The World and Everything in It: May 20, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Republican Trump critic Thomas Massie loses his seat after repeated clashes with the president.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Hunter Baker is standing by.

Also today, complications that make fighting Ebola even harder.

And later, in South Georgia, two brothers mourn what the wildfires took away.

AUSTIN: Put it in the Lord’s hands and thanked Him for all the time we had it. And I’m thankful for the memories.

And WORLD Commentator Janie B. Cheaney on the parenting trend from resilience to reliance.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, May 20th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran latest » President Trump says another military strike on Iran could be just days away if a peace deal doesn’t come together with Teheran quickly.

He called off strikes that had been set for Tuesday — after Gulf state leaders appealed for more time to negotiate.

TRUMP: They called me over the last two days to say they made a lot of progress, because we have them negotiating with us and primarily Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain and some of the others, and we have them negotiating with them.

He says they're all working together as a team.

Trump says Iranian leaders keep promising they want a deal — but then drag their feet.

TRUMP: I hope we don't have to do the war, but we may have to give them another big hit. We may have to give them another big hit. I'm not sure yet.

An Iranian official says Tehran will respond firmly to any new American attack.

Vice President JD Vance told White House reporters:

VANCE: I will not say with confidence that we're gonna reach a deal until we're actually signing a negotiated settlement here, and I think that it's ultimately up to the Iranians whether they're willing to meet us.

The Senate Tuesday advanced a Democratic-led resolution that seeks to force Trump to end the war. It advanced 50-to-47 after Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana switched sides following his recent primary loss.

Drones that struck UAE nuclear site came from Iraq » Meantime, investigators have traced Sunday's drone attack on a nuclear plant in the United Arab Emirates to Iraq— and likely to an Iran-backed militia. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: The Barakah plant is the Arab world's only nuclear power station — and it powers a quarter of the UAE.

No one was hurt in the strike and no radiation leaked.

The UAE Defense Ministry says all three drones came from Iraq. Saudi Arabia has since intercepted three more from the same airspace.

No group has claimed the attack — but Iran and its proxies were suspected from the start.

Sunday's strike is the latest in a string of attacks on the UAE during the war. Iran-backed forces have targeted the Emirates because it's a close U.S. ally — and hosts Israeli air defenses and personnel.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Blanche testimony » Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended a new $1.7 billion compensation fund at his first Senate hearing Tuesday.

Blanche calls an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" for victims of political targeting by the government.

But Democrats deride it as a “self-dealing: political “slush fund.”

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen grilled Blanche:

VAN HOLLEN: Will individuals who assaulted Capitol Hill police officers be eligible for this fund?

BLANCHE: Well, as it makes plain, anybody …

VAN HOLLEN: Will they be eli- just let me know if they're eligible for the fund…

BLANCHE: As, as, as was made plain yesterday, anybody in this country is eligible to apply if they believe they're a victim of weaponization.

Blache said furthermore the fund will not be limited only to those who feel they were targeted by the Biden Justice Department, but to anyone with a credible claim.

A five-member commission will decide what defines a ‘credible claim’ — and set the rules for who gets paid and how much. But the members of that panel have not yet been appointed.

New York rail strike ends » Long Island Rail Road trains are running again this morning along the country’s busiest commuter rail system — after a three-day strike ended at the bargaining table.

The four-year deal gives workers raises totaling about 14 percent, plus a $3,000 lump-sum payment.

Kevin Sexton is vice president of the engineers' union:

SEXTON: We're pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement. Due to the nature of the negotiations, we cannot discuss the specifics. What I can say is we are looking forward to our members getting back to work.

Limited service started at noon Tuesday — with full schedule back by evening rush. Long Island Rail Road president Rob Free:

FREE: The deal was a fair deal for the employees, but it also ensured that we maintained our financial stability, that we're not going to put a burden on our riders or the taxpayers. So it's a good deal. We're happy with it, and we're happy to run trains.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul reiterated a pledge that commuters won't pay a dime more — no fare hikes, no tax bumps.

Union members still need to ratify the deal in the coming days.

Election results: Kentucky »An upset in a GOP primary election in Kentucky, as eight-term incumbent Thomas Massie conceded his U.S. House seat to President Trump’s handpicked challenger. WORLD’s Travis Kircher reports now from the congressman's official watch party in Kentucky.

