The World and Everything in It: March 3, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. My name is Lisa Derhake, I live in Louisville, Kentucky with my husband Brian and our three children Scarlett, Luke, and John, and we are celebrating sixteen years of life with our oldest. So happy birthday Scarlett! You gave me a new glimpse of God’s endless love for us when I first held you in my arms. I love you, I hope you enjoy today’s program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning Teenage girls and depression. What if social media isn’t solely to blame…

And Vladimir Putin, culture warrior?

PUTIN: maybe they should take a look at the holy book of any great religion… . It says the family is a union between woman and man and these holy texts are now being increasingly doubted in the West

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

Also today, WORLD’s Collin Garbarino reviews a new movie that explores male friendship and boxing.

Hey, what are you doing, man?! Are you trying to hurt him? Hey! I know what you’re doing Donnie, you don’t owe this dude nothing! [CRASH]

And Ask the Editor.

BROWN: It’s Friday, March 3rd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mynra Brown.

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

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

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

Blinken on Ukraine-Russia and China » Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke face to face with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday … in the highest-level in-person talks between the two countries since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Blinken said he delivered a message:

BLINKEN: End this war of aggression. Engage in meaninful diplomacy that can produce a just a durable peace.

Blinken and Lavrov chatted for roughly 10 minutes on the sidelines of the G-20 conference of foreign ministers in New Delhi. But there was no sign of any progress.

The secretary said United Staeskraine has put forward a peace plan …

BLINKEN: President Putin, however, has demonstrated zero interest in engaging, saying there is zero to even talk about, unless and until Ukraine accepts, and I quote, ‘the new territorial realities.’

Blinken said he told Lavrov that the U.S. would continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes and would push for the war to end through diplomatic terms that Kyiv agrees to.

DoJ Trump » The Justice Department is urging a Washington, D.C. appeals court to allow several lawsuits against former President Donald Trump to move forward.

Congressman Eric Swalwell and two police officers injured in the Capitol riot … allege that Trump incited violence.

Many Republican lawmakers, though, say the Department of Justice has been turned into a political weapon. Republican Senator John Cornyn.

CORNYN - Being attorney General is a tough job because you are the chief law enforcement officer of the government, but you're also a cabinet member for the President of the United States.

They’re seeking damages for physical and emotional injuries.

Greece train update » Emergency crews are still searching for survivors at the site of Tuesday’s train crash in northern Greece. At least 57 of the train’s roughly 350 passengers have died from the crash.

Survivors are being treated at a hospital in the central city of Larissa. Outside, relatives of victims expressed anger with the rail company and government over neglected rail lines.

And One woman said she’s angry that the government isn’t providing the answers that the families of the victims deserve.

East Palestine » Meantime, at a town hall meeting in East Palestine, Ohio last night.

Residents let loose on representatives from the Norfolk Southern, the owner of a rail line where a train crashed spilling toxic chemicals last month.

MOS: This has touched me on every level. This has touched my family. This has touched my farm. This has touched my animals.

Many were upset that, as in a previous town hall, Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw, was a no show. Some shouted, “Where’s Alan?!”

The EPA says tests have shown that the air and water in East Palestine are safe, but many at last night’s meeting said thy’re not at all convinced. They’re demanding answers and accountability.

Jobs numbers » Jobless claims continue to drop. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: New claims fell for the third week in a row… for the week ending on Feb. 25.

For seven straight weeks now, Less fewer than 200,000 people have filed for unemployment benefits.

The number of unemployment applications on a moving, four-week average rose slightly, but has remained under 200,000 for six straight weeks.

That’s good news for the job market, but not necessarily for the economy. A tighter job market leads to higher pay, which leads to higher prices, at a time when the Federal Reserve is trying to tame inflation.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

CPAC » Former President Trump will be back in Washington this weekend as the headline speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

TRUMP: And we will make America great again!

The former president heard there at last year’s conference in Florida. This year, it is back in the nation’s capital for the first time since the pandemic struck.

CPAC has traditionally been who’s who of conservative leaders. But over the past few years, many of those conservatives who are not in Trump’s good graces have stayed away.

