The World and Everything in It: May 22, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. I'm Vernon Peterson, and our family is busy harvesting regenerative organic peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots in Kingsburg, California. Just like we have for the last 132 years. Hope you enjoy today's program!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Presidents Biden and Trump are on for a debate rematch. Will new rules convince voters to tune in, or tune out?

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday. Also, World Tour. And providing support for Portland’s homeless population.

DESPER: Individuals are able to use a clean restroom, wash their hands, get socks, check their mail.

And Apple’s dystopian vision for human flourishing.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, May 22nd. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

MAST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Good morning!

REICHARD: News is next. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump trial » The first ever criminal trial of a former president is drawing to a close. The defense has rested its case without feeling the need to call Donald Trump to the stand.

For his part, Trump is entirely confident that New York prosecutors did not prove their claims.

TRUMP: We have a phenomenal case. We've won the case by any standard. Any other judge who would have thrown this case out.

Judge Juan Merchand has dismissed the jury until next week for closing arguments.

Prosecutors had a tall task coming into this case. They had to prove several things:

First, that payments were made by Trump or on his behalf to silence information about alleged extramarital affairs and that those payments were made for political reasons ahead of the 2016 election.

They also had to prove this claim outlined by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg:

BRAGG:  The defendant repeatedly made false statements on New York business records. The defendant claimed that he was paying Michael Cohen for legal services performed in 2017. This simply was not true.

The former president has called the proceedings a show trial and says he’s looking forward to getting it over with and getting back on the campaign trail.

Israel/ICC » Many top U.S. allies are siding with Washington in condemning a decision by the top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak:

SUNAK: There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self defense and the terrorist group Hamas. And it's wrong to conflate and, uh, as I said, equivocate between those two.

Other allies, including Australia and Poland have said the same.

But at least a few Western countries are breaking ranks. France, Belgium, and Slovenia have released statements in support of the request for arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas and Israel.

UN Aid in Gaza » The United Nations has suspended badly needed food distribution in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.

It says Israel’s military operation there has made the main UN food warehouse and distribution center inaccessible.

Another issue: securing delivery of the food and supplies.

The U.S. military has installed a floating pier to get food and other aid loaded onto trucks and into Gaza, but over the weekend, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric says…

DUJARRIC: 11 of those trucks never made it to the warehouse. Crowds had stopped the trucks at various points along the way. There was what I think I would refer to as self-distribution.

Pentagon Press spokesman Pat Ryder says aid from the pier was paused for a few days, but started up again Tuesday.

RYDER: You’re going to see, as we work together, the amount of aid increase and the ability to get it distributed increase. But we never said it was going to be easy. I mean, again, the circumstances that we’re dealing with here are challenging.

The UN says if food and other supplies don’t start re-entering Gaza on a large scale, famine-like conditions could spread throughout the territory.

Russia has begun tactical nuke drills » Pat Ryder also reacted Tuesday to new Russian nuclear drills.

RYDER: Again, you know, we’ve seen that rhetoric in terms of the threat to use nuclear weapons. It’s irresponsible and inappropriate, and I’ll just leave it there.

Vladimir Putin is making good on a threat to carry out drills, practicing the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

He says it’s in response to what the Kremlin calls militant statements made by Western officials.

Tactical nukes are less powerful and have a smaller explosive yield than conventional nuclear weapons. But their use would mark an extraordinary escalation.

Germany Patriot systems to Ukraine/EU giving Russian fund interest » Meantime, in Kyiv …

SOUND: [German and Ukrainian foreign ministers shake hands]

Cameras flashed as Germany’s foreign minister shook hands with her counterpart in Ukraine.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s visit to Kyiv was part of a show of solidarity with Ukraine. She touted what she called a global initiative launched by Germany to strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses.

She said the initiative had already raised more than one-billion-dollars, but more was still needed.

BAERBOCK (in German): That is why today we are making an urgent, joint appeal to our international partners to provide additional air defense systems. Because one thing is clear: any dithering and hesitation in supporting Ukraine costs the lives of innocent people.

