The World and Everything in It - March 9, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today, the root causes of inflation and the Biden administration’s response to it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll hear from economist Jerry Bowyer about that on Washington Wednesday.

Also today, World Tour.

Plus behind the scenes of our new podcast, Lawless.

And consulting the owner’s manual on the care and feeding of the human being.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, March 9th. 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 with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Gas prices likely to rise further as U.S. bans Russian oil imports » Gas prices in the United States have reached record highs. And President Biden warns … they’re likely heading higher.

That is due in part to his decision, with bipartisan backing to ban Russian oil imports. The president made the announcement at the White House on Tuesday.

BIDEN: The decision today is not without cost here at home. Putin’s war is already hurting American families at the gas pump. Since Putin began his military buildup at Ukrainian borders, just since then, the price of the gas pump in America went up 75 cents. And with this action is going to go up further.

The action follows pleas by Ukraine to cut off the imports, which had been a glaring omission in the massive sanctions against Moscow.

Energy exports have kept a steady stream of cash flowing to Russia despite otherwise severe restrictions on its financial sector.

Biden declared, “We will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war.”

And British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said his country will join the United States in taking that stand.

JOHNSON: We will stop important Russian oil, Mr. Speaker. My [SIC] friend, the business secretary, will update the House on that tomorrow.

But most of Europe will not be following suit anytime soon as they simply don’t have a good way to replace Russian energy imports in the short term.

Poland offers fighter jets to US in plan to help Ukraine » Poland announced Tuesday it will indeed give all its MiG-29 fighter jets to the United States, which would, in turn, give them to Ukraine.

Ukrainian pilots know how to fly the Russian-made fighter jets, and the move is expected to be a morale booster for Ukraine.

The U.S. military would then send American F-16s to Poland to make up for their loss. But the White House has not confirmed the swap.

GOP Congressman Mike Turner said Tuesday …

TURNER: The White House needs to approve this and to get this moving. These planes would make a tremendous difference in Ukraine being able to defend itself, its population and to those corridors of people who are seeking to leave Ukraine.

But some aren’t so sure that it will make a tremendous difference because newer Russian aircraft can outclass the Soviet-era MiGs.

Still, the Polish government appealed to other countries that own MIG-29 jets to follow suit.

Russia has warned that supporting Ukraine’s Air Force would be seen in Moscow as participating in the conflict and open up suppliers to possible retaliation.

Iran sticks to ‘red lines’ in nuke talks » The latest round of nuclear talks with Iran wrapped up in Vienna on Tuesday.

Restoring the 2015 nuclear deal is a topic that remains controversial in Washington. Former President Trump pulled out of the pact in 2018, but President Biden hopes to reforge the agreement.

Iran wants all sanctions against the country lifted and says it will not back down on its “red lines” in nuclear talks.

Still, in recent days, negotiators on all sides had signaled that a potential deal was close.

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said Moscow is still involved in the talks.

BLINKEN: Russia continues to be engaged in those efforts, and it has its own interests in ensuring that Iran is not able to acquire a nuclear weapon.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he wanted guarantees that the U.S. sanctions would not affect Moscow’s relationship with Tehran. That threw months of negotiations into question.

But Blinken called Lavrov's demand “irrelevant.” He said the nuclear deal and sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine war were “totally different.”

Top French officials this week warned Russia not to hold up a new agreement as a form of blackmail in the face of Western sanctions over the Ukraine invasion.

Minneapolis teachers go on strike after contract talks fail » Teachers in the Minneapolis School District walked off the job Tuesday. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has that story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The walkout halted classes for about 29,000 students in one of Minnesota's biggest school districts.

The teachers’ union is asking for smaller class sizes, higher pay, and mental health support for teachers and students.

The union and district have been negotiating. And the district pledged to continue talks but it called the walkout disappointing.

Students will have access to online learning and breakfast and lunch at the school starting today.