This year, two major expected presidential candidates are skipping the event: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Former Ambassador Nikki Haley is attending, however. As is former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Trump rival, Senator Ted Cruz.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead, Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, a trip to the movies. This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It's the third day of March 2023. 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. Joining us now is John Stonestreet. John is President of the Colson Center. He is host of the Breakpoint Podcast and he is here now, John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released a study that found almost six in ten teen girls feel persistently sad and hopeless, and that rate is twice the rate recorded for boys. Over the course of the last decade that persistent sadness and hopelessness has risen almost 60%. And the same study found also that a third of teenage girls in 2021 considered killing themselves. Now, I imagine it is more than fair to lay some of this at the feet of our social media platforms. But let me read a bit of what Allie Beth Stuckey wrote about in WORLD Opinions, she wrote this. "It's not just the overt messages teen girls are receiving via their phones that are dragging them into depression. It's the implicit message that all of them carry, which is that we are our own gods." She goes on, and I'm quoting still here, "A popular response to this new study will likely be we need to teach girls how to love themselves more and more self-care, more self-empowerment. But what if that's exactly what's killing them? What if it's not just the social media itself, but the self-idolatry it represents? That's really driving teens into feelings of purposelessness and depression? How do you answer those questions?

STONESTREET: I think she's right. I do think that it's not one thing, it's everything. And I think that the untethering of almost all of reality, from anything fixed, anything certain, anything predefined, which, of course, is exactly if we want to keep going back. And I know, you know, the going back game eventually leads us to the garden, right? But, and the temptation to eat of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, but I do think in a very real way, these are the inevitabilities of modernism, they're in the inevitabilities of trying to create a world without God. And I remember in my early days of doing apologetics and worldview and listening to the folks, you know, talking about how naturalism and basically, whether that's an overt atheism, or whether that is kind of a God as your own personal private friend secularism. Either way, you're untethering the universe from any defined realities. And pretty soon, this kind of godlike complex that we have to define morality and to define reality and now increasingly to define everything becomes less of a joy and more of a burden.

I literally had this conversation this week with a group of teachers about this particular study. And that's what they say, it's just the, the idea that you can be whoever you want to be, which we've been telling kids now for decades. And it starts being way, way, way too much pressure. And now, I'll say that, and then let me also say this, social media is the most direct way that these messages get into these kids ear. And you don't have huge social shifts without stuff. And what I mean by that is what we call cultural artifacts. You know, you don't have the Protestant Reformation without the printing press, you don't have the sexual revolution without the pill, you don't have this revolution of mental health crises that's particularly facing a young girl without Instagram and Tiktok.

And I, you know, as a good kind of Reformed worldview thinker, I have almost an allergy of condemning an entire group of things that are used wrongly, you know, it's this theological distinction between what's called structure and direction. You know, I grew up in an environment where we oftentimes would condemn all structures, you know, you should never dance because some dancing is bad, and you should never go to movies because some of these are bad and I, I have an allergy to that sort of thing. But I am ready to say this. You would never allow your toddler to swim in a pool in the backyard unsupervised. It would actually be a cruel thing to do. It is time to take teenage girls off social media. It is time. It is like putting a megaphone right up to their ear, where 24/7 all they're hearing is that they're wrong in some way, that they're ugly in some way, that they just don't measure up, that they're not enough that they're bad that they're, you know, born in the wrong bodies, that they don't look pretty. I mean, it is just absolutely giving them a loaded weapon and hope they don't misuse it. I mean, it's just that it is time to do that. So I agree with what Stuckey writes in WORLD, I think she's hitting on things that are really important. But I also don't want to downplay the stuff, the actual thing that's delivering this message, like an intravenous poison right into their brains. And that's what's happening with social media platforms right now.

EICHER: You know, John, I wasn't planning to do this, but I got an email. And just as you were talking there, I was reminded of that email, it was nice email from a listener who had heard you last week, saying in response to a question from Myrna. It was the Supreme Court question, considering the case against social media. And you made the statement, social media is bad as essentially as you have here. And he thought that you overstated that case, and he thought I should have pushed back. So fair enough on that I will push back on his behalf now. This is Matthew brink of Owensboro, Kentucky, and he recorded his comment. So let me just play a portion of it and let you react and clarify or whatever you want to say,

MATTHEW BRINK: with respect to my brother, I believe that is sloppy thinking. The truth is more nuanced. Social media algorithms can be bad. Social media. leadership's motives can be bad. Social media, leadership, power moves can be bad social media leadership, censorship can be bad. Social media user attitudes can be bad, social media usage patterns can be bad, and much more. But let's continue thinking and making assertions with care.