AUDIO: Massie! Massie! Massie!

TRAVIS KIRCHER: Hundreds of Massie supporters packed the Cincinnati Airport Marriott here in Hee-brehn, Kentucky, Tuesday night to await the results of a hotly contested U.S. House race. But it soon became apparent that the eight term congressman, would be surrendering his seat.

MASSIE: I have called and conceded the race. We've been honorable the whole time, and we're going to stay that way.

KIRCHER: He lost to Ed Gallrein, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, who had President Trump’s full support.

The president had criticized Massie, first for voting against what Trump called his “Big Beautiful Bill” — Massie said it added trillions to the national debt. And for forcing a vote on a bill requiring the release of the so-called Epstein files.

I spoke with many Massie supporters who say they saw him as a Republican who kept President Trump accountable to his campaign promises.

HILGER: I do support Mr. Trump's policies. I wish he would get back into the MAGA line and do what he said that he told everybody he was going to do. The fraud that Mr. Massie talked about. The national debt that he talked about. The corruption in Washington, D.C.

KIRCHER: Ed Gallrein, for his part, told the GOP faithful that he intends to help the president fulfill those promises.

GALLREIN: I will serve this district, my party, and my nation with that same audacity to make a difference for them, their families, our district, our party, our nation. God bless America.

KIRCHER: Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher in Hee-brehn, Kentucky.

Georgia election » Meantime in Georgia, Congressman Mike Collins was the leading vote-getter in a Republican Senate primary race as the GOP vies to unseat incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Ossoff.

But Collins did not top 50% of the vote. And by Georgia law, that means he’ll head to a runoff election on June 16th.

As of early this morning, it was still unclear who Collins will face in that runoff, as the race for second place was still too close to call.

I'm Kent Covington.

Coming up, Hunter Baker is standing by for Washington Wednesday. And later, Janie B. Cheaney on the generational swing from resilience to reliance.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the 20th of May. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. 

First up, Washington Wednesday, and a full plate of politics today. Joining us is Hunter Baker, political scientist and commentator for WORLD Opinions. Good morning, Hunter.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

MAST: Hunter, Republicans were watching my home state of Kentucky closely last night as Congressman Thomas Massie faced perhaps the most serious political challenge of his career. No doubt about that now, but things just went from bad to worse for him after repeated clashes with President Trump, and that comes just days after Senator Bill Cassidy lost his Republican primary in Louisiana following years of tension with Trump after Cassidy’s impeachment vote back in 2021. So, what do you say, Hunter, with Massie out? What larger story are we watching inside the Republican Party right now?

BAKER: If we were to go back, I don’t know, 20 years, 25 years, one of the things that we would see Republicans saying over and over again would be the Republican Party is a big tent, it’s a big tent party, and the reason that that would be said is because of the understanding that politics is fundamentally about addition, not subtraction. Typically, you want as many allies, as many friends, as many fellow travelers as you can accumulate, and that’s how you build a really big party and win victories.

But the other thing you can do is you can have a smaller party with greater intensity, and it seems like that has been the choice that Donald Trump has made over and over again. There’s also, of course, the fact that he does not take slights or challenges. It’s a little bit like a prison yard, the idea that allowing someone to challenge you successfully means that you might die in your sleep, and so you’ve got to take out your enemies, you’ve got to show them who’s the boss, and Donald Trump is doing that, and he’s doing it well into his second term.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, it’s interesting you should say that, because I want to take a turn from the election results themselves to how the campaign was fought. The one thing I did not expect in the race in Kentucky is that the argument was not Trump versus anti-Trump. Massie was very anti-Trump, but in the campaign he was not. It was a fight over who represents the truest version of Trumpism. Is that what you mean by this prison yard thing, or is that different?

BAKER: I think that is a big part of what I mean. Trump has transformed the party. There’s no question about that. I can remember in 2016 when he first announced himself, and I thought that he might be kind of a novelty candidate, somebody who would be a celebrity, who would make some noise, but ultimately who would not matter. The real politicians would assert themselves, and somebody serious would be elected, and it didn’t work out that way at all.

