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The World and Everything in It: May 1, 2025

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WORLD Radio - The World and Everything in It: May 1, 2025

Coastal Alabama workers weigh in on tariffs, cleaning up national parks in Washington D.C., and artists overcoming physical limitations. Plus, Cal Thomas on God’s instruction to be fruitful and multiply and the Thursday morning news


The shrimp boat of Richard “Buddy” Brockley and his son Buddy Jr in Bayou La Batre, Alabama Photo by Myrna Brown

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

It’s been three weeks now since President Trump hit pause on certain tariffs. For some, it’s a high-stakes waiting game:

AUDIO: We just hanging on and hoping the tariffs gonna help us. 

AUDIO: I just don’t know how possibly dark it’s going to get before that happens.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Also, President Trump wants a cleaned up D.C. So what happens to the homeless?

And, when life knocked these people down? They picked up paint brushes.

FAREY: I was actually trying to paint with my knee, because I could hardly lift up this arm … I just adapted myself and just stuck the brush in my mouth.

BROWN: And WORLD commentator Cal Thomas weighs in on falling birthrates and why throwing money at it won’t fix it.

REICHARD: It’s Thursday, May 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown. Good morning!

REICHARD: It’s time for news now with Kent Covington.


KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine minerals deal » The ink is on the page: Ukraine has signed a long-awaited deal giving the United States access to rare earth minerals in Ukraine.

President Trump has long seen this as a way to recoup some of what the U.S. has spent on aid to Kyiv amid Ukraine’s war against Russian invaders.

TRUMP: As you know  we're looking for rare earth all the time. Rare earth is called rare for a reason.

Those minerals are critical for high-tech manufacturing, both commercial and military. And China, right now, controls much of the world’s supply.

The president said the deal also benefits Ukraine, and not just financially:

TRUMP:   Because you'll have an American presence at the site. Chris and the American presence will, I think, keep a lot of bad actors out of the country or certainly out of the area where we're doing the digging.

Ukraine's parliament must ratify the deal before it takes effect.

Kellogg on Ukraine peace talks » Meantime, the Trump administration is still pushing for peace in Ukraine. And US officials say a planned three-day ceasefire later this month announced by Vladimir Putin won’t cut it.

Special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg says the U.S. needs to see a comprehensive ceasefire of at least 30 days.

KELLOGG:  Comprehensive sea air land infrastructure for at least 30 days. Why is 30 days important? Because it can build to a permanent peace, uh, initiative. And the reason why 30 days is important. It stops the killing. That's what President Trump wants to do.

The president has been increasingly critical of Russia’s Vladimir Putin in recent days, with continued Russian attacks on civilian areas in Ukraine amid peace talks.

Economy contracted in first quarter » The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of this year. GDP was down three-tenths of one percent. Most economists had expected slight growth.

President Trump says it’s a hangover from the previous administration, noting that he didn’t even take office till late January.

Still, Democrats say the president is steering the economy in the wrong direction. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear:

BESHEAR:  People believed he'd make paying bills at the end of the month, just a little bit easier. I think this tariff policy is misguided, and I think it's making it harder on those same folks.

Energy Sec. Chris Wright said Wednesday that there are many components that drive GDP and people should not read too much into the numbers from one quarter. And he added:

WRIGHT:  We're in the middle of sausage making right now, right? We're sort of restructuring global trade and how funds flow.

He did concede, though, that this process of “restructuring,” as he called it, creates uncertainty:

WRIGHT:  Of course that's uncertainty and that creates people fearful about, uh, delays in investment and what that mean, what, what that might mean for future economic growth. So I'm sure there's a little bit of fear in there as well, but I think that fear is gonna get sorted out.

Trump says tariffs are driving major investments in the U.S.

Consumer spending grew in the first quarter.

Iran talks » U.S. and Iranian negotiators are heading back to Rome this weekend for the next round of nuclear talks.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi confirmed that on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Cabinet meeting.

ARAGHCHI: [Speaking in Farsi]

He said he also expects a meeting tomorrow with diplomats from France, Germany and the UK to discuss the talks.

