The World and Everything in It: May 19, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. I’m Heather Knudson, and I live in Cambridge, Minnesota where I teach kindergarten. I’d like to say happy birthday to my daughter Rebecca in Rochester, Minnesota. We often discuss things we hear on the program when we chat on the phone. I know we will enjoy today’s program, and I hope you will too.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Today on Culture Friday, the New York subway controversy: is Jordan Neely victim or predator? Is Daniel Penny hero or criminal?

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk it over with a new voice to Culture Friday, Samuel Sey. Plus a new documentary exploring the legacy of a baseball great.

VIN SCULLY: Yogi was representing, not the big guys, but he was representing, kind of us, the stick ball kids in the street.

And WORLD commentator George Grant talks about “lonely negatives” in this month’s Word Play.

REICHARD: It’s Friday, May 19th. 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: Time now for news with Kent Covington

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: G7 » Leaders of the world's most powerful democracies are gathered in Japan for Group of Seven—or G7 meetings this week.

FUMIO KISHIDA: [Speaking Japanese]

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida opened the summit with a face-to-face meeting with President Biden .

Kishida said the Japan-U.S. alliance “is the very foundation of peace and security” in the Indo-Pacific region, a major focus of the talks.

G7 leaders are expected to discuss China’s military buildup and growing aggression in the region.

Also high on the agenda: the war in Ukraine.

JOE BIDEN: We stand up for the shared values, including supporting the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereign territory and holding Russia accountable for its brutal aggression.

The White House said enforcing sanctions against Moscow would be a top priority.

Ukraine » Meanwhile, in Ukraine one person is dead and two more are wounded after a Russian missile attack yesterday. Ukraine’s air defense system destroyed 29 out of 30 rockets. The missile that snuck through struck an industrial complex in Odessa.

Pentagon Spokeswoman Sabrina Singh:

SABRINA SINGH - Our priority has been giving Ukraine the air defense systems that they need, and also their other priorities include armor and artillery.

Ukrainian armed forces said yesterday that it had endured more than a dozen missile attacks in the previous 24 hours.

FBI whistleblower hearing » Lawmakers on Capitol Hill heard from several witnesses Thursday whom Republicans called FBI whistleblowers.

Former special agent Steve Friend said the bureau strayed from its own guidelines when investigating pro-life and religious groups, among others. And he said in his view that:

STEVE FRIEND: Could have undermined potentially righteous prosecutions and may have been part of an effort to inflate the FBI’s statistics on domestic extremism.

He also said the FBI may have inflated the threat posed by parents raising concerns at school board meetings.

Witnesses also said the bureau retaliated against them when they raised concerns. The FBI denies that.

Democrats on the panel derided the proceedings a Republican attempt to discredit the bureau.

SCOTUS » The Supreme Court sidestepped a chance to address a statute that shields internet platforms’ from liability over content their users post. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: In two cases yesterday, the court sided with major tech companies, but declined to address Section 230. That’s a federal statute from 1996 that says internet platforms are not liable for content posted by users.

Legal experts thought the court might revise the statute.

Instead, the justices ruled in favor of Google, Facebook, and Twitter for other reasons saying the platforms did not aid and abet in multiple terrorist attacks overseas.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

WalMart/Inflation » The nation’s largest retailer is reporting strong returns even in a rough retail environment.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said sales grew globally in the first quarter.

DOUG McMILLON: Profit grew must faster than sales and we made further progress on inventory levels.

The low-price retailer may be benefitting from cost-conscious shoppers as prices soar.

McMILLON: In the dry groceries and consumable categories like paper goods, we continue to see high single digit to low double digit cost inflation. 

But McMillon said there is no doubt that persistently higher prices are weighing heavily on Walmart customers.

Airbag danger »U.S. regulators say millions of drivers may be at risk from a rare but dangerous airbag blast. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warns that 67 million airbags could explode so powerfully as to blow apart a metal canister, spewing shrapnel.

And the agency is demanding that the manufacturer, ARC Automotive, recall the inflators citing two deaths and at least seven injuries.

