The World and Everything in It: May 1, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: facing death—and telling the truth. The witness of Ben Sasse.

And a viral moment that asks: what happens when a child is denied his mother?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk it over with John Stonestreet.

Also today, two new films in theaters this weekend:

AUDIO: Who is this? Do you know her? Do I know her?

The Devil Wears Prada 2, and a new Animal Farm adaptation. WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has a review.

Later: George Grant with Word Play for May.

BROWN: It’s Friday, May 1st. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Myrna Brown.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran's supreme leader vows to stay nuclear course » Iran’s purported Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly vowed Thursday that Iran will nor give up its nuclear and missile programs, and intends to keep its grip on the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Iranian state TV, Khamenei said Americans belong, in his words, "at the bottom" of the Persian Gulf, and called the U.S. the "Great Satan."

Khamenei took over after his father was killed in February's U.S. and Israeli strikes. But no one has seen in public since that time.

President Trump made clear once more on Thursday, telling White House reporters:

TRUMP:  Can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon and their economy is crashing. The blockade is incredible. The power of the blockade is incredible.

The White House says the US blockade of Iranian ports will remain in place until Tehran agrees to end its nuclear pursuit.

Iran, meantime, is still terrorizing the Strait of Hormuz, driving up global energy prices.

President Trump is working to build support among allies for a coordinated push to reopen the waterway.

DHS funding » On Capitol Hill:

CHAIR: The Senate amendment is agreed to without objection. The motion to reconsider is laid on the table [gavel slams].

With that, the House passed a bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security.

WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more from the nation’s Capitol.

HARRISON WATTERS: One month after the Senate voted to fund portions of DHS not involved in immigration law enforcement, the House held a voice vote to send that bill to the President’s desk. Democrats did not object.

For weeks, House Speaker Mike Johnson faced Republican opposition over a plan to separate funding for ICE and Customs and Border Protection from the rest of DHS.

But on Wednesday, the House narrowly approved that plan in a resolution that puts committees to work drafting legislation to fund those agencies through reconciliation. That process allows both chambers to pass budget legislation through a simple majority vote.

Thursday’s voice vote ends a record-setting partial government shutdown that lasted 76 days.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

FISA 702 » Congress has bought itself more time on a controversial U.S. spying program.

The Senate and House on Thursday passed a six-week extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act just hours before its authorization would have expired. That sent it to President Trump’s desk, and he had vowed to sign it.

Lawmakers now have through June 12 to debate its long-term fate.

Speaker Mike Johnson said passing it was essential:

JOHNSON:  To ensure that the administration is armed the best possible intelligence to continue eliminating terrorists and defending our homeland.

But critics have serious privacy concerns. Section 702 It lets the CIA, NSA, and FBI collect emails and phone calls of foreign targets — without a warrant. But Americans on the other end of those conversations often get swept up too. And agencies can search through them without ever going to a judge.

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie calls even a short extension "an infringement of the Constitution."

Zelenskyy seeking details on Putin ceasefire proposal » Russia may soon announce a ceasefire proposal.

That from President Trump after a phone call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

TRUMP: I had a long talk with President Putin. I suggested a little bit of a ceasefire, and I think he might do that. He might announce something having to do with that...even if it's a little ceasefire, there's so many people being killed. It's so ridiculous.

Reports are that Putin is considering a May 9th ceasefire to coincide with celebrations for Victory Day in Russia: that's the event marking the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany.

Meanwhile, European officials say the Ukraine peace talks have actually stalled and that Putin’s comments only serve to muddy the waters.

EU Foreign Policy Chief Kaja Kallas:

KALLAS: Russia does not want to engage in any kind of dialogue. We should not humiliate ourselves by being the demandeurs, that 'please, you know, we beg you to talk to us', but we should put them in a position where they actually go from pretending to negotiate to actually negotiating.

And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has not yet seen a ceasefire proposal, and even if Moscow makes such an offer, Ukraine would prefer something more long-term.

U.S. debt reaches 100% of GDP » The national debt has hit an alarming milestone. The U.S. government now owes more money to investors, banks, foreign governments, and the Federal Reserve than the entire American economy produces in a year.

BENJAMIN EICHER: A budget watchdog group reported the threshold Thursday. That outside debt adds up to $31 trillion dollars.