The talks with the U.S. again will be mediated by officials from Oman.

SCOTUS hears school choice case » The Supreme Court just heard arguments in a school choice case with religious liberty implications.

The case from Oklahoma centers on whether public money can be used to fund a religious charter school.

Jim Campbell with Alliance Defending Freedom told the justices:

CAMPBELL:  St. Isador was privately created by two Catholic organizations, and it is controlled by a privately selected board of directors. Under this court's test, St. Isador is neither the government nor engaged in state action.

But Oklahoma’s Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond argues that allowing the funding would violate the separation of church and state.

That puts Drummond at odds with other fellow Oklahoma Republicans, including Gov. Kevin Stitt:

STITT:  If a group of families wanna set up a Hebrew school or a Muslim school or a, or a Catholic school or like I send my kids to a Christian school, why is the government standing in the way?

Drummond. though, also argues that a ruling in the school’s favor could open the door for taxpayer dollars to fund schools that teach extremist ideologies like Muslim Sharia Law.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case. That raised the possibility of a tie, which would uphold the Oklahoma Supreme Court's ruling against the school.

Michael Brown investigation » A team of elders says a well-known Christian author and teacher can return to public ministry following a sexual abuse investigation. WORLD’s Christina Grube has more.

CHRISTINA GRUBE: A board of elders at Michael L. Brown’s Line of Fire Ministries … is disputing the findings of a third-party investigation.

The probe, conducted by the Firefly group … concluded Brown engaged in inappropriate relationships with two women in the early 2000s, labeling it sexual misconduct.

But the elders called it moral and leadership misconduct.

Brown admitted to forming an inappropriate emotional bond with a married woman … but denied physical wrongdoing.

He did not admit misconduct in a second case involving a former employee — though he acknowledged poor judgment.

The elder team did not directly address that allegation, but said Brown met his Biblical obligation to confess and repent, which he did in a December video.

They also noted that the Firefly report did not include Brown’s personal rebuttal or the testimony of his wife Nancy.

For WORLD, I’m Christina Grube.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: we’re heading to Alabama to learn how tariffs are affecting the American shrimp industry. Plus, addressing homelessness in Washington D.C.

This is The World and Everything in It.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Thursday the 1st of May.

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

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up: Tariffs!

Last week we reported on how people living in towns along the Canadian border are reacting to President Trump’s trade policies.

Today, perspectives on Trump's tariffs from another part of the country.

BARNES: People have lost their boats. They’ve lost their homes. They’ve had to get into other industries. It’s been bad.

BROWN: Henry Barnes insists he’s not exaggerating. Barnes is the mayor of Bayou La Batre, a small fishing village in the southwest corner of Alabama, near the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi border.

We’re headed to Fisherman’s Marine, a fuel dock two streets over from City Hall.

AUDIO: Watch where you step…

Two decades ago, this dock would have been overflowing with fishermen and shrimpers waiting to get their boats refueled.

BROWN: Tell me about the good days.

MORRISON: Good days, whew! Wide open everyday…

Meaning they were fueling boats all day long. Dennis Morrison is the fuel dock manager.

MORRISION: Now, sometimes we lucky to get one boat every two days.

SOUND: [Boat shifting]

Morrison smiles as he watches Richard “Buddy” Brockley and his son Buddy Jr, parallel park their 90-foot shrimp boat, the Lady Catherine.

AUDIO: You want me to go down and catch the line. Yeah, that’s fine…

It’ll cost the multi-generational shrimpers a pretty penny to fill her up.

BROWN: So how much will you pay today?

BUDDY JR.: It’s going to be right at 21-thousand dollars for 9-thousand gallons of fuel.

That will give them about 30 days on the Gulf. They’re counting on President Trump to follow through on his executive order to slap double digit tariffs on countries importing shrimp to the United States. Last year, more than 90 percent of shrimp consumed in this country came from India, Ecuador, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Since 2021 the price of imported shrimp has dropped significantly. Buddy Jr says that drastically cuts the market value of his catch.