But the Tennessee-based company says there is no safety defect. It is fighting the recall setting up a possible court battle.

In the meantime, GM is recalling nearly 1 million of its vehicles with ARC inflators including certain SUVs from model years 2014 through 2017.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday—this time considering race, violence, and reparations. Plus, Word Play with George Grant. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s the 19th day of May 2023. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s Culture Friday.

Joining us now is Samuel Sey. He’s an up and coming blogger, podcaster, and commentator. He’s a graduate of the World Journalism Institute and the newest contributor to WORLD Opinions.

Samuel is making his first-ever appearance on Culture Friday. Samuel, good morning.

SAMUEL SEY: Good morning. It's an honor to be with you guys.

EICHER: I am so glad you’re here. Now Sam had his first column for us about a month ago a very personal column in which he made the point that there’s no such thing as an “interracial marriage.” He wrote, “My wife and I are not an interracial couple. … We do not have an interracial marriage—just a marriage.” He went on to say, “Though I’m black and my wife is white, … There is only one race in our marriage, not two.” Samuel, the subject of race is near and dear to you. Just by way of the listener getting to know you a little better, can you talk about why this subject is a passion of yours?

SEY: I'm so passionate about this topic, because I've seen how the issue of race has divided so many people that I know, including many of my own friends, who even share the same so-called race as me. Because the issue of race has been used—as it has been used for centuries in our society now—has been used to divide people. And now through critical race theory and woke ideology it's really dividing people, families, friends, churches, and as we know, in our society. So I think it's extremely important that Christians address this issue with Biblical truth. And in the article, one of the things I wanted to do is, is that, I'm married to a white woman and in many ways, our marriage has become controversial to some people, because of critical race theory. And we've received a lot of comments about our marriage. And I think it was very important that I address this issue from a Biblical point of view—to really teach what the Bible says about this. The Bible does indeed say that we are one race. And then even more than that, if we are in Christ, there is a unique race, biologically in the human race, but then even in Christ, there is a holy race as 1 Peter 2:9 says. So it's really important that we understand this because our society has been divided up through this.

EICHER: So, Sam, let’s talk about this sad situation on the subway in New York City, and you have a fairly predictable left-right breakdown of people who say...

Or one group of folks who say the Marine, Daniel Penny, a white man, is a hero. And another group saying the homeless man Penny placed in a chokehold, a black man who eventually died as a result of that, that the homeless man, Jordan Neely, is a victim of racism.

How do you go about analyzing this, from a Christian perspective? … Because I think when Penny’s manslaughter trial gets going, we may be facing—I don’t know if it’ll be on the scale of the George Floyd case—but we could be in for some difficult days.

SEY: Yeah, I have similar concerns. One of the things that I always remember in this is that, you have a lot of people in our society who are going to immediately defend one person because of their political beliefs, or even because of their skin color. And it's important that we remember that the individuals—at least the most prominent individuals in this case—are people who are made in the image of God - first. Therefore, we are required to love them both. So God has commanded me to love Jordan Neeley. And He's also commanded me to love Daniel Penny. And we need to remember that you don't necessarily have to choose a side between the two of them, you can just choose to obey what God has said when it comes to love.

Now, what does that mean? That means we have to—in love—rejoice in the truth. We don't have to necessarily pick a political side. So when I look, at least what has been presented so far, it is that Jordan Neely was being hostile, erratic, and he was threatening people on the train. He has been arrested 42 times. He had outstanding warrants against him. It's come out that he had attacked three women previously unprovoked on trains before. And also, even the freelance journalist who recorded the incident, mentioned that there were a lot of people who were deeply concerned for their safety when he was there. And that he had said that he did not mind going to jail, or going to jail for a long time, right before he was placed in the choke-hold by Daniel Penny.