He went from being somebody who was a primetime TV star on NBC with Celebrity Apprentice, and of course his long history of developing prime real estate, to being not only the Republican nominee but improbably the President of the United States. He has chosen not just to be happy that he got the job, but instead to go for a long-term play. He is trying to transform the GOP in an enduring fashion such that people don’t just outlast him and then take the GOP back to its truer self or something like that, but instead that it will be a Trump party henceforth, and he’s taking steps to ensure that.

MAST: Hunter, when you step back, does this kind of politics energize voters, or is it the sort of thing that eventually exhausts them?

BAKER: It’s a really good question, and I think it just kind of matters who you are. I can remember teaching community college American government years ago, and I would sometimes despair over how hard it was to get young people interested in politics and the civics of their own country. Well, that is much less of a problem now. When Donald Trump is president, I think a lot of people are paying attention who didn’t pay attention before. So, in that sense, he energizes voters.

Now, if you’re a connoisseur of politics, and maybe you’re looking for a better label or a better year, it can exhaust you, but there’s no doubt that there are a lot of people who are energized right and left.

EICHER: I wonder, with the decision yesterday of the President, Hunter, to back Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas over the incumbent Senator John Cornyn, I wonder what the practical meaning of “all politics is local” is anymore. It seems that more and more the races are national in character, and so with so much on the line in the fall, why would the president want to go with the more difficult-to-elect Ken Paxton over the safe, you know he’s going to be reelected, John Cornyn? Why?

BAKER: You’re exactly right that politics have become not terribly local, certainly when we’re talking about Congress and the midterms, and that instead we’re seeing race after race become nationalized, and in particular Texas. Texas is kind of the golden prize, the brass ring that the Democrats are always hoping that they can grab. It’s a state that they used to win. They used to always win Texas. Every now and then, you might get a Republican governor or something like that, but after George W. Bush, Texas became a solid Republican state.

So you’re right, you would ask the question, why not Cornyn? Cornyn has never lost a race before, and it seems like he would just roll on to victory, and all I can conclude is that the philosophy that Donald Trump has that is stronger than any other, stronger than any agenda he has, is loyalty to Donald Trump, and he perceives that John Cornyn has been less loyal to him than Ken Paxton.

In fact, Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina, apparently called Trump 30 minutes before this endorsement and tried to talk him out of it.

EICHER: Really?

BAKER: Yes, that was reported, and apparently failed, and that basically Trump just concluded that Ken Paxton was the guy who has his back, and that’s who he’s for.

MAST: Hunter, Democrats are increasingly talking openly about structural issues, things like changes to the electoral college, expansion of the Supreme Court, and statehood for Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Conservatives hear that rhetoric and argue the debate is shifting from winning elections under the rules to rewriting the rules themselves, so here’s my question: Are both parties increasingly treating institutions not as neutral frameworks but as instruments of political survival?

BAKER: There’s no doubt about that. You listed off a few things. Of course, there has been the talk about getting rid of the electoral college. Well, you’d have to change the Constitution first, and that’s a pretty big lift. Expansion of the Supreme Court, that would be easier, because the Constitution does not require nine. There have been fewer, for example, in the past, as opposed to more.

The one that really riles me up is when we talk about statehood for Washington, D.C. You cannot make the seat of government a state. You just can’t do that to me. It betrays this incredible sort of unawareness of the fundamental issues that exist in constructing a national government. The idea that you would do that. Puerto Rico is a little bit of a different story, but yes, everybody, this is the postmodern problem.

When you think about postmodernism, it’s the idea that there really is no capital-T Truth, but instead it just kind of comes down to power and narratives that are in competition with each other, and I think that both sides are embracing the idea that power is what ultimately matters.

Are Republicans sometimes guilty of this? I would certainly argue that Mitch McConnell stretched things a little bit when Justice Scalia died in the final year of President Obama’s term. You could have had a pretty good procedural expectation that President Obama would have the opportunity to make that appointment, and that was held up, but the Democrats are now turning that particular procedural move into a potential excuse for absolutely packing the court. In fact, they refer to what McConnell did as packing the court. It’s not that.

EICHER: No.

BAKER: He wasn’t adding to the number of the court, right? He was basically saying this election is about this seat, and whoever wins this election is going to get the seat. But the discussion of court packing has become extremely common, and I think that it may turn into a fight in the future.