Teachers in the neighboring St. Paul district had also scheduled a strike for Tuesday but announced a tentative agreement late Monday night.

National labor leaders say teachers and support staff across the country right now share many of the same complaints.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Australian authorities brace for flooding around Sydney » Authorities in Australia have told at least a half-million people in and around Sydney to evacuate or prepare to flee floodwaters as torrential rain lashes the area.

Major flooding was expected along several rivers in and around Sydney. And local residents say many streets look like rivers.

Forecasters warned of life-threatening flash flooding and damaging winds. At least two people have already died in the Sydney area.

And across New South Wales and Queensland, 20 people have died in widespread flooding in recent weeks.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: Washington’s strategy for tackling inflation.

Plus, the importance of reading the owner’s manual.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 9th day of March, 2022.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday. Up first: a policy prescription to fight inflation.

President Biden outlined his plan in the State of the Union address last week. And the Federal Reserve plans next week to raise interest rates. But are these steps the right prescription to get prices under control?

Here to help answer that question is Jerry Bowyer.

He is the chief economist at Vident Financial and author of The Maker vs. the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Economics and Social Justice.

REICHARD: Jerry, good morning!

JERRY BOWYER, GUEST: Good morning, Mary. How are you?

REICHARD: Doing well and glad to talk to you. Well, let’s start with root causes. In your view, what’s behind the inflation we’re seeing right now?

BOWYER: Well, inflation is, as Milton Friedman says, always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Inflation is a decrease in the purchasing power of your currency. So you can think of it as the price of something going up means that your currency buys less. So that happens when there is an imbalance between the production of currency and the production of goods and services. If you have too much money chasing too few goods, that is the perfect storm for inflation. And that's what we have.

We have too much money because the central bank has created enormous sums of a monetary base and M-1 and M-2, which are just different measures of money.  When there's a lot of it around, that drives the price up. Your currency is worth less, because you've made more of it. Just like any piece of art, if you start creating identical copies of that piece of art, the value of it goes down, and money is the same thing.

So, why are we doing that? Why have we created so much money? A couple of reasons. One, the creation of money is in and of itself seen as stimulatory. This goes back to John Maynard Keynes, who was brought up during the Victorian era. He rejected all of the worldview of the Victorian era and its focus, and said that really the way to get prosperity is to get people spending. Well, how do you get people spending? Well, if you create inflation, people think prices are gonna go up so they go out and buy things. The other thing is if people are saving, well, if you're saving, you're not spending. Well, if we punish people for saving, by, for example, putting inflation into the system, so that you're saving money, but it's losing value—because the currency is losing value—that will goad people into spending. So we got the idea that simply creating money supply was stimulative. It isn't. In addition, we got the idea that the government spending money on stimulus plans would also stimulate, which it doesn't. And then the double whammy there is since the government is doing this with borrowed money and regular savers aren't willing to lend enough to our own government by buying bonds, the central bank comes in and creates new money to fund this spending. So these things coming together, there's a kind of a vicious cycle, that becomes inflationary. And on top of that, if you have an administration or policy approach which is hostile to growth, that's the “too few goods.” All of that adds up to the highest inflation in 40 years.

REICHARD: That’s a very good primer. Of course, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell announced recently that the Federal Reserve will likely soon raise interest rates to fight inflation. Can you describe how that would help to slow inflation, if it will?

BOWYER: Well, when they say that they're raising interest rates, what they're really saying is raising interest rates is taking money out of the system. Lowering interest rates is putting money into the system. So what happens is the Fed board meets together and they decide whether to pursue an easing course or a tightening course. And then they instruct people at their trading desk to either create money and use it to buy bonds from banks, or to sell those bonds and destroy the money. Take it out of existence.

