The World and Everything in It: March 27, 2026

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Judgments come for social media companies; will parents follow suit?

And the right response to the death of the wicked.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet will be along shortly for Culture Friday.

Later: a coming-of-age story about boys on the edge of manhood, and what it takes to guide them there.

CLIP: Kids lose everything unless there’s someone there to look out for them.

Max Belz has a review of Stand By Me.

And, your Listener Feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 27th. 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: Iran update » President Trump said Thursday that he’s giving Iran 10 more days to reopen the Strait of Hormuz before the U.S. military takes aim at Iranian energy facilities.

TRUMP:  They asked for seven, you're gonna say, oh, Trump's a terrible negotiator. They asked for seven, and I said, I'm gonna give you 10.

 The president during a White House cabinet meeting said Iran, earlier this week allowed 10 vessels filled with oil to pass through the Strait of Hormuz as part of a goodwill gesture. He said despite denials on Iranian state TV and public grandstanding, Iran is absolutely negotiating. He said in fact, its government is begging for a deal.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told reporters that Washington’s 15-point ceasefire plan was delivered to Teheran.

WITKOFF:  This has been circulated through the Pakistani government acting as the mediator, and this has resulted in strong and positive messaging and talks.

Witkoff added, though, that Iran should not miscalculate again.

Strait of Hormuz » Meanwhile, with energy prices still elevated amid the war. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent voiced optimism about reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

BESSENT: I am confident that shipping traffic will continue to increase on a daily basis even before we secure the straits.

Secretary of State Marco Rubuio spoke Thursday just before boarding a State Department jet en route to France for a summit of G7 ministers.

He again called out U.S. allies, particularly NATO countries, for not doing more thus far to help secure the strait.

RUBIO:  The United States is constantly being asked to help in a war, and we have more than any other country in the war, in the world, on a war that's happening in another continent in Ukraine. But, uh, but when the US had a need, he didn't get proper positive responses.

Rubio echoed the president's remarks, saying that reopening the strait is far more important to Europe than to the United States.

Maduro in court » Venezuela's deposed dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife and co-defendant Cilia Flores wore beige jail uniforms into a Manhattan federal courtroom on Thursday. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The couple pressed Judge Alvin Hellerstein to throw out drug trafficking charges against them. But the judge made clear: that’s not going to happen.

But he did question whether the federal government should continue to block Venezuelan government funds from covering the couple’s legal costs.

Existing U.S. sanctions bar that money from flowing. But Hellerstein noted that relations between Washington and Caracas have warmed since Maduro's capture in January. The judge, however, delayed his ruling on the question.

President Trump said today Maduro will get “a fair trial.”

Both face life in prison if convicted.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

DHS shutdown » It is now day 42 of the funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security. And air travelers continue to wait in winding hourslong security lines, including this traveler at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

AUDIO:  Traveling from Houston to Baton Rouge, so I should have just driven right? Five hours would’ve been hilarious. Next to this.

Amid the airport chaos, pressure is growing on Congress to fund Homeland Security, ahead of its upcoming spring recess.

Senators are trying to move quickly to debate an offer to end the funding impasse. Republicans are trying again to address Democratic demands for changes to immigration enforcement.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he’s given the final offer to lawmakers across the aisle.

THUNE:   Democrats have repeatedly said that they want to pay TSA Coast Guard FEMA and employees who defend America from cyber attacks. This bill would do it.

But some Democrats claim the GOP’s latest offer doesn’t go far enough to limit immigration enforcement tactics.

President Trump has already dispatched ICE officers to assist TSA agents. And he is now discussing the possibility of deploying the National Guard to airports if the shutdown continues.

IOC protects women’s sports » Olympic organizers say biology will determine who competes in women’s sports at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more.

HARRISON WATTERS: Olympic athletes going forward will be required to take a one-time cheeks swab or blood test to screen for male DNA.