BUDDY JR.: The last three years have been a windfall as far as the amount of shrimp being caught, but as far as their value. It’s been toe-stumping. You went from getting five dollars a pound for a 36, 40 count tail to two dollars a pound for it, to a dollar something a pound for it, over the last 15 years or so.

BUDDY SR.: I’ve been running boats since I was 15 years old and I’m 69.

Buddy Sr. gets angry when he thinks about the variety of shrimp he believes many Americans are missing out on because of cheap imports.

BUDDY SR.: We got pink shrimp, we got Royal Reds, we got East Coast white shrimp, we got hoppers, we got brownies. They all got a little different distinguishing taste. And there’s nothing wrong with none of them. But the American people have never been introduced to it because they’ve had this stuff…junk thrown on their tables and they don’t know no difference!

Heading back to City Hall, Mayor Barnes says he reached out to President Trump months before he signed that executive order to restore the American seafood industry.

BARNES: I wrote him a letter in November and explained the situation and invited him to come down and look at our industry.

No response yet on that offer. Barnes says in the meantime…

BARNES: I totally believe in prayer. I mean, I pray every night for our city.

Alright, let’s grab some materials and walk up….you want to tote that wire?

About an hour east of Bayou La Batre, a four-man electrical crew carries cable up a flight of stairs.

JONES: They just put in drop ceilings this week. So we’re coming in to put some lights in.

That’s Jake Jones, owner of AGW Electric. He comes from a long line of electricians.

JONES: So my dad is an electrician. Both of my grandpa’s were electricians. My uncles, electricians. My mom was actually an electrical helper.

SOUND: [Beep!]

JONES: …ok it got power

Jones says copper is to him what shrimp is to the fishermen in Bayou La Batre.

BROWN: What’s this? This is what’s called M-C Cable. This is our wire. Does copper play a role in this at all?

JONES: Yeah, the wiring inside here…that’s copper.

Currently there are no specific tariffs or quotas on copper imports. But that could change. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of Commerce to investigate what he called a national security threat to the copper supply. The United States produces only half of the refined copper it consumes. That makes us reliant on foreign suppliers. If the investigation concludes imports threaten national security, the president could impose new tariffs and quotas on copper imports, making the goods more expensive for people like Jones.

JONES: If those prices go up by a substantial amount, anybody in this industry is not going to absorb that themselves. It’s going to roll down to the customer. So you still have to be competitive to be able to get work. Because there’s a lot of competition in my field. If it costs me more to purchase the materials, then ultimately it’s going to cost the consumer more to get it installed.

SOUND: [Wire pulling]

Jones admits, that’s troubling. Even so, he’s trying to keep an open mind about tariffs.

JONES: I think that if it does what it’s supposed to do, I believe we’ll have a lot more American made products that are sold by Americans, to Americans in America, which keeps the money here, keeps the economy going. I just don’t know how dark it’s possibly going to get before that happens.

But he says he knows Someone who does.

JONES: Even if prices go through the roof, whether they do or don’t, my faith is always in God. He is going to take care of His children.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Bayou La Batre and Daphne Alabama.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It ,cleaning up the nation’s capital.

Last month, President Trump signed an executive order titled, “Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful.” It calls on law enforcement to crack down on crime, and bans homeless encampments on federal property.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: So will clearing out tents improve the city, or just move the homeless elsewhere?

WORLD Reporter Josh Schumacher has the story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: Stanton Park sits just a few blocks East of the U-S Supreme Court in Washington. Late on a Tuesday morning, the park features mothers watching over children on a playground, squirrels roaming to and fro, and the occasional cyclist passing through.

It also features National Park Service signs prohibiting alcohol consumption, letting pets off their leashes, and camping on park property

That no camping rule is about to be enforced a bit more rigorously throughout the city.

In March, President Donald Trump directed the National Park Service to clear homeless encampments from all its property in the city. The National Park Service told WORLD last week it was still deciding how it would enforce the directive.

Organizations helping the homeless are also considering what the order means for those it affects.

LINDSAY: Some people are just a paycheck away from becoming homeless themselves. Others have been on the street for decades.