So I think it's important to understand that it's not like this, you know, as has been said by some people that, that Penny just went out there to try to harm this person. That just doesn't seem very likely. Plus, there were also two other people who were with him to restrain him. One of them was apparently another black person. So it seems to me that Daniel Penny was doing what he thought was best to protect the people on that train. And the second-degree manslaughter is a difficult issue when it comes to whether it is fair or not. Because oftentimes, even if somebody means well, if they act recklessly—and I’m not saying that he did—but if they act recklessly, it is necessary for them to be charged for that. And I think it is not necessarily unfair for there to be a trial over this. The problem is, will there be a fair trial? And there has been indication that this might not be the case, because of already how it's been presumed that because he is white, and because Jordan Neely is black, that it was because of racism when there's absolutely zero evidence of that

REICHARD: I want to ask you about recent news out of San Francisco, about reparations. Most recently, that city’s task force on reparations recommended giving a one-time, $5 million payment to any eligible black person. Apparently that’s for displacing black families back in the 1960s and 70s from certain neighborhoods.

The state’s reparations task force is more modest, if you can call it that: a sliding scale that tops out at $1.2 million for older black people.

More modest reparations have been established in towns like Evanston, Illinois.

The underlying argument is reparations will close the racial wealth gap or otherwise make up for past discrimination.

Now as a lawyer, I can see legal entanglement galore. What if you just moved there this morning? What if your own ancestors weren’t forced out of a place? Not to mention assessing damages. How is that even measured?

What do you say about reparations, Sam?

SEY: I'm really concerned about this for legal reasons, and also just again, more division in our society. You know, the thing with reparations is that some people are pointing to the Nazis and how there was so-called reparations for the victims of the Holocaust. There was also so-called reparations for the victims of the Japanese who were also put into internment camps in the US.

The problem is, I say “so-called reparations” because it was actually restitution. It was the actual victims of the Holocaust and the Japanese victims of the camps across the US. They were the ones that received the restitution for what had happened to them. With this, this is mostly going to be going towards people who were not the actual victims of, of redlining and all that. So that creates a lot of problems.

Plus, you know, historically there have been different kinds of reparations, in a sense, across the US. We tend to forget that LBJ's great society was actually framed as a form of reparations for black Americans across the US and that was a disaster. And I am not convinced that this will lead to a different outcome. I think this will make things worse.

When you consider what's happening across California, even when it comes to illiteracy rates across California, for black students, how is that going to help black students? How is that going to help the current issue? How's it going to help with fatherlessness? Crime? And then even when it comes to what about the wealthy black celebrities in Hollywood who will receive a lot of this, a lot of the so-called reparations? And then how is that going to affect the poor white Californians who will be made even poorer while the black elites get even wealthier?

You know, I'm from Ghana, where we had a huge role in the slave trade—Ghana. To this day, there are about 35 so-called slave castles in Ghana. Actually a lot of my tribal ethnic people, which is the Fante, were made slaves by our rival ethnic group, which would be the Ashanti's. So Ghana is a very poor nation already. If reparations is as just as people claim it is, what about Africa? What about Ghana? Should Ghanians pay reparations? As in the Ashanti's who played a role in the slave trade? Should those who are already poor right now, should they be forced to pay reparations to the descendants of the people that they sold as slaves? Or what about even in Ghana? Right. So my people the Fante’s, who were sold as slaves by the Ashanti's, should they also receive reparations from the Ashanti's in Ghana? In what is already a poor nation. Right? If it wouldn't be right in Africa or in Ghana, it shouldn't be right in America as well. It is just inherently unjust.

REICHARD: Sam Sey is a blogger, podcaster, and commentator, and a contributor to WORLD Opinions. You can find more of his writing at slowtowrite.com. Sam, thank you so much

SEY: Thank you. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Dust-ups are pretty common in baseball games, even, and maybe especially in little league where things can get heated. Quickly.

Well, in Jacksonville, Florida, recently the ground got heated and spun up this little devil.

SOUND: [DUST DEVIL]

A dust devil, little mini tornado, not really dangerous, but pretty scary for this 7-year-old little league catcher who got sucked into it.

The boy is Bauer Zoya. The audio from TV station WJXT:

BAUER ZOYA: I couldn't breathe that much. So I helded my breath and I feel like I couldn't touch the ground. So I kind of lifted up a little bit. And I got afraid if, if someone would pull me out.