EICHER: All right, Hunter, one lighter subplot, because this has been heavy stuff. We’re talking about civics, we’re talking about the Constitution, but now we need to talk about the briefing room at the White House. Vice President Vance got his turn as the spokesman for the President at the briefing podium while Karoline Leavitt is on maternity leave. Conservatives immediately started to compare the performance of the Vice President to Marco Rubio’s recent appearance behind the podium. So what do you think? Are we quietly watching an early audition for the post-Trump generation of Republican leadership, and do you think — this is the question — do you think that Trump enjoys running a real version of The Apprentice from the Oval Office?

BAKER: I have to say that I think that Karoline Leavitt’s maternity leave has been one of the greatest things to happen in American politics in my lifetime. This situation where we get to have Marco Rubio running that briefing, and then JD Vance doing it, is just really interesting. You get to watch these two individuals kind of displaying the skills and the intelligence that they have, and Marco Rubio was really amazing, and he was helped by the fact that it was primarily about foreign affairs with which he is constantly involved as Secretary of State, but I thought that JD Vance looked pretty good.

It reminded me of his debate with Tim Walz, and JD Vance, even though he’s famous as the Hillbilly Elegy author, and so you think of him as this sort of rural country guy, he is highly intelligent, he has that Ivy League education at law school, and a lot of experience, and he comes across as a guy who knows what he’s talking about.

EICHER: All right, Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University, in addition to all of the above accomplishments. Hunter, thank you. We’ll see you next week.

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

An Ebola outbreak that started in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has piled on to the problems of a country that has faced years of violence and unrest.

ONIZE ODUAH, HOST: The strain has a very high rate of death, in some places killing every other person infected. So far more than 130 people have died and hundreds more have become ill. The strain is rare, and that’s complicating the response. Treating it means going back to the basics.

WORLD’s Africa reporter Onize Oduah reports.

ONIZE ODUAH: In Congo’s Ituri province, shops and supermarkets have set up the familiar handwashing stations, including hand sanitizers for customers. This marks the 17th Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976.

Health authorities in Congo first confirmed the outbreak in Ituri on Friday.

Ebola is a highly contagious virus that spreads through bodily fluids. The virus can cause fever, fatigue, vomiting, and bleeding. The current strain, known as the Bundibugyo variant, has no approved medications or vaccines.

Samuel Roger Kamba is Congo’s health minister.

ROGER KAMBA: [FRENCH] I would like to remind you that this strain has a very high fatality rate, which can reach as high as 50 percent. So the sooner we can treat you, the sooner we can resolve the issue.

He says this variant has a fatality rate as high as 50 percent.

Health authorities have confirmed infections in the eastern city of Goma and west of the country in Kinshasa, the country’s capital. Neighboring Uganda has also confirmed infections.

Raphael Muhima Kasali resides in Goma.

RAPHAEL KASALI: [FRENCH] [I am] afraid, like any human being, because you know we have children at school, and they still come into contact with a lot of people, and we don’t really know who they might be around or play with. Once they come home, they can infect the whole family.

He says he’s afraid because he has children in school who could bring home the infection.

At least one American missionary doctor has also contracted the virus. Dr. Peter Stafford was treating patients in northeast Congo when he got infected. The United States is working to move Stafford and other high-risk Americans out of the country.

The World Health Organization on Sunday declared the ongoing outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. That means it’s considered a public health risk to other nations … but doesn’t yet rise to a pandemic level. Relief teams have sprung into action.

Robert Batusa is the program director of the World Relief team in Congo. He says activities and business operations have slowed in Goma.

ROBERT BATUSA: There are very few people on the roads. In markets there are few people, fewer people than usual around this time.

The outbreak comes as ongoing violence could threaten the medical response. Late in April, armed rebels killed at least 69 people in Ituri province.

And in Goma, a rebel group known as M23 still controls the city after a rebel offensive last year displaced hundreds of thousands of people. But Batusa says health workers can still access many of the affected areas.

BATUSA: If the epidemic spreads beyond the various towns into areas that are controlled by big rebel groups and that have not been accessible for a very long time, it’s going to be very difficult to control it.

Health authorities have deployed response teams and emergency support. Doctors Without Borders has said it is working with the Health Ministry to assess needs and respond.

