The World and Everything in It: March 7, 2023

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Cultivated meat may soon be in supermarkets across the country, but what’s in it? We’ll find out how the lab-grown meat gets made.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also, protection for First Amendment rights for religious student groups on campus. Steve West will tell us about how the Biden administration is working to remove protections.

Plus our Classic Book of the Month for March.

And a father-daughter outing for bacon. Whitney Williams on the simple things.

BROWN: It’s Tuesday, March 7th. 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: FBI involved in search for Americans abducted in Mexico » The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward the return of several citizens kidnapped in a Mexican border town and for the arrest of those responsible.

State Dept. spokesman Ned Price:

PRICE: The FBI is working very closely with other federal partners and Mexican law environments agencies to investigate this.

The bureau says four Americans were traveling in a white minivan with North Carolina license plates … when they unknowingly drove into the middle of a drug-related gun battle. They were abducted moments later.

A video posted to social media showed men with assault rifles and body armor loading the four people into the bed of a white pickup in broad daylight. One was alive and sitting up, but the others seemed either dead or wounded.

Republican Senator John Cornyn the city of Matamoros, just over the border from Brownsville, Texas has effectively become a warzone.

CORNYN - Everybody knows that the cartels control the plazas, which is all of the area along the northern border. And so, as shocking is, as this is, it's not completely surprising.

Three Americans accompanied a fourth who drove to Mexico to receive cosmetic surgery.

The U.S. Consulate in Mexico had issued a warning just days ago cautioning Americans to steer clear of the area due to violence.

NTSB on rail safety » Railway giant Norfolk Southern is announcing plans to to make its rails safer after two trains derailed in Ohio in a month's time.

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy Washington Post Live that there are multiple ways to make rails safer, including:

HOMENDY: Realtime monitoring of temperatures and data trending from the control center.

Investigators tied last month’s accident near East Palistine to an overheated wheel bearing.

And Norfolk Southern says it expects to add roughly 200 hot bearing detectors to its network. It will install the first of those near East Palestine.

Spokesman said Connor Spielmaker told reporters:

SPIELMAKER: We’re investigating all these incidents. We’re cooperating with the NTSB. We’re cooperating with the local, state, federal resources to make sure that we investigated them fully, understand what can be done better, and make Norfolk Southern an even safer railroad.

The announcement comes as Congress readies legislation to tighten safety regulations and increase fines for violations.

3. Ukraine/Bakhmut »

ZELENSKYY: [Ukrainian]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine’s forces will not retreat from the city of Bakhmut.

The president’s declaration comes less than a week after an adviser to Zelenskyy said defenders might give up on Bakhmut and fall back to nearby positions.

That after Russia made recent gains in the area.

But Ukraine’s top military brass favor strengthening positions in Bakhmut and holding out.

Defense Sec. Austin on Iran » Speaking in Amman, Jordan on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Pentagon remains concerned about the military alliance between Russia and Iran. Iran has been providing weaponized drones to Moscow.

AUSTIN: We also expect that Russia will provide technology back to Iran in return for some of the help that they’ve gotten. And of course, if you’re a country in this region, you’d be very concerned about that.

And any technology Russia might share with Tehran is troubling. UN nuclear watchdogs say Iran is now extremely close to developing a nuclear weapon.

White House jumps into states' abortion battles » The White House is reportedly wading into state-level fights over abortion and the right to life ahead of next year’s election. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more:

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: Reuters reports that the White House will lend legal and messaging advice to Democrats at the state level and lean on local lawmakers to back pro-abortion policies.

White House officials say the Biden administration has divided the states into three categories: battleground states, proactive states, and what it reportedly calls extremist states. Those are states with strong pro-life protections.

The White House's Gender Policy Council is spearheading the effort.

It’s part of a Democratic Party plan to largely build its 2024 platform around abortion rights.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

GA riot charges » Twenty three protesters are facing charges of felony domestic terrorism after a an attack on the planned site of a Georgia police training center.

Officials say the demonstrators broke into the site of the future Atlanta Public Safety Training Center near Atlanta, set construction equipment on fire, and threw explosives at police.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr called the attack anarchy.

