The World and Everything in It — March 26, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Private Christian schools are meeting the needs of students stuck at home. Yet financial worries linger.  

And, news you can use: some advice on how to survive homeschool—from kids, for kids.

KOCH: …for people that are stuck with their family now, this is the opportunity to grab, to start being with the people and start creating relationships.

EICHER: Also today WORLD reporter Kim Henderson paid a visit last month to Carville, Louisiana, once the site of the country’s biggest quarantine:

CLERK: As children coming up, we was always taught from our parents do not go past that road. Back then we thought the illness was contagious… 

And Cal Thomas tells about his interview with former Vice President Dan Quayle.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, March 26th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington has today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate passed $2.2 trillion economic rescue package » The U.S. Senate last night approved an unprecedented $2.2 trillion economic rescue package. 

AUDIO: On this vote, the yays are 96. The nays are zero. The 60-vote threshold having been achieved, the bill is passed. 

The vote passed unanimously, with several senators still absent in self-quarantine, after Kentucky Senator Rand Paul tested positive for COVID-19. 

After the vote, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the bill is designed to accomplish several critical goals. 

MCCONNELL: To save American individuals, small businesses, large businesses, and to provide considerable funding for the healthcare workers and the scientists and doctors who are trying to solve this pandemic. 

The nearly 900-page measure is the largest economic relief bill in U.S. history. McConnell said he anticipates the bill could keep the economy afloat for 3 months, but added, “Hopefully, we won’t need this for three months.” 

The bill provides a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home. And it provides conditional loans for large companies hurt by the virus. 

The package would also give direct payments to most Americans and expand unemployment benefits.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday… 

SCHUMER: I say to the American people, help is on the way, big help, quick help. 

The bill now heads to the Democratic-controlled House, which will most likely pass it Friday.

Florida requires travelers from NYC region to self-quarantine » The United States now has more than 55,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and nearly half of them are in New York state. And most of those cases are in New York City. 

With the New York City region now an epicenter of the coronavirus, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week signed an executive order. 

It states that anyone flying into his state from an area with substantial community spread must—quote—“isolate or quarantine for a period of 14 days.” The order specifically mentions the New York Tri-State Area (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York). DeSantis told reporters Wednesday …

DESANTIS: We have National Guard and some other health folks at the airports. All these folks are having to provide information. They have to provide a place where they’ll be self-isolating. And that is enforceable under the executive order so they could face adverse consequences. 

Florida is not among the states requiring everyone to shelter in place, but another state is joining that list. 

Idaho Governor Brad Little issued a statewide stay-at-home order on Wednesday. 

LITTLE: We’re sticking with where we’ve been all along, which was the CDC guidance was when you have community spread—and initially we just had it in Blaine County—when you have community spread, then you have to go to the next level, and that’s what we’re doing. 

Eighteen states have general stay-at-home orders in place and have closed non-essential businesses. 

Doctors, researchers prepare new tests to fight COVID-19 » A network of U.S. hospitals is waiting on permission from the FDA to begin large studies of a century-old treatment used to fight off the flu and measles in the days before vaccines. They’re hoping it might work on COVID-19. WORLD’s Leigh Jones reports. 

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: Doctors want to test transfusions—giving plasma from survivors of COVID-19 to newly ill patients.

When a person gets infected by a particular germ, the body starts making antibodies to fight the infection. After the person recovers, those antibodies float in survivors’ blood—specifically plasma—for months or even years.

Doctors dusted off the old-fashioned approach during the SARS outbreak of 2002 and used it against Ebola in 2014. The Journal of Clinical Investigation stated that while strict studies of the technique were not done, there are clues that it helped. 

Meantime, Reuters reports that several companies and academic labs are working to make blood tests. Those tests would “quickly identify disease-fighting antibodies in people who already have been infected but may have had mild symptoms or none at all.” That could help identify people who have some level of immunity, at least temporarily, against the disease. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones. 