She says her country is making an “urgent appeal” to global partners to provide more air defense systems adding that any hesitation will cost innocent lives.

Interest on frozen Russian funds to Ukraine » And Ukraine got some more good news: The European Union announced that it will give the Ukrainian military billions of dollars earned from interest accrued by frozen Russian assets. One EU council member said Ukraine could get up to $3 billion dollars in interest payments this year alone.

But Ukraine and some key allies are pushing for all Russian assets frozen under sanctions to be sent to Kyiv.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen:

Yellen: I believe it’s vital and urgent that we collectively find a way forward to unlock the value of Russian sovereign assets immobilized in our jurisdictions for the benefit of Ukraine.

Yellen said mobilizing the frozen funding will be a main topic of discussion at the G-7 meetings this week.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: The upcoming presidential debates…on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 22nd of May, 2024.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. It’s Washington Wednesday.

Today, Georgia electoral politics in 2024. But first, Donald Trump and Joe Biden plan to debate, again.

AUDIO: [Clip from 2020 debate]

After their raucous debate in 2020, Trump and Biden weren’t expected to clash on stage again.

The Republican National Committee withdrew from the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates back in 2022, citing bias, and President Biden’s campaign said in December that it wouldn’t commit to debates.

REICHARD: But then last week, the Biden campaign released this video…

BIDEN: Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, but since then he hasn't shown up for a debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. 

Trump accepted the Biden campaign’s proposal for two debates, first in June and then in September, hosted by CNN and ABC without the Commission on Presidential Debates. Trump also agreed to Biden’s terms of doing the debates without live audiences, and moderators that can mute debater’s microphones.

MAST: Trump explained his decision to accept during a campaign rally in Minnesota on Friday.

TRUMP: They're going to be fair, I think they're going to be fair. And if they're not, you know, you have to deal with it, right? You have to deal with it. But I just wanted to accept and, you know, the only one (network) he (Biden) wanted to do it on basically CNN and another one to get to two of them, I guess.

MAST: What does this new approach mean for presidential debates?

Joining us now to talk about it is Mark Weaver. He’s a veteran political consultant and election law attorney in Ohio.

REICHARD: Mark, good morning.

MARK WEAVER: Well, thanks for having me. This is certainly a timely topic.

REICHARD: It is, and we’re glad you’re here for it. Well, this’ll be the first election cycle since 1988 that the presidential debates won’t be organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates. Can you give us some background on the commission?

WEAVER: Sure. The Presidential Debate Commission was, you'll pardon the pun, the gold standard for presidential debates for many years. But as it got clunkier and less willing to negotiate and recognize sort of the new way things are done, it started to make itself less relevant. And then as candidates got pushier, and more willing to demand things that they would not normally demand, the flexibility or the lack thereof of this commission became obvious. And so some people in America might have thought, “Well, this was all Donald Trump's doing. He's the one who tosses norms out.” Well, no, this was Joe Biden's doing. Joe Biden was the one who went around them at least this most recent episode. So I would say that this has been something of a dinosaur that started out powerful, and now perhaps is going extinct.

REICHARD: Okay, that’s useful. Well, let’s talk about venue. Based on CNN and ABC’s past debate moderation, and the rules for the upcoming debates, do you think the moderators will be nonpartisan, without favoring one candidate over the other?

WEAVER: It's hard for me to think that way. Full disclosure, I've been a political consultant for a long time and I always help Republicans. I did a race against Jake Tapper in 1994, he was the press secretary for a Democratic Congressional Campaign, and I was helping on the Republican side. So, but my first exposure to Jake was as a partisan Democrat operative, which there's nothing wrong with being that, it just identifies what your beliefs are. And I think some of his coverage, certainly his criticisms of Donald Trump, have suggested he's held true to those far left Democrat views. I'd like to think he has the ability to be fair, but more recent commentators who were chosen to moderate debates had been much more likely to interrupt and attempt to fact check Donald Trump. In some cases, they turned out to be wrong, but they'd been much more likely to intercede with with Donald Trump's comments than Joe Biden or previously, Hillary Clinton.