Batusa was also involved in the response in Ituri during the last Ebola outbreak. This time, he says they’re trying to reinforce the strategies and messaging that helped the last time.

The World Relief team so far is supporting health facilities with protective equipment. They are also working through some of their 38 partner churches to assist more people.

BATUSA: We have sent all preventive messages that have been shared so far by the Ministry of Health to our different sub offices to reinforce infection prevention and control measures like hand washing station, temperature screening at all our sub offices and also in those groups where they meet.

But without any vaccine or medications for the current outbreak, Batusa says much of their effort will rely on education and community engagement.

BATUSA: Passing on the messages about hand washing, how to handle the dead in the community, breaking the cultural norms of handling the sick and the dead.

That’s this week’s World Tour, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: A run to the grocery store in Western Australia turned into a full-on amphibian encounter.

Rhys Smoker was getting dinner ready for his friends when he spotted something unexpected inside a sealed bag of lettuce he just bought.

SMOKER: … you got a pet frog for $1.99.

Allow me to translate. You see, we Americans and Australians are separated by a common language.

What the friend meant was: congratulations, mate, you just bought a pet frog for less than a buck and a half.

And there it was: A live frog tucked among the lettuce he was about to chop up.

JONES: He’s like, ‘Bro, there’s a frog in the lettuce.’ He’s the most relaxed Australian you’d ever find.”

Reports suggest the group kept the meal fully vegetarian, meaning they set the frog free at a nearby pond after naming him Greg.

So I’m imagining if frogs could talk, old Greg telling the story of the time he was enjoying a salad when he almost became the main course.

Reports suggest the group kept the meal fully vegetarian … meaning they set the frog free at a nearby pond after naming him Greg.

So I’m imagining if frogs could talk ... old Greg telling the story of the time he was enjoying a salad when he almost became the main course.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 20th.

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

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: losing a place to call home.

Communities in South Georgia are working to piece life back together after wildfires last month destroyed the greatest number of homes in the state’s history, about 120.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy paid a visit one of the families affected.

MARY MUNCY: Every December, when brothers Austin and Ashley Delouch were young, they cut a pine tree down and brought it to their mother for a Christmas tree. But one year, Ashley says they branched out.

ASHELY: This particular Christmas, I don't know what year, but we got mama a cedar tree, about five feet high, six feet high, and carried in that front room. And she put it by the fireplace, and that was a Christmas tree.

All of the relatives came and stacked presents a few feet high under it. At night, they dragged mattresses to wherever there was room, leaving most of the floor full of sleeping cousins.

ASHELY: And Mama liked to cook. She cooked. She cooked for 50 as quick as she would five.

After Christmas, she planted the tree by the porch. For years, the tree provided shade for the family. Today, it’s blackened and bare.

Austin points to a swath of brown pine trees to the south.

AUSTIN: The fire was coming right, right, right through the right side, right, right yonder, to the right. See that gap in yonder, about a mile in there. You can see it way above the trees. It was 40 feet high, about a mile off when we left.

The brothers split their childhood between this house and a newer one a few hundred yards away. Austin’s grandfather built the old house in the 1920s. They call the property the “Home Place.” Ashley and Austin moved away after high school and built their own families. But they kept coming back for their mother's big family meals.

AUSTIN: They didn't have a bunch financially, very little to tell you the truth, either one of them. But they had a lot of love for the family, and mother loved to cook.

The houses are surrounded by farm land and pine trees. No one has lived in either house for years, but the brothers still come here regularly—including when the fires broke out.

AUSTIN: We put a sprinkler up here on top of this house. And then Ashley boy, we went down there and mowed some.

The fire department sent firefighters and a tanker. The brothers stayed until about 12:30 in the morning.

Austin thinks the tanker saved the newer house. But 45 minutes after the brothers left, they learned their grandfather’s house had burned.

AUSTIN: It was an A-frame house set like this. And then on the back end of it was a kitchen…

Now, it’s a pile of twisted sheet metal with two brick chimneys sticking up on either side.

Ashley and Austin walk past the frames of a mule-drawn plow and a tractor.

After Ashley got the call that the house had burned, he tried to go to bed.