EICHER: Well, there you go. Instant feedback, John.

STONESTREET: I'm ready to say, look, I appreciate the question. And that's my theological angst that I just mentioned about structure and direction. And I think there are remarkable things being done on social media right now to introduce people to Jesus, to actually get good arguments out there. But that's not coming from teenage girls. So how about I say social media is bad for teenage girls, always. And boys. So yeah, I mean, look, I get it. I mean, I do think that there's an amazing work that's done when people run into war zones, and try to bring truth and care and healing for victims. But we wouldn't send teenagers into a war zone. And that's what we're doing. And there's so many analogies here. And again, I get the angst, I just communicated the angst that we have to distinguish biblically between structure and direction. God created the world structurally good. It's directionally been taken bad. Humans can create structural goods that can directionally be taken bad. But you don't, that doesn't mean you allow incredibly vulnerable people there. And right now, teenage girls, there's I don't think there is a scenario right now where a teenage girl should be on Instagram or Tiktok.

BROWN: Well, John, we heard a lot about President Joe Biden's visit to Ukraine last week, much coverage by so-called mainstream media on his speech. But we heard very little, if anything in this country about the speech, Vladimir Putin made around that same time. I want you to listen to a bit of his speech that's been translated, and I would add herd around the world.

VLADIMIR PUTIN (TRANSLATED) Maybe they should take a look in the Scripture, into the holy book of any great religion. It says that the family is a union between woman and man. And these holy texts are now being increasingly doubted in the West. The Anglican Church is now considering the idea of a gender-neutral God, what can we say?

BROWN: Okay, granted, Putin is no saint, not by a longshot. But he sure sounds like a right-wing conservative there. So here's my question, John, how do Christians saying essentially the same thing is Putin respond to those who criticize that commonality?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I mean, look, I didn't have agreeing with all kinds of people on my bingo list for 2023. You know, I find myself sometimes seeing clips of Bill Maher going, Man, I didn't know I was gonna agree with him. And, and here we have Putin, and then we have others. But, look, I mean, part of this is, we just have to call balls and strikes. And the fact of the matter is when it comes to the social agenda of radical sexual activists, their activities are far more totalitarian than we often call out. They want to force reality to bend to an ideology, and there are people who still are able to see reality. In this respect, Putin is one of them. Now, there's so many bad things about Putin's ideas and his behavior and, and his leadership that I, look, we can say that too. And just because, you know, I find myself agreeing with a particularly harsh statement. I mean, Putin is not wrong. You cannot build society, you know, without, you know, the family. He's exactly right on that. And he's exactly wrong on military aggression and Russian history and, but he's not wrong about the fact that much of the West is completely deluded. And living in that delusion and trying to reframe everybody else's thought around that, too. He's not wrong about the Church of England, and what he says about them. He's not wrong about Western perversions, socially experimenting on children. He's not wrong about that, even if he's wrong about so many other things, and we got to say that.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time zones can be confusing...as illustrated in this classic West Wing scene:

WEST WING: All right. What time is it in Tokyo? They're 14 hours ahead. I thought it was 13. Eastern daylight. Okay so it's almost 11 o'clock in Tokyo. 11 in the morning or 11 in the afternoon?

Now, imagine the challenge of keeping track of what time it is on, say, the moon, especially as missions and personnel from various countries overlap.

The international space station orbits the earth every 90 minutes, so it uses Coordinated Universal Time—or UTC—to manage the different time zones on earth.

But missions to the moon pose additional coordination challenges. So international space organizations agreed last year that there was “an urgent need” to establish a common lunar time reference—making things easier for everyone, something like UTC but on a more interplanetary scale.

And not to rush anyone, but the clock is ticking—so to speak—as manned missions to the moon begin in less than three years. Which is like 37 lunar days…

CHICAGO: Does anyone know what time it is?