CARR: It may be something that they don't like but they are putting together a plan here in Atlanta to undermine the rule of law and destabilize the system. But it isn't going to stand here.

Police say at least 21 of those charged were from out of state. Two were from outside the country, from France and Canada.

Domestic terrorism carries a maximum 35-year prison sentence in Georgia.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: How to make lab-grown meat.

Plus, new challenges for Christian college groups.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 7th of March, 2023.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

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

First up on The World and Everything in It, FrankenFood.

Well, recently The Food and Drug Administration announced that lab-grown meat from a California startup called Upside Foods appears safe for humans. Final approval is up to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

EICHER: Upside Foods is just one of many companies around the world vying for a place in the market … but will consumers trust what’s on their plates? WORLD’s Mary Muncy has that story.

MARY: Would you eat lab grown meat? Meat that’s grown in a big vat from stem cells?

MOS: Uh… No, no.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: I went to the Walmart meat section to see if anyone would try cultivated meat. The results were varied.

MOS: I’d try it

MARY: Yeah? Would you buy it? If it was here?

MOS: I’d have to try it first.

Most people said they would try it once. But several worried it wouldn’t be healthy.

The companies trying to get cultivated meat on the market say the goal is to create a safe, healthy product that helps the environment.

PERSHAD: My name is Mihir Pershad. I'm the founder and CEO of Umami Meats.

Umami Meats is a cultivated meat startup in Singapore, the first country to allow the commercial sale of cultivated meat. It specializes in endangered fish.

PERSHAD: So the process is akin to developing like a new seed for crop.

The process starts at the docks with a recently caught fish. Umami Meats gets a tissue sample from the fish and takes it to the lab.

From there, they isolate a stem cell and start the growing process.

The factory looks a lot like a giant brewery.

PERSHAD: So you'll have the big steel tanks that are maybe two stories tall. And then you have a bunch of smaller vessels that are used for things like the feedstock for the cells or for harvesting.

From there, they add in what those stem cells need to grow. Right now, one of the main growth hormones used comes from cattle. It’s a fetal growth hormone harvested by slaughtering a pregnant cow.

PERSHAD: We grow trillions of cells from a small vial of maybe a million cells. And that trillions of cells gets turned into muscle and fat at the right ratio.

That process can help keep a lot of things out of the meat. Because the fish meat is growing in a vat, it won't be exposed to many of the pollutants that wild fish swim in. Things like heavy metals.

PERSHAD: Also reduction of microplastics, and elimination of them if you're eating cultivated versus eating wild-caught fish.

Pershad points out that the process is very similar to making fermented products like yogurt. He says even the most natural bread is a processed food because flour has to be milled.

PERSHAD: I think the unfamiliar was always a little bit concerning to many people, right, just by the fact that we don't know what something is we always have we approach it with caution.

Usually, that means doing a lot of research.

HOCQUETTE: My name is Jean-Francois Hocquette. I am a senior scientist at INRAE which is a French research institute for agriculture, food, and environment.

Right now, Hocquette says the question isn’t just, ‘does the meat have nutrients?’ It’s ‘can our bodies process those nutrients?’

Plants have iron in them, yet meat is a better source of it. That’s because the chemical makeup of iron found in meat is easier for our bodies to process than the iron in plants.

HOCQUETTE: You need to know precisely the composition, but also the digestibility of cultured meat, it it's very important to know if nutrients, micronutrients and micro nutrients are digestible.

Normally, a mother cow slowly gives her calf those nutrients while it’s in the womb. Then once it’s born, the cow converts nutrients from the grass or grain it eats into vitamins… and then those are slowly incorporated into its body.

Cultivated meat companies try to mimic that by giving cells nutrients slowly at the right time.

Hocquette says the period of transformation from cells to muscle fibers is critical to absorbing nutrients.

Then, after a cow is slaughtered, Hocquette says it goes through another set of chemical processes. The muscle becomes meat.

HOCQUETTE: It's a well-known process by butchers. It means that a muscle and meat are very different.

He says it’s like the difference between grape juice and wine. They both start as grapes, but aging changes its chemical structure.

Hocquette says private companies have probably answered some of the questions about nutrition. But since they're private companies, the research hasn't been made public yet.