REICHARD: Mark, what stands out to you about the rules for these debates that are different from the Commission debates? And I’m thinking in particular about the muting of the mics.

WEAVER: Muting the mics was a not unexpected request for Joe Biden, and some of his people had been talking to reporters on background. And at least one of the Biden strategists acknowledged that this was one of their goals, to shut down the spontaneity of Donald Trump, and his ability to call out Joe Biden when Joe Biden lies. Now, each candidate thinks the other one lies, and each group's supporters thinks the other candidate is the big liar. But each of them is going to be able to be called out on something they said. This particular tactic, which is an unusual one, given that there's no audience as well, should play more for Biden, who needs a much more controlled environment.

REICHARD: We know these candidates, they’ve both been president and I doubt there’s anyone still sitting on the fence about either one of them…so is there anything you expect to see that would make these debates worth watching?

WEAVER: You made a very smart point, which is nearly everyone in the country has figured out what they think about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which means they're not a lot of  minds to change. There are people to turn out and this election will be a turnout election. But there are not a lot of people with open minds who are willing to change their perspective on these two candidates. Having said that, we do know anyone who is being honest acknowledges that Joe Biden has some cognitive issues. Sometimes it results in him using the wrong word, calling people wrong names, citing things that didn't happen. Not many people think that whatever lies or fabrications that Donald Trump are alleged to have made, not many people think that's because of cognition. His opponents think that he does that on purpose. Biden's opponents suggest that he is lying on purpose in some instances, and lying because he doesn't know what he's saying in other instances. And given that latter concern, I think a lot of people will tune in to see whether or not the wiring in Joe Biden's head short circuits. I'm being metaphorical, of course, I don't think he's really a robot. But we all know what that means when somebody loses their place and has that panic look on their face. And it doesn't bode well for somebody who wants four more years of leading the greatest superpower on the planet.

REICHARD: Final question here…earlier you said the debates are dinosaurs now. What do you think it would take to make these debates useful again? If you can even call them debates? Or do you think it’s just time to scrap them?

WEAVER: I should have been more clear with my analogy. I think the Debate Commission is the dinosaur that's going extinct, You could make an argument that debates are becoming less relevant and they could eventually become extinct, but I think the commission itself will go extinct a lot sooner than the presidential debate if for no other reason, we have so few shared moments as a country anymore, where we're all watching the same thing at the same time. The Super Bowl is one exception to that, presidential debates sometimes are exceptions to that. But more and more people are tuning out of formal campaign events because they see them as scripted or unhelpful, particularly if folks have their own opinion about the candidates already. So it might be that debates will become extinct, but certainly the Presidential Debate Commission will be extinct before long.

REICHARD: Mark Weaver is a political consultant and election law attorney in Ohio. Mark, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

WEAVER: A delightful interview. Thanks for having me.

MAST: As mentioned, CNN is hosting the first debate at its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27th. Georgia was a key swing state for Biden in the 2020 election, but what does the contest look like this year?

World’s Washington Bureau reporter Carolina Lumetta reports.

CAROLINA LUMETTA: In 2020, Joe Biden took home the first Democratic presidential victory in the state since 1992. But he’ll have to do some heavy lifting to repeat the performance this November.

PETER WIELHOUWER: When I teach this to my students, I classify it as a leaning Republican state.

Peter Wielhouwer teaches political science at Western Michigan University, and he’s not ready to call Georgia a purple state just yet.

WIELHOUWER: So I think that it's not a slam dunk for the Democrats or for the Republicans, but I think it leans Republican, and I think that that matches the general consensus of other election watchers out there.

Nevertheless, Biden is targeting Georgia. Last week, he gave the commencement address at Morehouse College, a historically black university in Atlanta.

BIDEN: (Applause) Many of you graduates don’t know me, but check my record, you’ll know what I’m saying I mean from my gut. And we know Black men are going to help us, lead us to the future -- Black men from this class, in this university. (Applause)

According to a Gallup polling report in February, the Democratic Party’s lead among black Americans has dropped 20 points since 2021.