It’s The World and Everything in It. …

Thanks, Chicago. That’d be Central Standard Time.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, March 3rd.

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.

Up next on The World and Everything in It, WORLD Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino has an update on what’s happening at the movies.

COLLIN GARBARINIO: Last week, I said Jesus Revolution, the faith-based movie about the 1970s Jesus Movement, was worth heading to the theater for. A few people contacted me to say they saw it and enjoyed it. And they weren’t the only ones. Jesus Revolution earned a rare A+ CinemaScore from audiences on opening day.

It grossed almost 16 million dollars last weekend—that’s more than double what the studio expected. I’ve heard the average American visits the movie theater three times a year. Jesus Revolution is worth using one of those three visits.

But if you already saw Jesus Revolution last weekend, and you’re looking for something new to see in the theater, Creed III comes out today.

Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky came out way back in 1976. Who would have thought almost 47 years later, the franchise would still be going the distance? In Creed III, Michael B. Jordan steps back in the ring to take another swing at boxing glory. This time he not only returns as Apollo Creed’s son Adonis “Donnie” Creed, he also directs.

DONNIE: I spent the last seven years of my life living out my wildest dreams. Bianca, Rocky, my dad—this is built on their shoulders.

After starring in eight franchise films, Sylvester Stallone has bowed out, so don’t expect to see Rocky Balboa in Creed’s corner.

The movie begins with Donnie Creed retired from the ring and living in Los Angeles. The former champion now spends his time developing the next generation of boxing talent and enjoying life with his wife and daughter. But Donnie’s confidence in the future shatters when he’s confronted by a ghost from his past.

DONNIE: Hey, my man. Can I help you?

DAMIAN: Let me get your autograph?

DONNIE: Nah, I ain’t signing no autographs, but you can get off my car.

DAMIAN: You don’t remember me, huh?

DONNIE: Damian.

His childhood friend Damian, played by the astonishingly talented Jonathan Majors, has just got out of prison. Damian wants a shot at fulfilling his own dreams of boxing glory.

DONNIE: How long were you locked up?

DAMIAN: Eighteen years, bruh. Just got out last week.

DONNIE: Glad to have you back out, man.

DAMIAN: I know I’ve been away a long time, but I kept myself in shape. I got gas in the tank.

DONNIE: Come by the gym.

DAMIAN: Thank you.

Donnie suffers from guilt over his complicity in Damian’s incarceration. He feels obligated to help Damian. But their strained friendship takes a toll on both Donnie’s business and his family. Following the tried-and-true Rocky formula, they’ll have to settle their problems in the ring.

DAMIAN: You a coward, bro. And a fraud. Try spending half your life in a cell. Watching somebody else live your life. I’m just getting started, little brother. I’m coming for it all.

Creed III is rated PG-13 for sports violence and some rough language—some of that rough language shows up in the hip-hop soundtrack.

Stallone left the franchise because he doesn’t like the new direction. He said he wanted to keep the tone sentimental and didn’t want the hero to explore dark places. But the storyline between Donnie and Damian is actually the best part of the movie. The scenes possess an affecting honesty and depict a certain kind of masculine relationship.

It’s too bad the subplots involving Donnie’s family lack the same emotional punch

LITTLE DUKE: I need you to let go of your fear. Let go of the guilt. Let go of whatever was, and walk into what is.

The story follows the typical Rocky pattern—a problem, a training montage, and a championship boxing match. As for Rocky-verse films, I would put this one in the middle of the pack. The movie’s biggest flaw is that it fails to justify why Donnie needs to fight Damian at all.

STEPHEN A. SMITH: The one and only Adonis Creed. You the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world—three years ago. It’s been a minute since you been out in these streets.

DONNIE: When I walked away from boxing, I walked away with some unfinished business.

Creed III isn’t perfect, but it’s an entertaining movie with visceral fight scenes you won’t find in a superhero fantasy.

Despite Stallone’s concerns about the movie going too dark, Creed III has a certain kind of sentimentality to it. It’s an unapologetically masculine film about imperfect men trying to figure out how to live in a world that’s passing them by.