So raising and lowering interest rates is really kind of the way they describe what is in essence a process of either creating or destroying money supply. Nobody in America has this authority. They can simply create an entry in an account. They can just say, “Let money be.” That's why it's called 'fiat' money. So it's almost divine prerogative here. The Fed actually has the authority to say, “Let there be money in an account.” And then they can take that money, and they can give it to banks in exchange for bonds. So, the conversation about raising or lowering interest rates is a little confusing because it's really a cover. What's actually happening is what they call open market operations. They're buying and selling bonds, and either creating or destroying money.

So how would raising rates? Well, what I would say is to the degree that they are taking money—if they created too much money, and they're taking it out of the system, that's a way of fighting inflation. The question is, are they willing to do enough of it? Because at this point, what's expected of the Fed is not nearly enough to contain this inflation.

Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan teamed up. Volcker seriously pulled back on inflationary forces on the monetary side. Reagan had his back. And Reagan also cut taxes so that there were more goods being produced. So instead of too much money chasing too few goods, Volcker dealt with the too much money. Reagan dealt with too few goods by doing supply side tax cuts that helped us produce more goods. And eventually those things came into equilibrium and inflation was beaten for a generation and then a generation arose which remembers not Volcker and Reagan, and we're falling into the same stagflation formula we did before under Nixon and Carter.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about what President Biden said in his State of the Union address to curb inflation. I’m going to quote him: “Let's pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and paid leave. Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.” And he mentioned boosting U.S. manufacturing capacity. Jerry, do you think those measures will work to curb inflation?

BOWYER: No. Of course not. Does he? Does anybody? Or is it just inflation is the headline, let's take our policy agenda, and try to glom it onto that headline? I don't see how raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would fight inflation. I'm not even hearing them try to rationalize that. Increasing the cost of labor to lower the price of things that labor produces? That doesn't make any sense at all. Also, increasing the cost of labor to the point where people are priced out of the market. Not everybody can produce $15 an hour worth of goods and services when they start out. When we said we raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour, that's a dishonest description. What we're doing is illegalizing wages under $15 an hour, which means we're illegalizing starter jobs. Because very few people will have a starter job skill set that's going to pay $15 an hour. People start out, they work for a few years, they get better at the job, and they kind of grow into – they get more productive and their wages rise. By basically saying anybody who's working for $14 an hour—that's the market wage—will henceforth not work at all. And if they're not working, then what are we doing? Then we're paying them not to work. So we have more welfare payments that's financed by deficits, which are financed by new money creation by the Fed. So, to the degree that has an impact at all, it's more monetary easing, more pressure on the Fed to keep creating money and therefore more inflation.

REICHARD: Okay Jerry, imagine that your phone rings tomorrow and it’s the White House. President Biden wants your plan to get inflation under control. What’re you going to tell him?

BOWYER: He wants my plan. Well, it’s going to stretch my credulity that he would call on that. But if he does, what I would say is, first of all, depends on what you're thinking about the Fed, Mr. President. I don't think the Fed really should be independent. I think the Fed is a creature of Congress. So I think the president could do what Reagan did with Volcker. Reagan didn't control Volcker but he had Volcker’s back. In other words, Mr. Chairman, if you think you need to reduce money in circulation in order to beat this inflation, I'm not going to attack you politically. You can do the right thing.

He ought to look at what Reagan did, which is a commission to look at fixing the price of the value of the dollar to gold, which sounds like a really crazy idea except all the greatest growth times in American history, we were either officially or unofficially linked to the gold price. So starting that conversation would put pressure on the Fed to not debase. Plus it is the constitutional position. All the constitutional notes that talk about monetary policy, assume a gold or silver standard back. The other thing the president can do is instead of talking about getting rid of the tax cuts, the supply-side tax cuts, cut more. We're in stagflation—stagnant growth and inflation. The president can get rid of the 'stag' by cutting taxes and lightening up on regulation. The Fed can get rid of the 'flation' by reducing the money supply, but the President can also give the Fed rhetorical cover like Reagan did to Volcker. I don't see a Reagan-Volcker when I look at Biden and Powell. And so that would not be my base case, but if they did that, I think we could deal with the stagflation issue pretty quickly.