Add in what Uncle Sam has borrowed from Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and the grand total hits $39 trillion.

That’s nearly $290,000 per American household.

Interest on the debt now costs more than the entire U.S. military.

And experts say the growing debt means tougher choices ahead: higher taxes, less spending, or both.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office expects the debt to keep growing. And as a share of the entire U.S. economy, it will surpass the all-time high reached right after World War II in just four years, hitting 120% by 20-36.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, a review of a new film adaptation of Animal Farm. Plus, George Grant is here for Word Play.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, May 1st. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday.

John Stonestreet is here. He’s President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, we’ve talked about former Senator Ben Sasse probably around the time that he received his terminal cancer diagnosis. But I’d like to talk today about the way, you know, to borrow from John Piper, that Sasse is not wasting his cancer. He’s been doing interview after interview in these different secular venues where the name of God really doesn’t get a lot of mention. This past weekend, I thought was extraordinary. He was on 60 Minutes, and I like the way James Wood put it in WORLD Opinions.

He said that Sasse is not just enduring this cancer. He is treating it almost as a calling, not just to live well, but to die well and to bear witness in the way that he faces death. Listen.

SASSE “Death is wicked. Death is evil. Death is not how it’s supposed to be. And me getting a cancer diagnosis… is pretty small on the grand scheme of things—but it’s a touch of grace, because it forces me to tell the truth. The lie I want to tell myself is that I’m the center of everything… that I’m going to be around forever… that I can work harder and store up enough that I can atone for my own brokenness. I can’t.

Isn’t that exactly the conversation about death that our culture is missing?

STONESTREET: I don’t think he’s treating it almost as a calling. I think Sasse is understanding it as a calling. And I don’t think that’s just a calling that is on him or on a certain number of people who die. I think anyone who dies in Christ understands that it is not us who holds the keys to life and death. It’s not us that make these decisions, and so therefore we embrace this in an act of obedience.

I’m struck with what my longtime pastor has often told me, that he tells people as they walk into the season of death, is that their family will have all kinds of memories of them, but what they will learn most about their faith will come in those days, those days of dying.

I’m also struck, though, when it comes to Sasse, the contrast, because our culture has sold us, and I mean this on a legislative level, on a policy level, particularly if we think about Canada and medical aid in dying, that always is sold with this phrase, death with dignity. And embedded in that very misleading nomenclature is that because there is a demand for death with dignity, there’s no such thing as dying with dignity.  So that has to be kind of autonomously managed.

And I think what Ben Sasse is showing the world right now, in a rich and profound way, is that there is such a thing as dying with dignity. There is such a thing as meaning in suffering and pain, and there is such a thing as the alternatives not being kind of either life or death, but that death can be redeemed. Dying can be redeemed in the ultimate source of life that is Christ Jesus.

There’s just an aesthetic beauty, despite the woundedness of Sasse’s own body and his face as he does these interviews. There’s a beauty in it. There’s a meaning in it. There’s a richness in it that clearly our culture is absolutely starving for. So that, to me, is such a remarkable contrast that we are seeing in, as you put it, interview after interview after interview.

EICHER: The end of the interview is powerful: It marries theology and personal life very well. The interviewer Scott Pelley says, “Are you really at peace with this?” Sasse replies by talking about what he’s going to miss, and this is where he starts to come apart. It relates to his kids. But again, he spins that conversation back into his confidence in God.

Listen to the question Pelley asks and the answer that Ben Sasse gives. A little beat pause, then the iconic stopwatch sound. Incredible ending. Listen.

PELLEY: And God, you believe, has a plan?

SASSE: Absolutely. There are no maverick molecules in the universe.

Wow! Amazing

STONESTREET: Yeah, it was. You wonder if whoever was producing this program, if there's someone who believes the same thing, kind of add that kind of impact. It's kind of like when you had the voice of God at just the right moment.

Listen, it reminds me of Lewis, when asked what the most important philosophical statement of all time was, he said, “In the beginning God,” because that means the entire universe is a different place. And that means how we understand suffering, how we understand disease, how we understand loss, how we understand leaving our kids behind too early, not being able to witness, much less walk with them in key moments of who they are, that still is not out of control, that there is a plan.