That makes it very difficult for anyone to determine if it’s safe.

HOCQUETTE: If the data stays in the private companies, you cannot check this data you cannot analyze this data. So far, we don't have enough data to be sure of the safety and nutritional quality of cultured meat, but this is the point we need more transparency.

Some groups also argue that cultivated meat will help lower emissions. But scientists aren’t sure yet.

HOCQUETTE: It's very difficult to estimate the carbon footprint of something which doesn't exist rarely at a large scale. It's likely that the carbon footprint of cultivated meat has been underestimated so far.

The last big hurdle that cultured meat companies will have to jump is gaining consumers' trust.

WALMART MOS: Walmart Ambi

It’ll take a lot of growth for cultured meat to show up in Walmart’s meat aisle.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

The future for protection of religious groups on college campuses.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Recently, the Biden administration proposed ending a Trump-era rule that tied federal funding for colleges and universities to respecting religious liberty on campus.

The Department of Education says that’s unnecessary because the First Amendment already protects free speech and free exercise of religion.

But WORLD reporter Steve West tells us that’s not entirely the case.

STEVE WEST, REPORTER: I think that the thing that will happen here is that in some schools where there is sort of an animus against religion, you'll find that the some of these groups are harassed basically by the administration, their recognition as an official student group is held up or threatened in some way, that's usually the case. And so if this rule doesn’t exist, these groups will be forced to take some action, get somebody to represent them, go to court, and try to fight this because they are protected by the First Amendment. But unfortunately, the First Amendment doesn't have any teeth, of course, unless you go to court and enforce it.

BROWN: Former President Trump issued an executive order in March 2019. In the words of the order, it set out to “improve free inquiry, transparency, and accountability at colleges and universities.”

Here he is at the signing ceremony.

TRUMP: Under the policy I'm announcing today, federal agencies will use their authority under various grant-making programs to ensure that public universities protect the First Amendment and First Amendment rights of their students or risk losing billion billions and billions of dollars of federal taxpayer dollars.

BROWN: The order has given student groups facing administration harassment an effective pathway for resolving issues.

WEST: Under that regulation, the groups can simply go to the administration, indicate to them that, there's this rule, and they're aware of it, and indicate that there's this rule that ties their federal funding to their respect for the First Amendment rights of these groups, and generally persuade these administrators to back down, or they can enlist the support of one of the religious liberty groups out there, like the Christian legal society, to help them in that respect. And generally that has happened because since 2020, there have no been been no investigations, no complaints made to the Department of Education, so they've had nothing to investigate. The reason they haven't is because administrators have wisely backed down when they realized that this rule is there.

BROWN: But if the Biden rule goes into effect, student groups that face challenges on campus would have to prove First Amendment violations in court.

This is a long and tedious process.

WEST: For example, back in 2021, InterVarsity prevailed in a court challenge to the University of Iowa non-discrimination requirement, where the school had basically singled out religious groups and said, you know, you have to have you have to open your leadership to everyone, whereas it didn't do that with all of the other groups on campus. And so InterVarsity prevailed. Also, before that the Business Leaders in Christ group prevailed as well. But that took a lot of litigation. I think those lawsuits started a couple of years before that, and wound their way through the courts until they finally won.

EICHER: Michael Tobin is a third-year law student at the University of Wisconsin. He leads the school’s chapter of the Christian Legal Society, CLS.

While the student organization has been on campus for a while, last year the school’s administration took issue with CLS’s constitution--in particular the requirement that student leaders of the Christian group must be Christian.

The school initially withdrew official recognition of CLS. But after the national CLS fought the decision the school reversed course. It granted CLS provisional status. In other words, this story isn’t over. Again, student leader Michael Tobin.

MICHAEL TOBIN: I think there's the expression for at least for government, there's no more permanent solution than a temporary solution. So on the one hand, it could be something along those lines of the most politically expedient way to resolve the issue when you've got some people who want to deny our application, some people just wanna get rid of the issue, is to offer this temporary license. And who knows, maybe year after year, they might continue to grant us temporary status. It wouldn't shock me. It's also entirely possible, particularly as the regulation in question is now somewhat imperiled, that they might come back with a vengeance.