Kirsty Coventry is president of the International Olympic Committee —or I-O-C. She says the policy reflects evidence-based science.

COVENTRY: Male chromosomes give performance advantages in sports that rely on strength, power, or endurance. At the Olympic Games, even the smallest margins can be the difference between victory and defeat, so it’s absolutely clear that it would not be fair for biological males to compete in the female category.

WATTERS: But as recently as 2024, that was not so clear to officials.

The IOC has previously encouraged what it framed as inclusion, and deferred to governing bodies of each sport to determine eligibility to play in female sports.

But after a controversial boxing match in Paris and President Trump’s executive order last February calling for clarity in the women’s category, the IOC has changed course.

The new rules state that men, regardless of physical appearance or so-called gender identity, can only compete in men’s sports.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: John Stonestreet is standing by for Culture Friday. Plus your listener feedback.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, March 27th. 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.

Back with us today is John Stonestreet, President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Two massive legal blows for Meta this week—and they’re sending shockwaves through Silicon Valley.

First, New Mexico. A jury hit Meta with a $375 million verdict for failing to protect kids from exploitation. Then, on Wednesday in California, another jury found Meta and YouTube liable for “addictive” designs that fueled a young woman’s mental health crisis.

Two states. Two different legal attacks. One big question: Is the “immunity shield” for Big Tech finally cracking?

John, lawyers are calling this the tip of the iceberg. Are we watching the start of a huge legal shift?

STONESTREET: Oh, they’re huge. That’s the understatement, because this obviously opens up the potential of all kinds of future litigation too, and we know the victims are many, from patients who have experienced the same kind of mental distress or depression, even being led to self-harm and suicide.

And also what we now know, which is that the tech execs knew they behaved differently with their own kids as compared to how they were expecting and hoping parents would behave with their kids.

So I think the precedent here is the same as the harms of smoking and the lawsuits against big tobacco. I think it’s similar to the lawsuits against the Sackler family after mis-advertising addictive, free pain medication. That’s a famous story as well.

The question is, where is this going to end? And I think it still leaves the question: are we going to behave differently? Because yes, I do think that companies bear some responsibility, but now we know. Now they’ve been guilty. Now the platforms are still there, and the addictions also are still there.

Now we know how bad it is, particularly for children, and yet parents are still buying smartphones and putting their kids on social media or allowing their kids to be on social media. Schools, private schools, public schools, are still encouraging technology use and not regulating it, even during the school day. Some are—a whole lot more are now than used to be—but there’s a responsibility now that we know, now that it’s been litigated, now that a decision has been made, now that these companies are beginning to be held accountable, that we hold ourselves accountable.

Speaking at an event last week in another country that is not as far down the sewage drain as we are on some of these issues, and I just did a flat-out endorsement: get your kids off social media. Get your kids off screens.

And another speaker there that was a pastor who was on the panel with me said, “and get off it yourselves.” In other words, you need to reflect the kind of behavior that you’re expecting your kids to exhibit.

And I think that’s the case. We have companies held accountable. Consumers need to hold themselves accountable.

BROWN: John, you said we know—we know the harm, we know what these platforms are doing.

So how much of this is really new—and how much of it is something we should have acted on years ago?

STONESTREET: Yeah. I think there’s a difference between 20 years ago and 10 years ago.

I think it is a difference between the ability of parents to stay in touch with their kids and a culture that felt more dangerous. There were all kinds of reasons for parents to want to stay in touch with their kids, and that’s been a driver, I think, of parents doing this for their kids in many ways.

But 10 years into it, when you’re talking about the social media boom, we knew a lot more than we acted upon. Educational officials knew a lot more than they acted upon, just like these companies knew a lot more than they acted upon.

And there’s also those who use this—not only those who developed this technology and created it in a way so that it would be addictive, but then those who knew it and then used that to brainwash kids.