Wielhouwer says that African American support might not decide this year’s election, but any small erosion of the base hurts the Democratic Party more than the GOP.

Wielhouwer: What we've seen in the last few years is, to the Democrats’ great chagrin, is that Donald Trump is in fact making inroads into the Democratic coalition, particularly among non-white voters. So I think that the Democratic party is quite concerned about this, and that it's something that the Biden campaign is really trying to not take for granted.

Meanwhile, Trump has a mixed history in Georgia. He’ll be returning to the same county in which he has pleaded not guilty to 13 charges of alleged election interference in 2020. Biden won the election by fewer than 12,000 votes, and Trump claims they were fraudulent.

The state does not register voters by party, but the growing shares of politically unaffiliated voters in Georgia and nationwide could present a roadblock for Trump. Here’s Wielhouwer again:

WIELHOUWER: One of the challenges that he had in 2020 is that all of his administration was not geared at all toward building support among the independents. It was all about placating and gearing policies that pleased his base, which is fine, I guess, but it doesn't help you win reelection. This time, I think that he needs to be trying to find ways to expand.

So far, Trump’s legal team has argued for either tossing out the case or at least removing some of the charges. The longer it takes to rule on pretrial motions, the less likely it is that he will stand trial before November 5th.

As for the June 27th debate, Republican consultant Brittany Martinez says she expects more spectacle than substance.

MARTINEZ: But I think the debates will definitely be illuminating to the public. as far as, you know, Biden's mental acumen and then also Trump's ability to stay above the fray if he even can.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Carolina Lumetta.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour with our reporter in Africa, Onize Ohikere.

AUDIO: Felix, you’re out, we’re coming for you.

DRC failed coup — Today’s roundup starts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the army said it foiled an attempted coup early on Sunday.

Authorities said armed men attacked the home of a local politician and also attempted to attack the presidential palace.

Brigadier General Sylvain Ekenge is the spokesman for the Congolese army.

EKENGE: [Speaking French]

He says here that the attempted coup included Congolese and foreigners.

At least six people died in the shootout. They include Christian Malanga, a U.S.-based Congolese politician who led the coup. Marcel, Malanga’s 21-year-old-son, and another American were among the dozens arrested.

MALANGA: [Speaking French]

In a video posted on Facebook before his death, Christian Malanga is flanked by other men in military fatigues as he says they’re tired of the current leadership.

President Felix Tshisekedi was reelected to office in December, but internal party squabbles have kept lawmakers from forming a new government.

AUDIO: [Arrival of Taiwan’s president and his wife]

Taiwan inauguration — Over in Taiwan, thousands of people gathered outside the presidential office in Taipei as Lai Ching-te assumed office as the island’s new president.

AUDIO: [Singing]

He replaces former President Tsai Ing-wen, who spent eight years in office. Lai previously served as vice president under his predecessor.

During his inaugural speech, Lai called for peace in the region.

LAI: [Speaking Mandarin]

He’s calling on China to cease political and military intimidation against Taiwan.

China warned in response that any effort supporting Taiwan’s independence threatens international order.

Delegates from the United States and other nations with diplomatic ties with Taiwan also attended the ceremony.

AUDIO: [Cheering]

Dominican Republic — In the Dominican Republic, President Luis Abinader landed a second term in a Sunday vote after his leading contenders conceded.

Abinader scored nearly 60 percent of the votes. Voters supported his tough stance against migrants fleeing Haiti.

Abinader built a concrete wall along the border with Haiti after assuming office in 2020. His administration deported more than 250,000 migrants last year.

He also promised to implement anti-corruption measures if re-elected.

ABINADER: [Speaking Spanish]

He says here that he will continue to execute the change he promised four years ago.

AUDIO: [Cheers]

Spain far-right rally — We end today in Spain where Europe’s far-right parties wrapped up a summit.

Spain’s Vox party organized the event ahead of the European Union’s parliamentary election next month.

Argentinian President Javier Milei attended the summit. He criticized socialism as an intellectual fraud.