Jim Lindsay is the executive director of Christ House, a hospital for homeless men north of Downtown DC. Volunteers with the Point in Time Count in DC tallied nearly 10,000 people as homeless last May, more than triple the national average. Lindsay says he understands where the President is coming from with his order to clean up the Beltway.

LINDSAY: I mean, none of us love having the environment of having tents and trashed running across the lawn and stuff. But I think that it's not a magical solution. It might move the homeless away, but they're still here. They're still somewhere.

But where is that “somewhere?” Sidewalks in other parts of the city?… parks that aren’t run by the National Park Service?… How about homeless shelters? Many shelters hit capacity over the winter, according to the Interagency Council on Homelessness. And even with enough shelter beds, advocates say some homeless do not want to go there.

DIPETRO: The reason that some people do not want to go to shelters is 'cause they've had terrible experiences with them. That said, they can go to encampments and have bad experiences.

Barbara DiPietro, senior policy director at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, says shelters aren’t always better than living out on the streets.

She says you can have your stuff stolen from you at a shelter or at an encampment. And depending on how shelters are run, residents are not immune from abuse either.

DIPIETRO: I'm not arguing for encampments here, but I am clarifying the fallacy that shelters are awesome.

Advocates say officials need to focus on addressing the root causes of homelessness, not just where the homeless camp out. Causes include substance abuse and mental illness,but in a city as expensive as the capital, poverty is also a driving factor. Jesse Rabinowitz works with the National Homelessness Law Center.

RABINOWITZ: In DC, housing is so expensive that you need to work 80 hours a week, a minimum, 79 hours at minimum wage to afford a one-bedroom rental.

The City of Washington offers numerous housing voucher programs to help people pay some of their rent. But according to Christ House director Jim Lindsay, those voucher programs have a downside.

LINDSAY: Those places with the vouchers don't require people to be clean and sober, you know, so you can live there and you have a roof over your head, but there's nothing really helping them with the underlying problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, dealing with their mental illness if they have some.

Staying housed requires more than material resources. That’s why three decades ago, Christ House established a 37-apartment facility called Kairos House.

LINDSAY: It’s a very structured program. It's a spiritual recovery program…

Men in the program go to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, as well as church services.

LINDSAY: And they can stay there for as long as they want, and we actually have people that have been there since we opened almost 30 years ago.

Lindsay says fixing homelessness will require cleaning up people’s lives—not just public parks.

LINDSAY: We're happy that we have such a place, but I think there's a greater need for even more more space than we have. And I think that removing the homeless encampments is not really solving anything.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher in Washington D.C.


MARY REICHARD, HOST:  It all started out as a hunt for pretty rocks, and then Mitchell O’Brien took a wrong step on a Lake Michigan beach.

Sound from NBC:

MITCHELL: The sand was just getting put back almost faster than I could get it out of the way.

Whoa! Stuck up to his waist in what felt like quicksand. His best friend Bree Siga was nearby. They separately called 911:

MITCHELL: I referred to her as my girlfriend that’s trying to call as well. At the exact same time, she got through to another operator and said, “My boyfriend is stuck in the sand.”

Girlfriend, boyfriend: not terms they’d used before.

Firefighters saved Mitchell. And Bree?

BREE: Two years of this guy being my best friend and just trying to hide everything, how I felt.

Turns out, nothing brings feelings to the surface like sinking sand.

It’s The World and Everything in It.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, May 1st.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: finding purpose through perseverance.

Painting isn’t easy, even in ideal situations. But for two artists in Australia, the challenge is much more than picking out color and canvas.

BROWN: WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis brings us their remarkable stories of creativity against the odds.

DOSSETOR: It was really just complacency that got me. I was coming in to land on a good day, you know, easy conditions.

AMY LEWIS: Geoff Dossetor is a world champion hang glider. He’s spent thousands of hours in the air and won two World Cup events plus several national championships. His longest flight lasted nearly 6 hours.

DOSSETOR: And eventually I had my own business…and that was all going really well.

He took customers on short tandem flights from the top of New Zealand’s Coronet Peak to his property below. In 2001, he was newly married. Seven weeks after his daughter’s birth, he took a last-minute customer up for a flight.