I mean, one of the things we’re going to have to reckon with that Jean Twenge and others have pointed out is that when you lay the trend lines of social media use and the expansion and growth of that among minors and the incredible spike in mental health issues among minors—of gender confusion and self-harm—I mean, these are trend lines that literally lay on top of each other.

And we knew that. We knew we should have known that. And those companies that leverage these platforms that we are now saying are dangerous knew that they were dangerous then, just like parents did.

So there’s a lot of accountability here to go around.

And look, even 20 years ago, we may not have known everything about smartphones, but we had a whole lot of people warning us about screens and entertainment addiction and things like that, and early sexualization of children. And, you know, go down the line of the things that we did know about.

So were we prescient on this? No. Should we have been more?

EICHER: Before we leave this—would you call these verdicts an overall good for the culture?

STONESTREET: You know, when a culture gets messed up, it’s a lot more like a drop of dye has been put into the water, and you can’t really fully pull it out without kind of going through a whole purification process.

There’s going to be overreach. There’s going to be greed of lawsuits and lawyers.

And honestly, it’s kind of like, again, the Sackler family—the overall amount of money that they ended up paying was nowhere near the damage that they caused.

And you think about an eye-popping number like 300-and-some million dollars in one jury decision—that’s eye-popping—but that’s not even close to the overall financial cost of this behavior.

So there’s going to be positives and negatives. There’s going to be good and bad, even in the decisions that are rendered in the future of the litigation.

BROWN: Well, another story this week—the death of Kermit Gosnell.

The Philadelphia abortion doctor convicted in 2013 of murdering infants born alive during late-term procedures… along with the death of a patient under his care.

His clinic was described by prosecutors as a “house of horrors.”

The case drew outrage at the time—not only for the crimes themselves, but for how little attention it received from the national media.

John, when you look back at the Gosnell case—both the crimes and the lack of media coverage—what stands out most to you now?

STONESTREET: It is hard to know where to begin.

I mean, this was a scandal at the time that the media was so silent on—really what was the trial of maybe the most prolific serial killer in American history by any definition.

Not to mention the medical malpractice here, specifically directed at women and the lack of care to women who underwent abortion, some of them having died at the clinic or in the days after.

I mean, this was just an incredible thing.

It was also a story about the lack of oversight—how abortion got to play by different rules. There was more oversight in Philadelphia of nail salons and ice cream shops than there were of this.

There was more oversight in Philadelphia of nail salons and ice cream shops than what this was, which became known as a House of Horrors, according to the police investigators that looked at the story.

And the media coverage of this—or the lack thereof—both during the trial and now in the days after his death, I guess is unsurprising.

The malpractice is pretty deep, as we know, in media.

And we saw it actually this past week, or the last couple of weeks, in another death—that of Paul Ehrlich.

Here you had the author of The Population Bomb, who predicted essentially that the population of the Earth would exceed the resources decades ago and lead to mass starvations and so on and so on and so on.

And what did we have? We had national media outlets calling his views controversial. They weren’t controversial. They were flat-out wrong.

And not only were they flat-out wrong, but they inspired things like China’s one-child policy, which was a state-sponsored genocide of epic proportions—not to mention forced sterilizations in developing nations like India and other places.

Paul Ehrlich and Kermit Gosnell have an awful lot in common. Their views were very anti-human. Their ideas had consequences. And because they were such bad ideas, they had victims.

They were both wrapped up in their own ability to be heroes and saviors and ended up instead leading to an awful lot of deaths.

And the media failed to deal with either one of them in a way that was appropriate for the terribleness of their views.

So, you know, it came in bunches in the last couple weeks—not only from Gosnell, but also Paul Ehrlich.

EICHER: Let me ask you this, John: How should Christians respond to the death of someone responsible for real evil?

We’ve just had a public object lesson on the president celebrating the death of someone he considered an enemy. And he was rightly criticized for that.

But that raises a question: What is the right response to the death of the actual wicked, specifically a convicted mass murderer?