And Christians can say that in a trivial way, but it's always interesting to me when someone who's in a place like Sasse says it, because now it's not just kind of the trivial Romans 8:28 bomb that Job's friends are throwing over the wall into his suffering. It's the one who's suffering who's saying, yet even if he slay me, I'll still trust him. There's my King James background for you. That's a framing of how we think about all of life and the world, including death.

BROWN: It’s okay to say thee and thou sometimes, John. I know you saw this next story because you wrote a Breakpoint article on it. That's how I first saw it.

A man bouncing a baby on his lap and then asking the baby, who do you want, dada or pop? And to me, it sounds like the baby says mama. Let's listen.

AUDIO: Who do you want, dada or pop? [mmm-ma-ma] No mama. Do you want dada or pop? [whines] Who you want Dada or pop? [mmm-mmm] Nope. Do you want dada? Do you want pop? [mmm-mom] No way, José! I think, oh-oh-oh. There is no mama. [Cries] So sorry. You have dada or pop. Two choices. No mama. [mmm-mama]

One thing I noticed in that short clip, there's a jump cut indicating some kind of edit was made, but I don't want to spend our time debating the veracity of this video. Millions have seen it, and I got to tell you, while watching it, I wanted to cry and I wanted to punch someone at the same time simultaneously.

What struck me, though, were the countless comments. The majority seemed outraged, calling it child abuse, indescribably evil. And even if the baby wasn't saying mama, the thought of just that exchange between that dude and this little baby, it just made people's blood boil.

So I guess my question: what does it say about a culture that embraces same sex unions and then cries foul when the ramifications of those actions become too hard to swallow?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I didn’t want to comment on this just out of anger, although the anger is clearly there, because it’s hard to see someone essentially badger and torture, emotionally, a baby. But you have in this exchange everything that has happened in the wake of the sexual revolution.

The sexual revolution has always been about not tolerance, but enforcing affirmation. And you watch this and you’re like, why are these two people so committed to having a baby affirm and not even accepting a baby’s lack of affirmation? The level of narcissism that’s embedded in this was just absolutely stunning.

And then turning around and putting it on social media underscored where we’re at now, which is everyone else is expected to be okay with this. But let me be really clear: what was happening in this video was a verbal form of abuse. If this individual and this other man, who both have appropriated this term “parent” in this child’s life, had been super nice, what’s happening in the video is still cruel, because against the child’s will, you are basically saying this child doesn’t have a right to a mother.

See, that’s the thing. They lied. There is a mama. The mama’s not on camera. The mama’s not being featured. The mama’s being denied. The child is being kept at exactly the time when a child wants a mama most. So the level of pretending and appropriation is certainly ungrounded in reality and is the source of all kinds of confusion.

But what you have here is this cruelty, not only in the words, but in the act itself. And that myth has been so damning and damaging in the history of the Western world—that we’ll do whatever we want, we’ll experiment with reality, we’ll change names like moms and dads and men and women, and we’ll pretend like sex doesn’t have consequences, and our new ideas about socially renovating our world around the things that we want, whether they’re real or not, won’t have consequences.

But the children have always been the disproportionate victims of the sexual revolution. And all of that is in this one video, which I think is why so many people viscerally reacted. But you’ve got to dig below the surface. There’s so much going on here.

EICHER: Before we go, I hate to frame it up this way, but these attempts on the life of this particular president of the United States are almost getting to the point of mundane, three now, where you have to say, Well, what’s new here?

But I do think that there’s something new here, John. Apparently, this kid who is accused in this failed attack came from a Christian home. I don’t get the sense that he deconstructed. I’m waiting to hear him say he was merely doing his Christian duty as he saw it. We haven’t heard that yet. But what do you think? I didn’t see this coming.

STONESTREET: It’s hard to make full conclusions about where a kid comes from in whatever way. I mean, we’ve had examples of this that are both the fault of the parents and not the fault of the parents. Parents can do everything right or try to do everything right to the best of their ability, and kids make their own decisions. That’s the thing about kids.

But look, there is at least a significant segment of the population that claim the name Christian and have been trapped in the political illusion. The political illusion is basically saying that all can be lost if the wrong person is in charge, and all will be right if our person is in charge. So the political illusion cuts both ways.