BROWN: But the regulation hasn’t been overturned yet. Biden’s proposed change is in a period of public comment until March 24th.

When WORLD’s Steve West checked the comments last week, only 24 people had contributed. But that number is now over 900. And CLS’s Kim Colby is hoping for even more.

Again, Steve West.

WEST: You know, she said, If you've seen the benefits of religious groups, you know, if you've been a part of one if your children have been a part of one, or if you're currently part of one, just say that and say what it's meant to you, you don't have to be lawyers. You don't have to be you don't have to have all of the right words. Just say what it's meant to you to be able to be in a student group like this.

EICHER: Steve West is WORLD’s legal reporter. If these stories are important to you, you might want to receive his weekly Liberties e-newsletter which is packed with strong reporting on these stories delivered to your inbox. And the newsletter is free. We’ll place a sign-up link in today’s transcript.

http://wng.org/liberties-signu...

(Link to this story: https://wng.org/roundups/campus-student-groups-face-renewed-threat-1677619787)

NICK EICHER, HOST: A couple up in New Brunswick in Canada returned home one day to find their front window broken. It looked like a robbery.

But it wasn’t. Audio here from CTV News.

That's homeowner Ray O'Donnell turns out his cat burglar was a white-tailed deer.

Ah, the forestry people. That’s the right call. These guys speak softly and carry a big stick.

A big broom handle, anyway.

The deer struggled to get its footing on the hardwood floor and tile, but it did eventually scurry through the open front door.

The Department of Natural Resources reports that the deer did not appear to be seriously injured—which is more than can be said for the house.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 

Today is Tuesday, March 7th.

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: our Classic Book of the Month for March. Reviewer Emily Whitten says a new edition of a classic biography seems clearly a good fit for history buffs …

But also for anyone who wants to know the real secret of American greatness.

SAVING LINCOLN: Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

EMILY WHITTEN, REVIEWER: That’s a clip of The Gettysburg Address from the 2012 movie, Saving Lincoln. Maybe you memorized that speech as a kid…or maybe you’re memorizing it with your own kids these days…perhaps a musical version like this one on Sandy Wilbur’s Youtube channel.

SOUND: [THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS]

While some today are toppling statues, Abraham Lincoln remains a hero for many of us. But as Christians, what are we to make of Lincoln? I hope our Classic Book of the Month can help answer that question. It’s titled Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, and it’s by Princeton University’s Allen C. Guelzo, who’s also a committed Christian. Guelzo currently serves as Princeton’s Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program.

GUELZO: I wrote my dissertation not on Abraham Lincoln, but on Jonathan Edwards and Edwards’s great 1754 on freedom of the will. And I fully expected that what I would continue to do be to write about 18th century moral philosophy, especially about Edwards. But a detour opened up.

That detour began with a phone call from a publisher, asking him to write about Lincoln. At first, he resisted, but eventually he came around to the concept of an “intellectual biography,” treating Lincoln as a man of ideas. Eerdmans published the book in 1999.

GUELZO: I take as something of a guiding star that verse from the Psalms, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And in many ways I take that and I apply it to Lincoln. I want to know what was in Lincoln's core. What were these ideas and how did they work themselves out.

In Guelzo’s telling, Abraham Lincoln grows up reading the Bible, but he turns away from Christianity early on. His father is a Calvinist, but he and Lincoln have very different temperaments and his father is sometimes abusive. Later on, Lincoln reads authors like Thomas Paine who strengthen his early skepticism.

GUELZO: Lincoln will pay a certain degree of respect to Christianity, but he won't participate in it. He never joins the church. We have no record of him ever taking communion, being baptized or anything like that.

For a while, Lincoln seems to put his faith in political ideas of progress. He embraces authors like John Stuart Mill and Whig politicians like Henry Clay. And if you’re unsure what a Whig actually is, no fear—Guelzo defines such terms and helps readers understand 19th century battles over tariffs, slavery, and the idea of markets and “free labor.” 

Later in life, Lincoln does soften his public skepticism of Christianity. When The Civil War becomes a bloody quagmire, Lincoln begins to see the God of Providence in a new way—prompting him to free many slaves.

