BLUES by W.C. Handy]

The title refers to Beale Street in Memphis, the main entertainment district for the city's African-American population in the early part of the 20th century. It’s a place closely associated with the development of the “blues”—both good and bad.

Handy has been described as a deeply religious man…incurably optimistic…finding inspiration in spirituals and God’s creation. Handy cited for inspiration the sounds of Creation such as, “whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises.”

He liked the “sounds of Cypress Creek in Florence, Alabama washing on the fringes of the woodland.”

And he said he copied "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art.”

And of course, Handy used the rhythm of church spirituals with which he grew up and heard as “the sound of a sinner on revival day.”

Even though W.C. Handy is known as the “Father of the Blues,” his love of the artform is secondary to his true love. He closes his autobiography with this sentence, “I also hang a memory on these words from my mother’s prayer which so aptly express my inmost feelings, ‘Lord, I thank thee that we are living in a Christian land and a Bible country. God bless America.’”

I’m Robert Case.

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

Mary Reichard, Nick Eicher, David Bahnsen, Caleb Welde, Juliana Chan Erickson, Emma Eicher, Todd Vician, Janie B. Cheaney, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Oduah, Brad Littlejohn, Steve West, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, and Bob Case.

A new voice this week, recent WJI midcareer graduate Betsy Brown.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterbury, 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.

Jesus said: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” —John 16:33.

When you gather with your brothers and sisters in Christ this weekend, don’t just attend a service together…but show up ready to share an encouraging and uplifting word.

And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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