Canada enacts mandatory quarantine for incoming travelers » Canada has announced that it is invoking the nation’s Quarantine Act. That will impose mandatory self-isolation for any traveler entering the country. The measure is in effect as of this morning. 

There are some exceptions, though. Healthcare workers, truck drivers, and other essential workers will be allowed to cross the border without quarantine. 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also announced on Wednesday benefits for workers losing their paychecks due to the virus. 

TRUDEAU: The Canada emergency response benefit will provide $2,000 a month for the next four months for workers who lose their income as a result of COVID-19. 

Meantime in Britain, a reminder that the virus is no respecter of persons. Prince Charles has tested positive. The 71-year-old Prince of Wales is reportedly displaying mild symptoms, but a spokesman said he “otherwise remains in good health.” 

ISIS attacker kills dozens at Sikh house of worship » A lone ISIS terrorist rampaged through a Sikh house of worship in Afghanistan Wednesday, killing dozens. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The attacker burst into the building in Kabul, lobbed grenades and fired on the crowd with an automatic rifle—killing at least 25 people.  

He held many of the worshippers hostage for several hours as Afghan special forces and international troops tried to clear the building. They managed to save 80 worshippers trapped inside the building. 

Within hours, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

An ISIS media arm identified the gunman as an Indian national. It said he carried out the attack to avenge the plight of Muslims living under harsh restrictions in Indian-ruled Kashmir. 

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: COVID-19 creates some unique challenges for Christian schools.

And Cal Thomas tells about his interview with former Vice President Dan Quayle.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER: It’s Thursday the 26th of March, 2020.Thanks for listening to The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. First up: The coronavirus and Christian schools.

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’… hand sanitizer and toilet paper? Wait, I remember this rhyme very differently.

EICHER: Ah, what a time to be alive!

From “spring break” to “school’s out,” we have moved from that to who knows when we’ll be back and what things’ll be like.

Here’s WORLD correspondent Katie Gaultney on how Christian schools in particular are grappling with a new normal.

AUDIO: Hello! How are y’all?

KATIE GAULTNEY, REPORTER: The asphalt parking lot is still slick from morning rains when cars begin lining up at Coram Deo Academy in North Dallas. But they’re not dropping off or picking up kids, like usual. Instead, grammar school principal Michele Howard’s latex-gloved hands deliver packets of schoolwork to parents, drive-thru-style. 

AUDIO: Those are your Missouri kids results. Is that all you need? Have you got everything? That’s all first grade and pre-K, so… 

These worksheets will support two weeks of “virtual school.” But it’s possible the doors of many private Christian schools will be closed through the end of the year. Logic school director Rev. Jon Jordan said Coram Deo had to pivot quickly. 

JORDAN: It’s just kind of the sort of thing that, you know, we may have taken an entire summer to think through do we ever want to offer anything online? And we would have explored options and tested it out and gotten feedback from faculty. And that whole process just kind of took place in four days instead. 

The news of social distancing and other precautions has affected educators and families from all types of school environments: public, private, even homeschool. But private Christian schools face some unique challenges.

For one, they often lack the technical resources of major school districts. “A tablet for every child” is harder to come by in Christian school classrooms. They don’t have the deep pockets of public institutions for funding those types of tools. 

Jordan told me teachers have had to be creative and keep an open mind. 

JORDAN: On the one hand, you signed up for this ‘cause you signed up to teach your class, and this is how we’re allowed to do it now, but in a real sense, this isn’t what any of our faculty were hired for. Um, it’s kind of learning how to teach in a virtual context and doing that. And they have really risen to the occasion… 

Coram Deo will expand the use of its online parent-teacher communication platform and implement a web-based tool called Microsoft Teams to get through these out-of-classroom weeks. 

Meanwhile, teachers have been brainstorming together. They’re answering hard questions, like how to conduct assessments. Jordan told me one teacher suggested beginning each online test with a sort of ethics creed.

JORDAN: It essentially says, “Knowing that my honor is something that I can protect my whole life and lose in a moment, I’m certifying that I did all the reading I was supposed to do,” and they click the true button. 