Somebody did pull him out, the umpire did: 17-year old Aidan Wiles. He scooped up the young catcher and pulled him out of what had to be a terrifying moment for the little guy.

As for the dust-devil, it disappeared as quickly as it appeared, so the game continued. As did the stirred but not shaken kiddo. Carried on, did his job.

ZOYA: I caught one and it was so high and my dad said “up” and then I caught it.

Good for him and good for the kid umpire. This whole episode took about 7 seconds, so there wasn’t really time to think, only to react. And the teenager’s reaction was the right one. Safety of the young kids first, good for Aidan Wiles. Tip of the cap to the ump!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, May 19th. We’re glad you’re listening to WORLD Radio! 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 documentary about a baseball legend. It’s called It Ain’t Over, and it’s in theaters now. The movie takes a fresh look at the life of Yogi Berra and tries to set the record straight about his legacy.

Because, you know, you may have heard it before. It’s like dejavu all over again as someone famously once said.

Here’s WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: The opening ceremony of the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game honored the four greatest living baseball players as determined by 25 million fan votes: Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays.

And sitting at home watching the game on TV with his granddaughter was 90-year-old Yogi Berra. Yogi’s granddaughter, Lindsay, was stunned that baseball fans across America had forgotten her grandfather’s accomplishments.

LINDSAY BERRA: Wait a second. He’s got more MVPs than any of these guys. He’s won more World Series rings than all four of them combined.

How could Yogi’s baseball legacy have been forgotten? That moment of confusion sparked the new documentary It Ain’t Over.

JOE MADDON: To have Yogi not included in the greatest living players in 2015. I mean that makes no sense to me whatsoever. I don’t quite understand it.

It seems Yogi’s status as a cultural icon had eclipsed his legacy as one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game.

Yogi started life as Lorenzo Pietro Berra in the Italian section of St. Louis. His immigrant father wasn’t excited about his son’s obsession with baseball, but the boy proved to be quite a slugger.

Yogi tells the story of how his teammates in St. Louis gave him his unique nickname.

YOGI BERRA: Bobby Huffman played with the Giants. We played on the same American Legion team. And I was sitting on the ground with my legs crossed and my arms crossed. And he said, “You look like a yogi.” That stuck.

Yogi’s hometown St. Louis Cardinals snubbed him, so the kid ended up signing with the New York Yankees in 1943.

Before he could play a game with the Yankees, the then 18-year-old Yogi signed up to fight in World War II. Berra manned a rocket boat during the D-Day invasion of Normandy despite not knowing how to swim.

The movie introduces us to a man from the Greatest Generation whose virtues and values were shaped by the war. He’s an everyday guy, not a superstar, who stays grounded and never seems to have forgotten what’s important.

VIN SCULLY: Yogi was representing, not the big guys, but he was representing, kind of us, the stick ball kids in the street.

Having a proper perspective on sport didn’t keep Yogi from working hard. He didn’t start out as a catcher, but after learning the position, he quickly became one of the best. He was also one of the most reliable hitters for the Yankees.

MARTY APPEL: There are only two people with more than 350 home runs and fewer than 500 strikeouts in the whole history of major league baseball. And their names are Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.

Despite his heroics on the field, the media portrayed Yogi as a clown. With his rounded shoulders and five-foot-seven-inch frame, Berra didn’t resemble a baseball player. He didn’t have the classic good looks of other Yankees players, like Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle. The good-natured Yogi was only too happy to play along with the media’s mockery.

He had a big personality and he used to ham it up for interviews and commercials. His famous Yogi-isms furthered his image as a comic figure. Even presidents on both sides of the political aisle loved quoting him.

RONALD REAGAN: It isn’t over until it’s over.

GEORGE W. BUSH: Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

BILL CLINTON: We may be lost, but we’re making good time.

Yogi spent much of his career as the butt of the joke, but he was a smart player who knew how to run a game. He kept every player’s strengths and weaknesses in his head, allowing him to call for the right pitch for each batter. When Don Larsen pitched his perfect World Series game in 1956, Berra sat behind the plate calling the pitches. Larsen didn’t shake off his catcher a single time.