STONTESTREET: Well, Scripture tells us that God doesn’t cheer the death of the wicked, but it also doesn’t do anything to downplay the wickedness of the wicked.

And that’s why I think the Bible is so compelling and the Christian worldview so compelling.

When people ask, you know, what is it about it that you find the most convincing, it’s its description of the human condition.

Because within other worldviews, you have to assume that humans are gods. In some worldviews, you have to assume that intention overcomes the rightness or wrongness of action. In others, you basically remove human responsibility or accountability, since we’re just essentially animals with a conscience.

It’s within the Christian worldview that you have the inherent human dignity, and also the ability and capacity of humans to violate that dignity, both in themselves and in others.

Blaise Pascal wrote about this in incredibly powerful terms in his collection of writings called Pensées, that humans are the glory and the garbage of the universe.

And I think we should apply that and frame that out in how we think and talk about folks.

I thought, for example, Professor Robert George on his X account wrote a bit of a description of Kermit Gosnell as an image bearer, and also as someone who just completely lost track of what was true and right and what gave humans value, and the consequences of that were dramatic.

And I think you can do that as a practitioner like Gosnell did. I think you can do it as a theoretician like Paul Ehrlich did. I think you can do it as a dictator like we saw throughout the 20th century and the dehumanizing ideas of communism and so on.

There’s all kinds of ways to violate human dignity, and it doesn’t do us any favors to downplay that, ignore that, or anything else.

And yet, what do we know? That God does not rejoice in the death—death of the wicked.

BROWN: All right, John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center and Host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, March 27th.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a film returning to select theaters this weekend, marking its 40th anniversary. The film is Stand By Me.

WORLD’s Max Belz now on why this coming of age tale has stood the test of time.

MAX BELZ: The late Rob Reiner directed Stand By Me and in an interview he reflected on what drew him to the story.

REINER: It was about him and this journey to see the body was something he had to do in order to come to grips with his relationship to his father and how his friends helped him see him through that difficult time because he felt his father didn’t love him…

Stand By Me is based on a Stephen King story called The Body, in which a group of boys intrigued by news of a missing boy head out on an adventure. King in turn had been inspired by the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies about boys who crashland on an island and have to govern themselves. The results in that book are not good. But in Stand By Me, the boys leave civilization behind in order to become more civilized. They have to face the unknown to come to grips with reality.

CLIP: I’m never going to get out of this town, am I, Gordie?

Reiner made this movie before The Princess Bride, one of the few Hollywood movies approved for viewing in the most guarded Christian homes in the 1990s. Stand By Me would not have made that cut. It’s rated R for profanity and coarse language throughout.

CLIP: It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of your life, like busboys in a restaurant.

The film is framed by a voiceover from Gordie, played by Richard Dreyfuss. He remembers an adventure in the late summer of 1959 in Castle Rock, Oregon when he and his friends search for a missing boy who might have been struck by a train.

CLIP: Hey guys, I bet you anything that if we find him, we’ll get our pictures in the paper.

The four of them strike out with their bedrolls through the forest to find the corpse. We follow their adventure and their confessions to each other about the pain in their own families. They are growing up.

CLIP: We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were going. It was grand.

The boys talk big—trying to be tough and streetwise, but their journey reveals that they are insecure, finding their way through the forest but also through life. Gordie’s parents ignore him, overcome with grief over the loss of their older son who died in an accident.

CLIP: Bible says in the midst of life we are in death. Did you know that? I lost a brother in Korea.

A junkyard owner mocks one of the other friends, Teddy Duchamp, about his dad who suffers from shellshock.

CLIP: What did you call me? I know who you are. You’re Teddy Duchamp. Your dad’s a looney. A looney up in the nuthouse in Togas.

“He stormed the beaches at Normandy,” Teddy cries in defense of his dad.

Gordie’s boyhood friend and leader of the pack is Chris Chambers, played by an exceptional River Phoenix, the late brother of Joaquin. Chris delivers a moving monologue about the people in the town accusing him of being a thief, even though he righted his wrongs. He sees Gordie’s talent and encourages him about his writing.