Jordan expects that will build more than academic knowledge; this exercise has the potential to build integrity.

JORDAN: And when the students are honorable in their answers, I think they learned something from that. And then when the students are tempted and given to the temptation to fib a little bit there, as a Christian school we kind of trust that that’s something that the Holy Spirit can use also to form them.

Christian schools also face financial challenges their public counterparts aren’t dealing with. 

They depend on tuition to pay teachers, staff, and administrators. Christian “mother’s day out” programs and preschools are in a particularly tough spot: Most of them bill tuition on a monthly basis. And the distance learning model doesn’t lend itself to the baby and toddler set. 

Lily Riemer is the assistant director of Jubilee Junction, a church-based school in Richardson, just outside Dallas.

RIEMER: And most schools can still offer virtual classrooms and still have their tuition. But as a preschool, what does that look like? If we don’t have payments, obviously then we can’t pay our staff. And our staff for the most part depend on that income. 

Riemer and her school’s director are coming up with options to present to parents. Teachers could send a weekly email with suggestions for sensory activities, plus age-appropriate instruction. They also thought about having the teachers do a virtual circle time, sending a video of themselves reading a book to students, but… 

RIEMER: Some kids, most kids are going to be more interested in the device than they are on what’s going on virtually. So I love the idea of a virtual circle time, but really, how productive is that developmentally for preschoolers? 

They’ve also kicked around the idea of enabling tax-deductible donations that would go into a benevolence fund to help pay teachers in these unexpected down months. If teachers go without pay, that makes retention tricky. 

RIEMER: So you have the short term vision, and you have this long term vision of how are we gonna keep our doors open and how are we going to provide for our staff so that cause we want it back next year, right? Like, we want to provide for them so that they can come back and be the effective, fabulous teachers that they have been for us this year…

Back at Coram Deo, Rev. Jordan has been able to move regular part-time staff to online support roles. Everyone at his school will continue getting paid as planned. But he worries this short-term pain could have long-term ripple effects. Years in the education system have shown him that hard times tend to negatively affect Christian schools’ bottom line. 

JORDAN: If the economy takes a massive hit and people are losing jobs, that affects their ability to pay for private school. Short term,  short term we’re keeping everybody.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Katie Gaultney in Dallas, Texas.

NICK EICHER: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: student assessment.

Every year, millions of children take standardized exams. Federal, state, and local governments use those exam scores to identify which public schools are failing and which are not, and how to allocate funding. Some schools use them to pass students onto the next grade.

MARY REICHARD: But now because of school closures, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced on Friday that states could skip standardized testing this year. WORLD reporter Sarah Schweinsberg has a story on what that means for teachers and students.

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: When Coperni 3 closed, Amy Storlie was surprised. She teaches 5th and 6th grade math at the charter school in a low-income Colorado Springs neighborhood. 

STORLIE: And it was really shocking to us because we don’t even have snow days at our school. Like we never close. 

To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Colorado schools will remain shuttered until at least April 17th. So Amy Storlie has spent the last 10 days moving her class online.

But she’s concerned about how she’ll ensure her students are still learning.

STORLIE: Not, you know, being able to really see them in person and know what they are struggling with and how to best help them was another thing I’ve worried about and am still worried about. 

That’s a concern for teachers everywhere. To help ease those worries, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has given states the option to waive end-of-the-year standardized testing. So far 24 states, including Colorado, have already applied for a waiver. 

Doug Harris is an education policy analyst at the Brookings Institute. He says cancelling standardized testing is the right move. Schools can’t make sure all students have equal access to online learning, and the tests can’t be administered securely. 

HARRIS: If they were to go forward with the tests, not only would this put a lot of stress on the system and on students and parents and teachers, but the results would be pretty meaningless.

Harris says states will just reuse last year’s scores when it comes to evaluating schools and determining state funding. 

But in many states, schools use the tests to determine if a student is ready to move up a grade. Without exam scores, schools will need to work with parents to figure out student grade placement in the fall. 