DOSSETOR: And at the end of the flight, I thought, I'll give my passenger a bit of a thrill. And did some aerobatics, as we often do, and, often did, I should say…

That last maneuver left them flying lower than usual and over his neighbor’s property. In an attempt to get back over the fence, Dossetor and his passenger crash-landed into a streambank.

DOSSETOR: Either his hand or his elbow swung through and hit me in the back of the neck, and yeah, I just suddenly couldn't feel anything, and had my face in the grass, and I said, ‘Oh, are you okay?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, don't move me, because I think I've got a spinal injury.’

Dossetor has spent the last 24 years in a wheelchair.

DOSSETOR: I can't feel anything from my chest down and, and my hands and my wrists don't work…I used to be right handed.

Not long after the accident, Dossetor planned to move to Melbourne so his parents could help him raise his young daughter. Before he did, he went on an adventure week for people in wheelchairs. There he met a student member of the organization Mouth and Foot Painting Artists.

DOSSETOR: He showed me some of his work, and I thought, that's pretty good. I reckon I could do something like that. And he sort of told me what I needed to do.

MFPA, as it’s known, works with artists all over the world. It turns their art into cards that it sells unsolicited through the mail. The money provides income and scholarships to help disabled artists get more artistic training. So Dossetor painted six paintings and mailed them off. He’s had monthly income from a student scholarship ever since.

Before the accident, he sometimes illustrated hang gliding articles with cartoons but that was the extent of his art. He didn’t need it because hang gliding was all-consuming to him. Now, painting gives him purpose and a meaningful pursuit.

DOSSETOR: There's not a lot I can do with my disability, physically. So this is something that I can do, and I can do it reasonably well.

Another artist who paints for the MFPA is Pam Farey.

She lives in Linton in rural Victoria.

FAREY: It was called chronic relapsing peripheral motor neuropathy.

She was diagnosed almost 40 years ago. She stretches her permanently curled fingers over the gear shift and steering wheel to drive to her temporary studio a few minutes from her house.

FAREY: With all the rain we've had, I wasn't sure. Oh, we can go the other way. We might go down the other way. Here's the hut, and there's some of my darlings over there. And there'll be a whole lot of kangaroos just over here.

Yeah, so this is Little Big Hill Sanctuary. So this is the hut. There’s some crazy stuff in here. But anyway, that's me. I'm a bit crazy. This is the hut…

Her studio doubles as a gallery of her various art projects.

FAREY: I've got a splint on this leg that you can't see. It's got the boot over it, but, because I've got foot drop, I can't move this foot up, and you see, it's affected. It's asymmetrical.

Farey grew up surrounded by a mother and aunties who all sewed and did needlework and crafts. To cut the book-heavy monotony for her psychology and sociology degrees, Farey also completed a fine arts degree even while her health deteriorated.

FAREY: I was actually trying to paint with my knee, because I could hardly lift up this arm…I just adapted myself and just stuck the brush in my mouth.

Farey and Dossetor have learned to live—and even thrive—with their disabilities. But that doesn’t mean everything—or anything—is easy.

Both artists spend hours just inches away from their canvases. Farey holds the paintbrush in her cheek.

FAREY: [with brush in mouth] So yeah, I talk with it in my mouth. And yeah, they're all the other ends are all chewed…Some people use longer brushes, but you have more control over the shorter brushes.

Dossetor puts rubber tubing on his paintbrush handles and grips them between his teeth. His helpers squeeze paint onto a palette for him.

DOSSETOR: [with brush in mouth] And I have to move around a bit, and my chair can go up and down.

After a conference in Singapore he discovered water soluble oil paints.

DOSSETOR: Like, I really like artwork with palette knives, but a palette knife is very difficult with your mouth, because you need to get the right angle to scrape, yeah.

To retain their scholarships, Farey and Dossetor have to submit at least 5 quality paintings a year. Dosseter admits it’s not only about the end product.