MILEI: [Speaking Spanish]

He encouraged other far-right lawmakers, saying they might be few, but their success does not rely on their numbers.

French politician Marine Le Pen and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also attended the meeting while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban sent a video address.

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: If you’re in the market for a lobster tank you may have just missed a really good deal. Earlier this month, some fans of the popular national restaurant chain Red Lobster were surprised to sea their local stores closed. Man on the street audio here from WISN.

CUSTOMER: I like their Cheddar Bay Biscuits.

So do I! But those hot biscuits may be harder to get these days.

That’s because the seafood chain has filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Its website lists dozens of closed locations, but it’s not the finale–for the fixtures, anyway. A restaurant liquidator auctioned off the contents of nearly 50 stores.

To win the auction, you had to buy everything inside an entire restaurant.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: For the right buyer, it was probably a real catch.

MAST: It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 22nd. This is WORLD Radio. Thank you for listening! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: shining the light of Christ on the streets of Portland, Oregon.

Homelessness in the city shot up by 65 percent between 2015 and 2023. Drug use is rampant. So are overdoses.

The Portland Rescue Mission helps thousands of people every year. But the city’s prioritization of personal autonomy is threatening its mission.

REICHARD: How do you make a difference in such a challenging environment?

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire has the story.

AUDIO: Howdy! Hey, brother. [Door clinking]

EMMA FREIRE: The Portland Rescue Mission’s homeless shelter in Old Town Portland is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

TIMOTHY DESPER: Last year, we served around 6,000 unique individuals through the doors here.

Timothy Desper is the shelter director. He’s been here 17 years and his work is deeply personal.

DESPER: I was born here. I love the city, my heart breaks for it, and I follow Jesus.

Desper worked in international missions before returning to minister closer to home.

He oversees the shelter’s work providing many different services:

DESPER: We have volunteers here during the day, usually, and then staff overnight. And then individuals are able to use a clean restroom, wash their hands, get socks, check their mail, anything that allows us to support the process of them moving away from the street.

Desper and his team provide daily meals. And only nutritious food is allowed.

DESPER: Breakfast is always a main entrée, a side, and a fruit at minimum. And dinner is always a main entree, vegetable and salad. Minimum. The moniker soup kitchen would be a pejorative to me.

Desper says bacon and eggs for breakfast are particularly popular. At dinner time, fried chicken is always a hit.

DESPER: It's comfort food. Those things that you would associate that just are like they feel so good to eat are the most popular. And sadly, the reality is, the most expensive.

They plan meals around the reality of the community they serve:

DESPER: The beginning of the months are always lesser than the end of the months, because of the reality that food stamps and social security benefits are usually distributed at the beginning of the month.

There are many nonprofits in Portland offering services to the homeless. But the Portland Rescue Mission does something unique. It requires everyone who enters the building to scan a community card. To get a card, a person can give any name and date of birth they want. There’s no verification. But the shelter does take a photo.

DESPER: Which is for Americans or others, like Costco. Stores where you present your card when you come in, and they go, ‘Oh, hey, welcome.’

Holding a community card means people have to follow a few minimum standards like no violence and no using drugs in the building. But that doesn’t mean they have to be clean.

DESPER: If they come in, and they’re maybe struggling with addiction, well, that's who we serve. And we're gonna accommodate them and build a relationship with them and try to help them understand ways to step away from that.

These minimum standards of behavior might sound like common sense. But the fact that the Portland Rescue Mission attaches any requirements at all to the services it offers attracted criticism from other nonprofits.

DESPER: Your ability to be who you are and to do what you wish, how you wish, where you wish, your freedom as an individual is placed on a really high place here, within, especially Portland culture.

Desper is not the only one who thinks Portland’s struggles are rooted in ideology. Mark McConnell is an elder at First Orthodox Presbyterian Church, about 5 miles away. The church has dealt with high levels of crime, including four homicides, near their building.