This movie doesn’t try to turn masculinity into a problem that needs to be solved. The issue is whether that masculinity will be used for noble ends. But really. All Rocky movies ask the same question: What kind of man are you going to be?

I’m Collin Garbarino.

BROWN: If you're interested in reviews and entertainment news delivered to your inbox, you can subscribe to Collin Garbarino’s weekly Muse newsletter. You can find it and sign up at wng.org/newsletters. It’s free.

BROWN: Today is Friday, March 3rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD’s Paul Butler now with Ask the Editor for March.

PAUL BUTLER: Last weekend I got an email from Rick Franklin. The subject line caught my eye. It was simply titled: “Grammar request.”

Greetings in the name of the Lord. Love the show, listen every day.

I assume y'all know that using “year” and “anniversary” in the same term to describe the anniversary of an event is redundant. Unfortunately, terms like “one-year anniversary” have become somewhat common in our culture. The AP style guide frowns on such use…I've heard some of your on-air talent using it over the years...Please join my efforts to end this particular abuse of our language.

Better terminology would be phrases like “It’s been one year since . . .” or “fourth anniversary.”

Thanks for all you do. Keep up the great work!

Rick

Rick you’re right, and I’ll admit that I’m one of those guilty of using the phrase. I turned to our AP Style guide and confirmed that it does indeed frown upon modifying “anniversary” with the word “year”—though I will say scrolling through the clarifications that it’s an inconsistently applied guideline…so I might not go as far as you and call it an “abuse of our language,” but it’s a suggestion duly noted and we’ll work on it. I look forward to next year, when I can mark the first anniversary of my proper use of the term—without the modifier.

Next, a voice memo from Newcastle, Pennsylvania.

DOUG GLENN: Hi friends at WORLD, longtime listener, first time caller. Very much love what you all do on a daily basis.

Listener Doug Glenn is in the publishing business and enjoyed Myrna’s piece last month on the challenges facing newspapers—leading many to move to online only distribution.

GLENN: It was an interesting segment to which I did not disagree with anything, but I'd actually like to add a little note lest any of the WORLD listeners be left with the impression that print is going away anytime soon. But Print books and magazines are at an all time high and there is no indication that print, broadly speaking is dead or dying. As Mark Twain said, the report of my death was an exaggeration such as the case in the print versus digital debate.

One more excerpt from Doug’s voice memo…he ended with this account of when he was touring the facility that prints his magazine. There—in an overflow bin—was a copy of WORLD Magazine:

GLENN: We were extremely honored to know that our humble magazine is printed in the same place where WORLD Magazine is printed. Keep up the good work. And thanks so much, really appreciate what you guys do.

God's blessings.

Thanks Doug! And God’s blessings on you as well.

And finally today, a short and challenging email from listener named John…he sent this note after last Wednesday’s program:

Why no mention of Ash Wednesday on today’s podcast? Is Lent not a big deal?

Lent started a little more than a week ago, and as John points out, we neglected to mention it. While some of our listeners and staff may not commemorate the season of Lent, it would have been appropriate to mention it as millions of Christians around the world do. And it’s a great reminder for us all to take time to consider our own relationship with Christ and pray that God would conform us more and more into His image.

So John, we pray that this will be a particularly meaningful season of preparation and reflection for you…and to try to remedy my oversight, I’d like to end this month’s Ask the Editor with an excerpt of a cover version of Terry Talbot’s song: Create in Me a Clean Heart…sung here by World Watch viewer Stephen Nasby as posted on his YouTube channel.

I’m Paul Butler.

EICHER: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week: Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Mary Jackson, Amy Lewis, Steve West, Carolina Lumetta, Leo Briceno, Onize Ohikere, Koryn Koch, Ryan Bomberger, Lauren Canterberry, Grace Snell, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Josh Schumacher, Mary Muncy, Elias Ferenczy, and Anna Mandin.

And our guys who stay up late to get the program to you early … Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

BROWN: Our producer is Harrison Watters with production assistance from Benj Eicher, Lillian Hamman, and Emily Whitten.

Paul Butler is our Executive Producer.

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: “A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And [Jesus] said to them, ‘The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.’”

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.