REICHARD: Jerry Bowyer is chief economist at Vident Financial. Jerry, thanks so much!

BOWYER: Mary, a great pleasure to be with you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour. Here now is our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Foreign students flee Ukraine—We start today in North Africa.

Parents in Tunisia welcomed home the first group of African students evacuated from Ukraine last week. This woman spoke through an interpreter.

AUDIO: I am very happy because my son returned. I am also happy for the others. We hope that all our children will make it back.

About 16,000 Africans study at universities in Ukraine. Many of them fled along with Ukrainians as Russian forces advanced. But students from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East reported mistreatment by border officials when they tried to cross into neighboring countries.

African leaders scrambled to airlift students from Poland, Romania, and Hungary.

Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey is Ghana's minister for foreign affairs.

BOTCHWEY: Evacuation options were limited as Ukraine closed its airspace at the start of the military operations. This left, as the only viable option, evacuation by land to neighboring countries such as Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic and even Russia.

A group known as Black Foreigners in Ukraine has rallied support online for African students. The volunteers coordinated funds, shared updates on border points, and partnered with organizations to help students get settled in other countries.

The volunteers are working on long-term plans for students now spread across other European nations, including options for them to transfer their credits and continue their studies.

Burkina Faso gets a new government—Next we go to Burkina Faso.

The military leader who took over the government in January signed a charter authorizing a transitional government last week.

AUDIO: [Man speaking French]

The country’s new prime minister said the government would focus on fighting terrorism, restoring national territory, responding to the country’s humanitarian crisis and improving governance. He also noted the need for national reconciliation and social cohesion.

The military initially asked for 30 months to accomplish its goals. But the new charter calls for a 36-month transition. It also makes junta leader Lt. Colonel Henri-Paul Damiba and the other 25 members of the transitional government ineligible to run for office when elections are finally held.

Iraq’s national museum reopens—Next we go to the Middle East.

AUDIO: [Sound of people talking in museum]

Iraq’s national museum reopened on Monday for the first time in three years.

The museum contains artifacts dating back 2,500 years to the neo-Assyrian empire.

Looters stripped the museum in 2003 amid the chaos that followed the U.S. military operations that deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. Officials have recovered about one-third of the 15,000 items taken then.

A little over 10 years later, Islamic State militants raided historic sites all over Iraq, destroying or selling antiquities to raise funds. Officials have recovered more than 18,000 of those items in the past year alone. Many came from the United States.

Sheep run ends Paris agriculture show—And finally, we end today in Europe.

AUDIO: [Sound of sheep, bells]

Thousands of sheep trotted down the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday. It was a symbolic show of transhumance—the traditional practice of moving herds from one pasture to another as the seasons change.

French farmers have applied to have the practice recognized by Unesco as an important cultural tradition.

Sunday’s urban transhumance marked the end of the Paris International Agricultural Show. The week-long event showcases farming and food trends from across France.

That’s it for this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A teenaged boy in Indiana climbed a tree last weekend to rescue a cat he spotted high up in the branches.

Valiant though it was, he got himself stuck.

The young man identified only as “Owen,” scaled the 35 foot tree at Holliday Park in Indianapolis.

The fire department had to use rope and a pulley system to lower Owen to the ground because the ground was too soft to support a ladder.

AUDIO: Watch me, take out the slack. Just keep your hands on there bud … slowly, we’re lowering.

As for the cat? Well, it seemed completely relaxed and perhaps—even a little amused.

Battalion chief Rita Reith said “The cat seemed to enjoy the commotion but made no effort to climb down the tree.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 9th. We’re so glad you’ve chosen WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new podcast from WORLD Radio. Perhaps you remember this preview:

AUDIO: [CARRIE SHOW OPENER]

It’s not every day that a call-in radio show saves a life.