This is something that Jackie Leigh, the quirky French theologian, articulated so well. It’s basically when the state takes up more than it should, politics as a process takes up more air out of the room, culturally speaking, than it should. And the blame for that is almost always put on those who are Christian conservatives.

But the political illusion is alive and well on both sides of the aisle. And what we have seen in recent years is that on the left side of the aisle, it has been used to justify a remarkable amount of violence. The math is just adding up on this.

So to me, it is another example of the political illusion. And listen, I’ll say this: there are national magazines, there are colleges that have been historically identified as Christian, or even still claim to be Christian, who are examples of this political illusion from the left. I’m not saying that there’s no political illusion on the right. I’m just saying this is an example of a political illusion on the left, and that’s something that’s been overlooked.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. John, thanks!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, May 1st. 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.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: what’s new at the movies.

This weekend, two new films arrive in theaters, both of which have loyal fan bases. Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino now on whether either of them live up to expectations.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Let’s begin with an animated adaptation of a book on just about every high school reading list, George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

In many ways, this film sticks to the classic story. The animals of Manor Farm expel their farmer from his home and rename the property Animal Farm. Their new society begins with promise.

SNOWBALL: And all animals are equal.

But in this barnyard utopia a power struggle begins between the two pigs Snowball and Napoleon. Napoleon exiles Snowball and begins to consolidate power for himself, which allows him to exploit the other animals and rewrite the rules. Eventually some animals become “more equal than others.”

Orwell’s novella doesn’t have the kind of action and feel-good ending that movie watchers have come to expect, so this animated film for families adds frenetic scenes and a young, relatable hero.

PUFF: Hi, Lucky.

LUCKY: Oh, hey. What’s up? uhh…

Lucky is a small intelligent pig who feels torn between loyalties to Snowball and Napoleon. By the movie’s end, he comes to realize Napoleon has led the animals in the wrong direction, and he starts a second revolution to restore the farm to its original vision. Other additions to this adaptation include a shrewd tech billionaire and jokes about flatulence.

Many Americans praise Animal Farm because Orwell used this parable to critique communist Russia. What often gets overlooked is that Orwell was a committed socialist who wasn’t promoting western-style capitalism. He just didn’t want Russian-style propaganda and exploitation. Attentive readers of the book understand that Orwell is teaching that both capitalism and Stalin’s communism are oppressive.

The film preserves Orwell’s socialist premise, updating it with some 21st century concerns. This Napoleon relies more on populism than propaganda to push his agenda, and tech billionaires are the new capitalist enemies who keep us from an egalitarian paradise.

PILKINGTON: I crush my competitors so I can raise prices as much as I want.

NAPOLEON: I like a lady who crushes.

This adaptation suffers from the same muddled political messaging as the book. In both, no matter what the rules say, the animals aren’t and never could be equal. Many of the barnyard animals aren’t intellectually equipped for having a say. The pigs are fundamentally smarter. Does the farm really need equality or does it really just need virtuous pigs? And there’s a subtle implication that we’d all be happier with equitable poverty rather than prosperous inequality.

This is the socio-political worldview of the typical Hollywood celebrity, which might explain how this modest film managed to attract so many stars. It’s directed by Andy Serkis, and features voice work from Seth Rogen, Glenn Close, Woody Harrelson, and Kathleen Turner, among others.

Actors might preach socialism, but studios want to make money, which probably explains why the major studios and Netflix refused to buy this movie when it was being shopped around. What seems less understandable is why Angel Studios, which claims to champion traditional values, would buy a socialist film with an atheist director and a transgender voice actor.

Anyway, the other new film this weekend is a sequel to a favorite with the millennial generation, The Devil Wears Prada 2.

ANDY: Miranda.

MIRANDA: Took ya long enough.

It’s been 20 years since we last saw Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly terrorizing her staff at the fashion magazine Runway. The magazine is still around but the industry has changed significantly. An unexpected turn of events lands Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs back at Runway, this time as the features editor.

MIRANDA: I’m sorry. Who is this? Do I know her?

ANDY: Andy Sachs. Andrea.

NIGEL: She was one of the Emilies.

Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt return to their respective roles from the original as well.

EMILY: It’s really remarkable. A senior editor at Runway. You!

ANDY: Yep.

MIRANDA: We’re all so thrilled.

NIGEL: Um hmm.