ANNOUNCER: Here it comes. Strike three! The perfect game. Not a man reaches first base. No one has ever done this in World Series history.

The movie is rated PG, but be warned it includes a little profanity at one point. Even so, it’s a treat for both baseball fans and fans of American pop culture. It features vintage footage from baseball’s yesteryear and plenty of endearing interviews from the self-deprecating Berra. Children and grandchildren offer personal glimpses into his life. I especially appreciated how the film celebrated Yogi’s 65 years of marriage to wife Carmen. The documentary also includes numerous interviews with friends and fans including Vin Scully, Bob Costas, Billy Crystal, Derek Jeter, and Joe Torre.

JOE TORRE: He may be overlooked, but he certainly wasn’t overlooked by the people who know what they’re looking at in baseball.

It Ain’t Over successfully makes the case that Yogi Berra was one of baseball’s greatest players. But it also confirms that America’s collective consciousness was sort of right about him all along. Yogi really was bigger than baseball. He became an institution—a humble, quirky man of integrity embraced by Americans from all walks of life.

ANNOUNCER: There’s one. It is going… Gone!

I’m Collin Garbarino

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, May 19th. 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. Up next: antonyms. Sometimes it’s easy to name a word and its opposite: obey, disobey. Pleasure, displeasure. But some English words don’t pair with an opposite quite so easily. Here’s WORLD Commentator George Grant with Word Play for the month of May.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: According to journalist Donna Dickens, “the English language defies logic.” In fact, she says, “it is most illogical and discombobulating.” But, if it were logical, would it then be combobulating? Well, no. There is no such word as combobulating! And that is indeed quite illogical and discombobulating.

The opposite of disgusted is not gusted; the opposite of disheveled is not sheveled; the opposite of disappointment is not appointment.

There are many negative English words whose positive forms either do not exist at all, are now obscure and obsolete, or have changed meaning altogether. Grammarians call these words lonely negatives or unpaired words.

The word disgusted comes from the Norman French, derived from the Latin prefix dis, “expressing reversal,” and gustāre meaning “to taste.” But only the negative form passed into English, so no one has ever declared, “That gusted me.”

Disheveled comes from the late Middle English word, dishevely, derived from the Old French past participle of descheveler and taken from the root word cheveux, meaning “hair.” Originally it described “having the head uncovered.” Later it referred to the hair itself, untidily hanging loose. Again though, the positive form never made it into English, so no one has ever been sheveled.

Prior to the sixteenth century disappointment was removal from an office, dispossession from a property, or negation of an appointment. It meant “to cancel or to revoke privileges.” Only much later did it come to mean “to frustrate, upset, dishearten, or dissatisfy.”

There is no reckful to serve as a positive counterpart to reckless. There is no delible to oppose indelible, no cessant to stand up to incessant, no nocuous to contrast with innocuous, no dolent to counter indolent.

A handful of lonely negatives are not actually negative. For instance, the prefix dis in disgruntled is an intensifier not a nullifier or negator. If you’re disgruntled would that mean that you’re extremely gruntled? In his comic classic, The Code of the Woosters, P.G. Wodehouse made humorous use of that lonely negative declaring, “He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

What a great sentence! It is almost enough to make one yearn for just a bit more English combobulating.

I’m George Grant.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week: David Bahnsen, Steve West, Carolina Lumetta, Jenny Rough, A.S. Ibrahim, Onize Ohikere, Myrna Brown, Janie B. Cheaney, Lindsay Wolfgang Mast, Bonnie Pritchett, Amy Lewis, Cal Thomas, Collin Garbarino, and George Grant.

And a new voice this week: Samuel Sey from WORLD Opinions.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Mary Muncy, Lauren Canterberry, and Josh Schumacher.

And our guys on the night shift, Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz who stay up late to get the program to you early.

REICHARD: Our producer is Harrison Watters with production assistance from Benj Eicher, Lillian Hamman, and Bekah McCallum.

Paul Butler is our executive producer.

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

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians: “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” Galatians chapter 4, verses 8 and 9.

Let’s all worship the Lord this weekend! Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

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.