AUDIO: [CARRIE SHOW OPENER]

But that’s exactly what happened 20 years ago this week in Florida…

For more than a year, the creative team at WORLD Radio has been working hard on a powerful 14-part true-crime podcast titled: LAWLESS. When we began promoting it last year, we had no idea just how much work it would turn out to be.

REICHER: New York Times bestselling author and WORLD Senior writer Lynn Vincent is the driving force behind the project and she’s here to fill us in. Good morning Lynn!

LYNN VINCENT, SENIOR WRITER: Good morning!

EICHER: Mary, I think you left out a couple of important facts in the Lynn bio before we get going here. You know, she's a Navy veteran. She's also the owner of a Harley Davidson. So I think we can say it couldn't possibly have been the military background—maybe the Harley—is the reason for the new podcast title: Lawless. But no, I know that there's a serious reason for that. Lynn, why don't you tell us about that.

VINCENT: Well, thanks, Nick. The reason for the title Lawless: it's a reference to Scripture. James refers to lawlessness. And there are other places in scripture where lawlessness is referred to and it just has to do with the with an ethos, it has to do with the idea that you can almost get away with anything. That's becoming more and more true in our culture, where things that really ought to be crimes, in fact, are not crimes. And that's the reason for the subtitle to the podcast. Lawless: not every crime is against the law.

REICHARD: Well, I know the Lawless podcast feed is now live on Apple podcast and Stitcher and just about anywhere podcasts are available. Lynn, let's start this way. Tell us about the trailer.

VINCENT: Well, Mary, it took us a really long time to boil this 14 episode podcast down to a three-minute trailer. And what we'd like for people to do is share on social media, get the word out, and also pray for us and those who are going to listen to this podcast. We're hoping to attract True Crime listeners. But we're also hoping to maybe get a crossover audience—people who may not be familiar with WORLD—and may not even be believers.

REICHARD: I know you have a little more than three weeks to go. I also know from experience that there’s a lot of production work happening behind the scenes even as we speak.

EICHER: Right, there is. The last time we talked about Lawless, we hoped to release it in the summer of 2021. We know why we couldn’t, but the listener doesn’t know why. Lynn, why don’t you fill us in on that?

VINCENT: Well, there was this thing, it was called a global pandemic.

EICHER: Oh, that…

VINCENT: Yeah. So that restricted a lot of our travel. And we really wanted to go directly to the sources. We wanted to go and visit with Terry Schiavo’s mom. We wanted to go and visit with her brother. We went down to Florida to St. Petersburg and talked to a whole bunch of people. And so that took a while. And there are also people that we're still trying to talk to. Terry Schiavo's husband, for example—Michael Schiavo—and the attorney in the case on Michael Schiavo's side, George Felos. So we're still working on that.

REICHARD: Well, the first few episodes are still being finalized. But we do have a short excerpt from the prologue. Let’s listen.

CLIP: In 1998, eight years after Terri’s brain injury, her husband went to court. Michael Schiavo said Terri was in a kind of waking coma, and that she would not have wanted to live that way.

MICHAEL: There was nothing more they could do for Terri. She told me what she wanted. And the courts heard it over and over and over again.

Michael said Terri’s parents wanted to force her to live a meaningless and humiliating existence against her wishes. But the Schindlers, along with Terri’s friends and caregivers, said her existence wasn’t meaningless at all.

CARLA: Terri was everybody's favorite.

That’s registered nurse, Carla Iyer-Sauer—who cared for Terri.

CARLA: When I first came on board. they had her at the front of the nursing station when visitors would enter…She would just smile; she would … actually react, she reacted to her environment, she reacted to people, she reacted to her name. … She would just light up.

Many witnesses said Terri could even talk.

EICHER: You know, I think as far removed as we are from the case, I think that it will be a surprise to a number of people—with that idea that you just mentioned—that she could talk.