CLIP: It’s like God gave you something, man. All those stories that you can make up. But He said this is what we got for ya, kid. Try not to lose it. But kids lose everything unless there’s someone there to look out for them.

These boys are trying to find their way on this escapade, and the struggles on their quest strengthen them to take on the difficulty in other, more painful parts of their lives. They face dangers in the forest like howling wolves and leeches in a swamp. The search for the missing boy also causes them to face their own mortality.

CLIP: Why did he have to die Chris? Why did Teddy have to die? WHy? I don’t know. It should have been me. Don’t say that. It should have been me. Don’t say that, man.

They enjoy teasing each other, but they genuinely support each other. The events of the movie happen at the end of elementary school. It’s a rite of passage.

CLIP: That’s when a cigarette tastes best, after supper.

In literature, we have a tradition of coming of age stories: Great Expectations, Huckleberry Finn, and even The Catcher in the Rye. These stories show the change from the tomfoolery of youth to the responsibility of manhood. In our age in which many young men find themselves in prolonged adolescence, these stories are worth retelling.

I’m Max Belz.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Finally today, we end the week with your Listener Feedback.

Becky Manring of Sterling Heights, Michigan sent this in about our feature story on a church that set out to help members with special needs:

BECKY MANRING: Good morning. I want to thank your report that was on the 11th of March, Mary Jackson’s report on ministering to people with disabilities and bringing it to all of our attention that we have brothers and sisters who have challenges because of different things in their bodies that don’t work the way they are supposed to, and yet they need Christ. They need compassion, and we in the church are to minister to them because they are just as much part of the body as anyone, and they teach us Christ in new ways.

Lindsay Griffen from Tampa, Florida sent in this note about your March 12th story, Myrna, on grandparents raising their grandchildren:

LINDSAY GRIFFEN: I listened twice to your story about grand families. Both times I was brought to tears, not because of sadness, but because of pure joy. When little Mercy described her baptism and her favorite song and how she and her grandmother would sing it in the car, you could hear the love and happiness in her voice. It was the most beautiful sound, and you could absolutely feel the goodness of God. It’s stories like this that make your podcast an essential part of my day.

BROWN: On March 10th, we had a story about Christians in Thailand. Listener Christine Hayden lives there and had this to say.

CHRISTINE HAYDEN: Hi. This is Christine Hayden in Bangkok, Thailand. We just listened to the podcast about the challenges of evangelism in Thailand. Thanks so much for this report. We have lived in Thailand almost 30 years, ministering in Christian education at International Community School, may listeners continue the prayers for the lovely people here who need Jesus. Thanks again. You.

EICHER: Finally, Leta Powell in Cedar Crest, New Mexico, on our February 23rd History Book.

LETA POWELL: I really enjoyed Arsenio Orteza’s piece on Johnny Cash and the concise summary of his life of his music and the good times the bad times the challenges the victories It was just a great piece and I hope you do more of those kind of Segments to learn about these people that have passed on but have left their mark on this world So thank you for that piece about Johnny Cash.

And that’s Listener Feedback for the month of March.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Alright, time now to say thank you to the crew who helped out with this week’s programs:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Max Belz, Mary Muncy, Emma Eicher, Albert Mohler, Onize Oduah, Elizabeth Schenk, Hunter Baker, Cal Thomas, Lauren Canterberry, John Stonestreet, and Bethel McGrew.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Devine, and Christina Grube.

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros—serving up the program each week-day bright and early: Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Lindsay Mast is producer. I’m Executive Producer Nick Eicher.

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

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 recounts what happened after Jesus healed the ten lepers: “Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, ‘Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ And he said to him, ‘Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.’” —Luke 17:15–19

Give thanks and praise to God this weekend, and be sure you’re in a Bible-believing church on Palm Sunday.

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.