HARRIS: So now that we don’t have the scores and now that we know that there’s gonna be less learning what’s the effect gonna be directly on the students?

Rick Hess is the director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. He says cancelling standardized tests could have positive long-term effects.

Hess argues the tests have become too important relative to what they actually measure. They focus almost exclusively on reading and math. Skipping this year could force officials to reevaluate how they measure success for schools, teachers, and students.

HESS: These tests don’t capture world languages. They don’t capture social studies, civics or history. There’s only one test in elementary, middle and high school that touches on science. They say nothing about character. Nothing about the arts. It’s not that these tests aren’t important. It’s that these tests are important but limited.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg.

NICK EICHER: Now that much of the country is under orders to shelter in place, families are spending lots of time together. And even the best relationships can start to feel tetchy after a while. 

WORLD reporter Anna Johansen talked to one family for some advice—from kids, for kids—on how to handle all that extra togetherness.

KOCH KIDS: I’m Koryn and I’m 18. Kaleb and I’m 16. I’m Kyra and I’m 15. I’m Ben and I’m 13.

ANNA JOHANSEN, REPORTER: When state and federal officials banned gatherings of more than 10 people, the Koch family was automatically in violation.

KOCH KIDS: Claire and I’m 11. Madeline and I’m 9. Daniel and I’m 8. Mickey and I’m 6. I, I Sarah and I’m, I’m 4.

There are 10 Koch kids. The oldest is 18; the youngest is 1. And yes…they’re homeschooled. The advent of social distancing wasn’t a drastic change for them. But it has still taken some getting used to.

KIDS: I think it’s really bad because we don’t get to like go outside and play baseball and practices. Yeah. So that’s like pretty boring.

The siblings like each other, but they don’t always get along.

KYRA KOCH: I understand the feeling of like siblings getting on nerves and stuff because I think that happens to everybody. 

This is Kyra. She’s 15.

KYRA: But you’d be really surprised at how big a difference like a, just a smile or like a kind gesture will do…they light up and they get so happy when they actually feel like you’re paying attention to them.

Kyra says one way to get to know your siblings is to read a book out loud to them. She read the Harry Potter series to her little sister Maddie. She hasn’t been as close with Maddie as some of her other siblings, but through reading to her, their relationship deepened. 

16-year-old Kaleb says a lot of people he knows aren’t on good terms with their families.

KALEB KOCH: I’ve been thinking about this and for people that are stuck with their family now, this is the opportunity to grab, to start being with the people and start creating relationships. 

The younger kids chime in with their own advice.

KIDS: They just, they have to learn to live with it, which is a good trait, like as being, it can really depend. Like sometimes it’s really good to have, to have to learn to love the people around you and the people that are your family. 

The Kochs also know that alone time is important, but you have to do it right.

Koryn is the oldest. She says if you’re intentional about spending time with younger siblings, then they’ll probably be OK when you need some space later.

KORYN: A lot of the times when they’re bugging you is when they’re bored, when you haven’t been with them for a while. So if you do take the time to invest, they’re not going to bug you all the time because they’ll be happy with what you already did. They understand usually that you’re going to need a little bit of space at some point.

The kids also agree that the message you send is important. A lot of people might be tempted to have an “I’m stuck with you until the quarantine is over,” kind of mindset. But that’s not beneficial for anybody. Instead, be intentional about getting to know the family members around you. As Kyra points out…

KYRA: Your siblings are going to be the people in later life who you’re closest to and who always have your back.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

NICK EICHER: Well, like many Americans, a woman in Springfield, Missouri went to Walmart in search of toilet paper. 

Alas, those shelves were empty. But she didn’t leave empty-handed.

Store manager Jessica Hinkle told KYTV that the obviously pregnant woman approached one of her employees and said she needed some help.

HINKLE: We were like this is really gonna happen. So we were like what do we do now?! Another lady comes around the corner, she says I’m a delivery nurse. Can I help? I was like yes please! Please help us! She had gloves in her pockets. She was ready to go. 