GUELZO: He says, I am almost ready to say that what it means is that God has a purpose in this war beyond just victory for the north or the south. Something else is in play here. And it's not too hard to guess what's at the back of his mind, he's thinking about emancipation.

Guelzo says he got his title–Redeemer President–from a Walt Whitman poem. He thinks it’s a good descriptor because Lincoln was a man of great irony. By helping to end slavery in America, Lincoln hoped to give the nation a new birth—to realize the freedom of the Declaration of Independence for many Americans.

GUELZO: He redeemed the promise of the founders. He made it live again. He got it up from its bed of sickness that the civil war had consigned it to. 43:20 And yet the irony is that he could not claim redemption himself.

Guelzo concludes that, sadly, Lincoln probably never came “the whole way to belief” in Christ.

Overall, Guelzo’s writing isn’t as gripping as someone like David McCullough. But Guelzo is more theologically astute. And his depiction of Lincoln’s last days and hours is especially moving.

Since 1999, debates over slavery and America’s history have only intensified. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, our Classic Book of the Month, can equip us to join that debate wisely. Ultimately, while Lincoln wasn’t a Christian, his best ideas still offer Americans much worth striving for.

SAVING LINCOLN: We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I’m Emily Whitten.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST:  And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, meaningful moments when you least expect them.

Commentator Whitney Williams now on a short but memorable trip with her dad last Christmas.

AMBI: [WALKING IN WALMART]

WHITNEY WILLIAMS, COMMENTATOR: My dad and I don’t have a mushy-gushy relationship.

So a trip to my hometown Walmart together on Christmas Eve had my heart singing.

We needed bacon.

Now, I must pause here and say that Walmart has a special place in my heart anyway. Over the years, I’ve found it to be a familiar, welcoming friend no matter where I go in the world. A friend I know. A friend I can trust to meet my needs. friend who doesn’t care if I show up in my pajamas.

And my dad has a special place in my heart too, of course, growing more special as the years tick by. So there we were in my mom’s red Honda CR-V–I in my shacket and he in his Carhartt–heading out of small town Texas into slightly-bigger-town Texas. We found ourselves in no particular hurry, talking about nothing particularly important, and all felt right in the world.

As we drove, I took note of his rough hands on the wheel, one now missing an index finger after a board kicked back at him off of a saw blade. He’s a custom cabinet maker, has been all of my life, and a darn good one, too. As such, I’m not sure he knew what to do with a girl like me--a girl with … feelings, though I sanded my fair share of doors.

As we parked, got out of the car, and started walking toward Walmart’s entrance, I thought back on the night I almost died in that very parking lot. I’d come home from college on break and had grown used to doing what I wanted without updating my parents on my whereabouts. So that evening I’d gone galavanting around town with a boyfriend of mine. It was a typical small-town date night. We hit up iHop around ten or eleven, sat atop a stack of tires in a deserted downtown around midnight, and settled into the Walmart parking lot around 2 a.m. Just talking.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, good parents still care about their 18-year-old children and mine had expected me home at a decent hour. After failing to reach me on my silenced cell phone for several hours–oops!--they decided to drive around town to look for my white Mustang. I’ll never forget locking eyes with my dad as he and my mom rolled slowly past my car in their gray Expedition. If looks could kill, my dad murdered me violently, brought me back to life, and murdered me again for good measure.

As we walked through the automatic doors, I wondered if my dad ever thought back on that moment, and, if not, which of our moments did he think back on?

We took the long way around to the bacon, stopping by the hardware and camping section, looking for a heater that connects to a large propane tank. No luck. We decided to check Tractor Supply, too, which was fine by me. I was thankful for the extra time together.

“I really enjoyed that, Dad,” I told him, as we headed inside his house with the bacon. “What? Going to Walmart?” he scoffed. But I think deep down, he enjoyed it, too.

I’m Whitney Williams.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Washington Wednesday…we’ll get a view from CPAC on how the 20-24 Republican field is shaping up.

And what’s the best way to deal with wild cattle in New Mexico? Myrna, can’t wait to hear this. Myrna will have that story.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m 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 says: The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (John 2:13-17)

Go now in grace and peace.

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