Runway is facing an existential crisis in this age of click bait, AI slop, and declining subscriptions. Will the guardians of high fashion be able to beat back the Philistines assaulting their business model while at the same time navigating the expectations of Milan’s fashion week?

I expect the movie will please fans of the 2006 film. It has enough of the original to give viewers the feeling of a family reunion. But this isn’t a retread because it takes the conflict in a fresh direction. Of course there’s plenty of snarky one-liners.

EMILY: You know what’s funny? You’ve changed. You have. You’re much more confident.

ANDY: Oh?

EMILY: Kept those eyebrows though, didn’t you?

The movie is rated PG-13, mostly for two harsh obscenities, but the romances are more chaste than the ones in the first film.

I was especially impressed that the characters have grown into a new self-awareness in the last 20 years, musing on the costs associated with a career-centric jet-setting lifestyle.

The film also asks us to consider the beauty of human frailty. Some of the dialogue gets melodramatic, but maybe a little melodrama is called for in this age when AI threatens to come after both the arts and our jobs.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Next, George Grant—on the Dutch fingerprints you may not realize are all over the English language. Here is Word Play for May.

GEORGE GRANT: I have just returned from a ministry trip to the Netherlands—a land I have always loved visiting. Once again, I was struck by the close relation between the Dutch and English languages.

Like English, the roots of Dutch can be traced to the West Germanic dialects of the Angles, Saxons, and Frisians. English and Dutch are essentially linguistic first cousins. While Latinate French was introduced into Old English following the Norman conquest in 1066, even then almost a third of William the Conqueror’s army were Flemish and Dutch. Then, over the course of the next few centuries, the Hanseatic League, a dominating commercial network of merchant guilds and market towns across northern Europe, adopted Dutch as its lingua franca. The inevitable influence of Dutch on our language was thus dramatic.

The result is that a significant percentage of our everyday English vocabulary is comprised of Dutch loan words. From bicker, boss, and bully to dollar, drill, and drum, from easy, elope, and excise to filibuster frolic, and forlorn, from gas, golf, and grab to leak, loiter, and luck, from mannequin, measles, and mud to Santa, spray, and stove, from tackle, trek, and tub to walrus, wagon, and wiggle, English is replete with words drawn from Dutch.

The Dutch were among the first European settlers in North America—indeed, Manhattan Island was once called New Amsterdam. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that a host of familiar place names have Dutch origins: Brooklyn, Coney Island, Flushing, Harlem, Hoboken, Knickerbocker, Rhode Island, Rikers Island, Schenectady, Staten Island, Yonkers, and Zeeland. Even the most common nickname for Americans abroad, Yankee, is Dutch.

From the Dutch colonial past we also inherited words like aardvark, Afrikaans, aloof, bamboo, batik, Boer, blunderbuss, iceberg, knapsack, onslaught, plunder, and quartermaster. And the Dutch seafaring tradition gifted us with a rich nautical vocabulary: aboard, anchor, and aweigh, sail, ship, and swab, bulwark, bow, and buoy, captain, commodore, and cruise all share a Dutch etymology—as do deck and dock, flag and freight, maelstrom and mast, skipper and starboard, and even tattoo and yacht.

The Dutch not only gave us Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh, they also gave us the words to describe their artistic craft: easel and etch, landscape and layout, still life and sketch.

Even our culinary vocabulary borrows heavily from the Dutch. Common food and drink terms like booze, brandy, buckwheat, coleslaw, gin, pickle, and scone have Dutch origins. My favorite Dutch treat is a confection called a stroopwaffle. It is part cookie and part waffle. Appropriately, both of those words are also Dutch.

Avast, me hearties! It seems English has pirated Dutch booty at every turn. Shiver me timbers!

I’m George Grant.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to name the crew who contributed to this week’s programs:

Mary Reichard, Will Fleeson, David Bahnsen, Mary Muncy, Hunter Baker, Carolina Lumetta, Arsenio Orteza, Denny Burk, Jeff Palomino, Bethel McGrew, Cal Thomas, George Grant, Collin Garbarino, John Stonestreet, and Josh Goniea.

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

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros: Tech producers Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

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

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible records the words of Jesus: “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” —John 15:20, 21

This weekend, find a Bible-believing church and give thanks and praise to the name which is above every name, Jesus!

And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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