And soon the woman was giving birth in the middle of the toilet paper aisle. Hinkle did what she could to help. She blocked off the aisle and held up a sheet.

HINKLE: Crowd control. I’m not like the best with blood, so that was my job is holding the sheet and crowd control, making sure nobody invaded what privacy the poor lady still had.

Which is to say, not so much

Customers cheered as paramedics wheeled mom and baby to an ambulance. Both are doing well.

REICHARD: That’s how we do it in the Ozarks.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: Today is Thursday, March 26th. We’re so glad you’ve tuned in to WORLD Radio today. Good morning to you. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a quarantine from history.

Today’s social-distancing requirements are likely to end when the threat of COVID-19 diminishes. But for some people in the past, quarantine lasted for most of their lives. 

Here’s WORLD reporter Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON, REPORTER: Just beside the levee at Carville, Louisiana, is a complex of buildings and dormitories that once was the National Leprosarium of the United States. I’m standing beside the entrance gate. For a good part of the 20th century, patients diagnosed with leprosy came right through this spot on their way to be quarantined …with no idea if they’d ever come out. 

The manicured grounds now house a National Guard installation. Staff member Bruce Casey offered me a tour in his Yamaha golf cart.   

CASEY: Right now we are on top of steam tunnels. You hear the panels moving. In the olden days, they generated their own power.  

And grew their own food. Published their own newspaper. Operated their own school. Carville was its own community, with some 450 quarantined members at its peak in the 1940s. 

CASEY: OK, this originally was the hospital, they’ve converted it to a hotel for the military use…

I decided to stay the night at the old infirmary. Little remains of its busier days. There’s a patch of original green tile on the second floor. And the rooftop is still flat, just like it was designed to be, a special outdoor getaway for patients. While they sat there in wheelchairs, they could catch a breeze from the Mississippi River and watch boats passing by. 

A front desk clerk told me what it was like to grow up near the leprosarium.  

CLERK: I lived in Gonzales, a little town outside Carville. As children coming up, we was always taught from our parents don’t go past Martin Luther King Drive, do not go past that road. Back then we thought the illness was contagious… 

I met another local resident who actually grew up on the grounds. Austin Barbay’s father worked at the leprosarium. He remembers some of the perks of quarantine life for patients—a theatre with the latest movies, the softball team’s winning streak, a stocked fish pond, Helen Keller’s visit. 

But he also saw their pain. 

BARBAY: There was a patient here: name was Dempster. He was 5 years old. His mother came here with him. She had the disease, and his sister did, who was quite a bit older than him. He lived to be in his 80s and never left Carville…

Catholic nuns wearing sailboat-like hats appear in many photographs taken at Carville. But Protestants made an impact here, too. Carl Elder was a chaplain who arrived for duty in 1951. Donations from American Leprosy Missions purchased the Montgomery Ward mail order house where he lived. It’s still standing on 2nd Street.  

So are the extensive covered walkways I saw on my golf cart tour.

Chaplain Elder wrote that he came to view the enclosed walkways between Carville’s buildings as his ministerial niche. He called it “corridor counseling.” There in the breezeways, Elder dealt with patients who were experiencing quarantine fallout, feeling forsaken and forgotten.

Paul Brand was a caring doctor who served here.

YANCEY: Paul Brand worked primarily on feet and hands. He started by finding various ways to move tendons around…

He and his wife spent 20 years working with patients at Carville. Best-selling author Philip Yancey shadowed them here and eventually co-wrote three books with Paul. 

YANCEY: Every time when I saw Dr. Brand with a patient, he would be stroking the hand, stroking the feet. He believed touch was one of the most, one of the most beautiful gifts that he could give a leprosy patient. Many of them had not been touched by others out of fear, undue fears because it’s not very contagious as a disease. But he would always touch, and you could see the impact on his leprosy patients. He, he and Margaret both were in the business of restoring human souls. 