ASHLEY: I didn't cry, really at the time. Tried not to, but I couldn't keep from thinking of one story after another after another till about five o'clock in the morning, just like we'd been talking. When one got to the end. I think about that, and I prayed. I prayed the Lord to stop me from thinking about anything. And finally, about five o'clock, he heard me, I reckon, and I got some sleep.

They may not live in or visit the Home Place as much anymore.

But it held family history. The brothers hope to keep their memories alive and maybe create a new Home Place.

AUSTIN: I've been all the way around the gamut. What you could do, get mad and this, that, and the other aggravating, this, that, and other. But I finally put it in the Lord's hands and thanked him for it, all the time we had it. And, you know. Thankful for the memories. You know, we got a bunch of them.

The fires that took the house—and more than 100 others—are almost completely contained now, but they’ll likely keep smoldering until there’s a big rain. The next step for the family is to start slowly cleaning up.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy in Clinch County, Georgia.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

A lot of Americans look back fondly on the childhood of the 1970s and ’80s, kids riding bikes until dark, solving problems on their own, and learning independence the hard way.

EICHER:But many of those same children grew up determined to give their own kids something different, more protection, more guidance, and fewer risks.

WORLD commentator Janie B. Cheaney says that generational swing may help explain some of the parenting debates we are still having today.

JANIE B. CHEANEY, COMMENTARY » You may have noticed that fashions in child-rearing change. When I was growing up, few moms left home to work and “daycare” was barely a word, much less a political issue. But depending on who you talked to, mom was either a happy housewife like Laura Petrie, or a frustrated domestic prisoner like Betty Friedan. The truth was probably somewhere in between, but homes were generally stable, divorce rare, and kids came home to at least one parent after a long summer day figuring out what to do with themselves.

By the mid-70s there had been a mass exodus of moms from home. Divorce rates hit the ceiling, daycares bloomed like lilies, and kids old enough to make their own peanut butter sandwiches routinely came home to an empty house. It was the era of the “latchkey” child. with no dinner until Mom got home at six, what did they do in the meantime?

According to the experts, they spent tons of unsupervised time becoming “resilient.” Gen-Xers – and their parents, too – will reminisce about getting lost and finding their way home, of building fires in a vacant lot or spending all afternoon at the pool without sunblock or going on road trips without car seats. “We’re lucky we made it out alive,” they’ll say, with an undertone of nostalgia for their free-range childhood.

So you might wonder why such resilient kids went on to raise a generation seemingly less able to handle setbacks, live with boredom, form lasting relationships, or take a risk. For sure, plenty of millennials have launched into adulthood successfully and have even started families of their own - determined, as all generations are, to avoid their parents’ mistakes.

Still . . . there has been a trend, noticed among workplace supervisors and college professors, that younger generations tend to rely on parental help to make decisions more than their elders did.

It didn’t begin with the smart phone. Twenty years ago parents were giving flip phones to their fifth-graders so they’d be only a few pushbuttons away from instant communication. By the time those kids were in college, their professors noticed they had barely left the classroom before flipping open their phones to tell mom they just got out of class and what to do with sour milk or a cancelled debit card. Helicopter parenting was becoming a thing.

If Gen-Xers grew up with such “resilience,” why couldn’t they raise their children in the same mold? Could some of them be overcompensating to supply what they themselves missed?

There’s no guaranteed path to raising a responsible adult. But responsible adults are not formed by benign neglect or diligent hovering. In the 1970s, while marriages were falling apart, we heard that kids were “resilient” and would adapt to whatever seemed best for the grownups. God made children to be adaptable to circumstances in a fallen world, and also to be trained up in the way they should go by wise counselors, who were themselves formed by the word of God. Our kids will answer for their own mistakes, but for best results, aim for resilience coupled with wisdom.

For WORLD, I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: how one woman is alerting corporate America to the harms they underwrite when they back gender ideology. We’ll have her story. 

And, WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza looks back at the career of the late singer-songwriter Dave Mason. 

That and more tomorrow. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

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 King Saul: “He said to David, ‘You are more righteous than I, for you have repaid me good, whereas I have repaid you evil. And you have declared this day how you have dealt well with me, in that you did not kill me when the LORD put me into your hands. For if a man finds his enemy, will he let him go away safe? So may the LORD reward you with good for what you have done to me this day.’” —1 Samuel 24:17–19

Go now in grace and peace.

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