DOSSETOR: I could speed up my painting process by taking photos, printing them out onto a canvas, and then painting on top of it, which I did for one painting, but I sort of felt like I was cheating.

A few years ago, Dossetor took an online class to improve his painting skills.

DOSSETOR: I didn't tell anyone that I was disabled, cause I wanted to get realistic feedback.

The teacher wanted multiple drafts of each work and singled out Dossetor when he didn’t do them. Another student—who didn’t know about his disability—stuck up for him. The teacher then turned on his defender.

DOSSETOR: It was all getting a bit tense amongst the group. And so I sort of said, well, this is the reason why. And then…the teacher backed right off.

Suddenly his art grew in the eyes of his fellow students. But that’s exactly what Dossetor was trying to avoid.

DOSSETOR: We don't want people to buy the cards because they feel sorry for the artist. We want them to like them because they like the paintings.

Farey says she loves the challenge painting provides. And she tries not to let her disability get in the way.

FAREY: I guess you have to be flexible and laugh, and move with, with what presents to you, and try and just make the most of what you got. I guess that’s my big lesson in life.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Melbourne and Linton, Australia.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, May 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, WORLD commentator Cal Thomas says there’s a right way and a wrong way to fix the decline in human population.

CAL THOMAS: In Genesis 1:28, God tells Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” President Trump is going God one better…he’s considering adding an incentive by paying couples $5,000 to begat.

The fertility rate in the U.S. has been declining for the last decade. In 2023 it dropped to 1.6 births per woman, the lowest in a century.

There are many reasons. The most obvious is abortion. The Pew Research Center cites figures from the CDC. The last yearly national totals are from 2021. Even with four states not reporting their figures, there were nearly 626-thousand abortions that year. When adding the available statistics from 2019 and 2020…the three years together totalled more than 1.8 million babies. Stopping or severely restricting abortions would go a long way toward solving the birth dearth.

Absent that possibility we are down to the reasons people can't, or won't, have children. Can't is usually biological. Won't is more likely psychological or spiritual. Perhaps the most frequent reason given by “won't couples” includes: the expense of having children, the supposed restrictions on parents' travel, general freedom, the disappointments and pain that can come when kids rebel, or the consequences should parents divorce.

I have suffered from rebellious children, even the death of an adult child. None of it cancels the joy of holding a baby in my arms that I helped produce, hearing that child later tell me he or she loves me, and seeing even the spiritually truant come back to faith and set their lives aright.

Deciding not to have children, for some, creates the pain of regret. Never will they have descendants with their DNA, their values, and a set of accomplishments that adds further meaning to their own lives. Never will they know what their children might have become, or contributed to the world. Their family tree will lack branches. Having a pet is not the same.

Parenting is more than biological. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that tech titan Elon Musk has warned that: “civilization is going to crumble' if people don't start having more children.” Musk has at least 14 children by four different women.

He wants to populate this planet and possibly Mars with children of high intelligence. He even thinks babies should be born by caesarean section so they will have larger brains.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Musk is not the first to think this way. It is an outgrowth of a worldview that is materialistic and sets humans in the place of God.

In his novel Brave New World, Aldous Huxley explains the scientific and compartmentalized nature of his fictional society. He begins at the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre, “where children are created outside the womb and cloned in order to increase the population.” The reader is then introduced to the class system of this world, where citizens are sorted as embryos to be of a certain class. “The Matrix” film franchise is a modern metaphor that pits inherent human worth against soul-less technology. Musk’s pronatalism is no better.

President Trump's suggestion that $5,000 dollar payments would help produce more children reduces the value of a child to materialistic levels. An appeal made on the level of more important things—eternal things—will work better in the long run. Not only producing more babies, but even good parents and a healthier society.

I’m Cal Thomas.


MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: Katie McCoy is back for Culture Friday. And, Collin Garbarino reviews what he says may be one of the best Marvel films in recent memory. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

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 Apostle Paul wrote final instructions to the Christians in Rome: “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles CONtrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive.” —Romans 16:17-18

Today is the National Day of Prayer. However you mark the day, take a moment to lift up our nation, our leaders, and our neighbors in prayer.

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.

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