MCCONNELL: I believe that we have an ideological conflict. There are motives behind this that are humanitarian. There's a trauma-informed kind of mentality. They don't want to add to the problems of poverty and violence that they've been living in by arresting them and bossing them around.

McConnell believes the solutions offered by Portland’s leadership are ultimately not compassionate at all.

MCCONNELL: So they are trying to find some gentle way to provide them options so that they choose to get off the street. And there's no action being taken to remove them forcibly out of an environment that is worse than anything you've ever experienced.

The Portland Rescue Mission believes that true freedom is found only in Christ.

Desper is not optimistic about the city’s future. He believes Portland’s worldview needs to change before drug use and homelessness will drop significantly.

DESPER: We still, as a community and as a society, have to come to terms with: where do we lie on the spectrum of the necessary reality of holding people accountable? And where do we lie on the necessary reality of intervening in the lives of people experiencing crisis?

In the meantime, he and his team offer hope. After dinner each night, they organize a chapel service.

Attendance is entirely voluntary. But Desper says it’s often full.

The services feature singing and a short talk. Desper says the basic theme of the talk is always the same.

DESPER: Hope, hope. Yes it's a message of hope. It's a message of Jesus' love seven days a week.

That’s the message visitors to the shelter most need to hear.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Portland, Oregon.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 22nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next … what an iPad can’t do. WORLD Opinions commentator Nathanael Blake says your iPad can do a lot, but it can’t replace real life.

NATHANAEL BLAKE: Apple just released an ad showing the accoutrements of civilization being crushed—paint splatters, a piano cracks apart, a sculpture is smashed. In their place, the latest, sleekest iPad appears. Many did not like Apple’s dystopian vision of replacing the tactile material world with a digital one. The backlash was so fierce that Apple even (kind of) apologized, but without showing any understanding of why the ad was repulsive.

The ad revealed that Apple is still committed to a vision of technology as a way of life. Apple promises instantaneous access to almost universal content, connection, and creativity. But this convenience comes with costs, including giving control to Big Tech—if you need an iPad, Wi-Fi, and a streaming subscription to read your books, listen to your music, and watch your movies, are they really yours? And a centralized digital world will only expedite the rewriting of history and literature already occurring.

This problem runs much deeper than the potential malfeasance of Big Tech. Disassociating ourselves from the physical is spiritually hazardous. Christianity insists that we are not souls that we happen to drive around bodies like meat-suits. Rather, we are our bodies as well as our souls. Furthermore, Christians believe that the God who created the material world and declared it good also became incarnate in it.

Of course, our material desires must be disciplined. Still, there is nothing ascetic about what Apple is selling—an iPad is physically minimalist, but Apple wants us to be expansive digital consumers. This may mimic a detachment from possessions, but it encourages more consumption, often of the mediocre or even harmful. The ideal is a sort of Spartan indulgence—you live in a pod and eat the bugs, but get endless content on the screen.

We rarely live in the houses of our ancestors, or till the fields of our forefathers, or work with tools passed down to us, and the digital world further dispenses with natural reminders of our mortality. But we need them; we benefit from living among reminders of the dead. The endurance of things provides an important reminder of our mortality, the gratitude we owe to the past, and the duties we owe to posterity.

Signs of the broken continuity between generations are all around us, from collapsing birthrates to the push for euthanasia. And these ailments arise from a spiritual and relational deficit that Apple’s vision will only exacerbate. Digital life must be balanced by robust physical reality. FaceTime is not a substitute for actually visiting grandkids. Digitally creating music in an app is not the same as the physicality of precisely playing the wood and wire of a guitar. Watching a sermon online is not the same as joining the body of Christ in a specific congregation.

The unity of body and soul means that we need the physical. We wither without human touch. We need the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the real-life gathering of believers. We need the physical world, and the physical presence of others, to be fully human. Compacting civilization down to an iPad will not do this.

I’m Nathanael Blake.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: A big name bank takes steps toward protecting customers from politicized debanking. We’ll talk about it with an attorney. And, an Alabama mom lives out her childhood dream of driving an ice cream truck. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” —Ephesians 2:8-10

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.