Today, Carville is closed and its quarantine lifted. Researchers here discovered antibiotics can cure leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, as it’s now called. Even so, touch is still important for patients, according to Pamela Bartlett. Before she retired, Bartlett was a social worker for the National Hansen’s Disease Programs. 

BARTLETT: One of our doctors would greet patients as they got off the elevator, grab their hand and rub their arm and say, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” And having seen her do that and seeing the patient’s reaction—sometimes the first time they had ever been touched by a medical person—I, of course, started doing the same thing.

Misunderstandings about leprosy still cause a lot of grief. One of Bartlett’s clients came to Louisiana for treatment, then returned home to the Carolinas. She thought she’d be safe confiding in her dentist, a medical professional. 

BARTLETT: He immediately went to the school board of their small town and said, “We have a child in our school system whose mother has leprosy. We’ve got to do something about this.” 

The young woman found out all the second grade parents were having a meeting to discuss the issue. 

BARTLETT: She went down and she shut that down in a hurry and said, “You can’t do this. This is just totally wrong and I’m not even a danger… I’m more likely to give you a cold. I can’t give you this disease.”

The group of parents listened. And, after hearing all the facts about Hansen’s disease and her treatment, they agreed she was right. No social distancing necessary.  

Finishing my tour at Carville, I can’t help but notice the very healthy-looking National Guardsmen now making use of leprosarium property. 

CASEY: This was more living area for the patients, but now it’s been converted to on-site personnel, little apartments and such…  

But the exterior of some 50 buildings can’t be changed too much. The Park Service placed the Carville Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. So in a way, there will always be a memorial of sorts to the quarantine that happened here. 

For WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson reporting from Carville, Louisiana.   

MARY REICHARD: Today is Thursday, March 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD commentator Cal Thomas on policies and pandemics.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Whatever became of Dan Quayle? He has kept a low profile since he was George H.W. Bush’s vice president three decades ago, so I called him up to discuss government policies related to the coronavirus. 

Quayle gives high marks to the Trump administration and its response to the coronavirus pandemic. He said—quote—“They’re doing a very good job. They know what they’re doing.” 

He also shares President Trump’s optimism about the nation’s recovery. But rather than a V-shaped recovery, he thinks it may look more like a U-shaped recovery—meaning it will take a little longer than people would like. 

Quayle noted that China’s near-monopoly on the production of drugs was not always the case. The U.S. tax code used to give preferential treatment to pharmaceutical companies that manufactured their products in Puerto Rico. But Bill Clinton signed a law phasing out those tax breaks, and the companies responded accordingly. 

“They left Puerto Rico and went to China,” Quayle told me. “I ask you today: Would you rather have medications produced in Puerto Rico, or in China?”

The former vice president believes the country that could be the “big winner” in this is Mexico. Quoting now—“Mexicans are hard workers, family oriented, good values, and the cost of labor is less in Mexico.”

Quayle said even if those drug companies didn’t bring their business back to the United States, “at least bring it back to North America.”

Quayle says the policy of engaging China—bringing them into the World Trade Organization and hoping communist leaders would be less authoritarian and more has not worked. Quote—“They want us out of the Pacific so they can be the dominant player in the world, and we have to recognize this. Instead of becoming more democratic and more in favor of human rights, they have moved in the opposite direction.” End quote. 

Despite the mocking criticism he often received when he was vice president, Quayle says he does—quote—“miss the politics, running the country, being in the Senate. I wouldn’t mind being back (in Washington), but I have no desire to go back there. It’s a noble cause. I wish more men and women would get involved in politics. We’d be better off for it.” End quote. 

For the last two decades, Quayle has been chairman of Cerberus Capital, an investment fund. He has an office in New York and a home in Phoenix. For him, life is good. For the country at the moment, not so much.

I’m Cal Thomas.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow on Culture Friday we’ll talk about why some non-essential businesses— like marijuana shops — are exempted from orders to close during the pandemic. 

And, Megan Basham reviews last year’s version of Pilgrim’s Progress for children.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. 

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.