VINCENT: Well, that's exactly right. And think about the implications of that. We talked to many witnesses. And of course, there are affidavits to this effect, as well. That Terry could talk. She would say things like “mommy” and “pain.” She couldn't really say the last “n” on pain, so it would come out “pay.” And these vocalizations that she would make—this speaking—didn't just happen after her injury in 1990. But this happened all the way up until March 18 2005, which is the day that her feeding tube was removed.

And so that, for us was very unsettling and part of what propelled us down the path of this reinvestigation. And there were other and unsettling details as well. Greed, broken promises, even adultery. And that's part of the story too. Let's listen to a little bit more from the podcast.

CLIP: And Terri’s parents began to wonder: Had Michael had something to do with Terri’s injury? Years later, investigators would examine Michael’s story of what happened that night.

Terry Beckstrom: There were  inconsistencies all throughout the whole storyline….

That’s retired DEA investigator and behavioral expert Terry Beckstrom.

Terry Beckstrom: He says he scooped her up and he cradled her and he held her, he tried to revive her. The biggest problem I have with that is the paramedics found her face down.

REICHARD: The first episode of lawless is set to release in just over three weeks, as we mentioned on Thursday, March 31. Why that date?

VINCENT: We chose that date, Mary, because that's the date of Terry's death: March 31 2005.

EICHER: Well, as we said, the trailer is now available online. You can search for Lawless wherever you get your podcasts. And Lynn, we are grateful for all of your investigative journalism and work on this project. We’re looking forward to hearing the whole series. So thanks so much for joining us.

VINCENT: Thanks Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. WORLD founder Joel Belz says when we ignore the Creator’s design for us, we do it at our own peril.

JOEL BELZ, FOUNDER: It had been a while since I had been forced to go through the early morning routine of starting a car in zero degree weather. And those recollections reminded me what’s so wrong with our present society’s preoccupation with what it hopefully refers to first as “safe sex”, and then, more and more, as gender issues. But back to my car for a minute.

Armed with both a spray can of ethyl starter fluid and a pair of jumper cables, I was always pretty sure I could conquer those zero degree mornings that had thickened my car’s oil and discouraged its battery. It worked—after a fashion. The engine always cranked, even if it took a while. And I was usually on my way. But it was hardly a satisfying experience.

The focus was sharpened one evening as I put away my tools and re-read the warnings on the spray can. “Not for regular use,” it said. “You can damage the components of your car’s engine through repeated use.”

Ours, I thought, is a starter fluid and jumper cable society. If the internal energy system is kaput, let’s find some juice elsewhere—and fast. We want a quick fix. We need to be on our way.

Certainly it’s that way with our culture’s sex-driven crisis. The freedoms we’ve craved, and carried to excess, faithfully sent their warning signals early—but we ignored them. Now the warning signals are bigger, and they occasionally capture society’s attention. But the response is all wrong. We haven’t really read the warnings on the can—or, more pointedly, in the owner’s manual.

The secular response to the crisis is always to manage the symptoms rather than to deal with the root issues. I remember, for example, when Planned Parenthood invested extensively in the slogan, “Love Carefully Week.” That was like offering a band-aid to someone who had been hit by a Mack Truck. It’s fine to show some care for the injured. But it’s also wise to figure out where the trucks are coming from.

Our society has tended to reduce human sexuality to little more than anatomy, biology, timing, and perhaps a few other technical issues. If our ability to manage that eight-cylinder marvel gets a bit out of whack, why, never mind, we’ll just grab our aerosol can and soon be on our way.

We human beings are pretty high powered, finely tuned machines in many ways—not least when it comes to our sexuality. That part of us is many times more specialized and sophisticated than the engine of a Porsche or a BMW. We’re designed by our Creator to run just one way—God’s way. And we too regularly ignore the manufacturer’s specs as we race up and down society’s dirty back roads.

I’m Joel Belz.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis. WORLD’s Jenny Lind Schmitt will take you to the border between Poland and Ukraine and let you hear what refugees have to say.

That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: 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.

The Psalmist prayed: Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked; do not further their evil plot, or they will be exalted!

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.