The World and Everything in It: May 26, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. Hi! My name is Diana Matthews, and I’m a 2021 World Journalism Institute mid-career graduate, working as assistant editor of a weekly paper in Whitefield, North Carolina. I hope you enjoy today’s program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday we’ll talk about retailers, sports entertainment, and the culture issue of our day.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And because we’re right in the middle of our collegiate World Journalism Institute, we’ll open the mics to some of our students for a special Culture Friday with John Stonestreet.

Also today, a preview of summer movies, starting with Disney’s remake of Little Mermaid.

SEBASTIAN: You won’t tell him. I won’t tell him. And I will stay in one piece. You got it?

SCUTTLE: Got it. Sorry, what'd you say again?

SEBASTIAN: I’m a dead crab.

And your Listener Feedback.

BROWN: It’s Friday, May 26th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

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

Now news with Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Comer FBI » House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer says he may soon begin proceedings against FBI Director Christopher Wray.

JAMES COMER: Nothing’s going to change with respect to holding him in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t turn over the document.

That document is what’s called an FD-1023 form. A whistleblower claims the document describes an alleged criminal scheme involving President Biden, who was vice president at the time, and a foreign national.

COMER: It’s consistent with a pattern that we’ve seen in several other countries where then-Vice President Biden would fly into a country during the last year of the Obama administration, meet with government officials, and then weeks later, members of his family would receive through shell companies, direct payments from foreign nationals.

Congressman Jim Jordan says Senate Republicans are aware of the document as well.

JIM JORDAN: Sen. Grassley has a whistleblower that he deems credible who came to us and said this document exists. Let us have the document. 

Comer has reportedly given Wray a May 30th deadline to respond to his panel’s subpoena for the document.

EPA SCOTUS » The U.S. Supreme Court issued a sharp rebuke to the Biden administration’s EPA on Thursday.

The high court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot regulate wetlands that are not connected to larger bodies of water.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: The court’s decision today aims to take our country backwards. It will jeopardize the sources of clean drinking water for farmers, businesses, and millions of Americans.

But the ruling was unanimous. All nine justices said the EPA overreached.

The case centered on an Idaho couple who were barred from building a home on their property. The agency said their land included wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act.

Russia-Belarus » The White House also responded Thursday to news that Russia is deploying nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.

JEAN-PIERRE: This is yet another example of making irresponsible and provocative choices. So we remain committed to collective defense of the NATO alliance, and I’ll just leave it there.

The two countries signed an agreement formalizing the deployment of Moscow’s tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of its ally.

Belarus shares a border with Ukraine and multiple NATO countries.

Target blowback » Retail giant Target is bleeding billions of dollars in market value amid calls for a consumer boycott in response to its “PRIDE” collection. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Target has lost $9 billion dollars in value in just one week.

Consumers were alarmed by LGBT products aimed at children, as well as swimsuits designed to hide a person’s biological gender.

The collection includes sweatshirts with slogans like, “cure transphobia not trans people.”

One of the designers associated with Target’s PRIDE collection is an avowed Satanist who has produced T-shirts with the message, “Satan respects pronouns”  though that shirt was not sold by Target.

Earlier this month, Target CEO Brian Cornell suggested that promoting LGBT causes was a smart move for the company and—quoting here “the right thing for society.”

The company has since minimized or relocated its “PRIDE” collection displays in some of its stores.

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Debt limit » Still no debt ceiling deal in Washington though both sides say they’re confident it’s only a matter of time.

President Biden say both parties agree that the debt ceiling must and will be raised.

JOE BIDEN: I want to be clear that the negotiations we’re having with Speaker McCarthy is about the outlines of what the budget will look like, not about default. It’s about competing visions for America.

Lawmakers are set to leave town for the holiday weekend just days before a June 1st deadline to raise the debt limit.

But Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he had directed his negotiating team “to work 24/7 to solve this problem.”

And House leaders have told lawmakers to be ready to return to Washington on 24 hours notice to vote on a debt ceiling agreement.

Chinese malware » Microsoft says it has uncovered Chinese malware, and what it calls targeted malicious activity against U.S. infrastructure across several industries. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The company says a group of Chinese state-backed hackers called Volt Typhoon is behind the campaign of infiltration. And it said the group could be laying the groundwork for future disruptions of communications between the U.S. and Asia.

Microsoft says the hackers have been active since the 2021 and have infiltrated infrastructure at locations in the United States and in U.S. territories.

China denies the claim.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

I'm Kent Covington. 

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, a preview of summer films around the corner. 

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s the 26th day of May 2023. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: John, it’s that time of year again, and we’ve returned to Dordt University in Sioux Center Iowa. We’re celebrating WJI’s 25th anniversary and we have our largest class ever. Really strong students. They’re learning journalistic technique across different platforms and they are asking very good questions.

And we offered them the opportunity to ask questions of you, John, and we’ll get to them in just a moment. Sound good?

STONESTREET: That sounds great. I always love taking the questions and love that WJI is still such an incredible program for students to take advantage of.

EICHER: All right, first thing I want to bring up is this on-again, off-again controversy with the L.A. Dodgers. They were planning for a pride night and had invited a drag group known as The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. But then the team got some organized pushback from a conservative Catholic organization, and the Dodgers wound up disinviting the group. But now they’ve reversed course, apologized for disinviting and then re-invited. So that’s one. And I wonder what you think that back and forth says.

Second, related story connected to the retailer Target and its “pride” product line. Conservatives seemed to win some concessions, and Target pulled some of its products. But the way the retailer announced it was interesting: it said it pulled products because of threats to employees.

What do you make of that? That’s not a PR victory if the public perception ties Christian groups to threats of violence. That’s not a net positive, right?

STONESTREET: It's not a net positive, but I'm not sure it actually happened. I think that's actually become a line that Target punts to. And I think actually Target’s M-O is to when they get caught on this that they pulled back and then quietly implemented the same policy a few months later, I suspect we'll see some of that, although let's be clear, targets been very actively promoting pride and pride ideology in various forms for a long time. This is to another level. And speaking of to another level. I mean, the LA Dodgers story is just really something to, you know, to call this group, a drag group is an understatement. This is a group that specifically targets religious imagery, Catholic imagery, but Christian in general, and then sexualizes it. So what this does is it reveals that at least a part of the transgender movement is a group of men who have fetishes and that this group is about promoting those fetishes. This isn't really about a pride thing. If you look at their public performances, they're very sexualized, and they're very targeted. You know, this kind of falls under the category of, you know, if you don't believe in Christianity, why do you spend so much time talking about it? And that's all this group does. This is a group that just absolutely is lock step fascinated with Christianity, Christian imagery and Christian opposition to their behavior and then chooses to mock it and then sexualize it. I suspect the Dodgers will backpedal again, just because this group is so extreme. I hope they do. And if they do, it'll be because some of the players and some of the management who have professed to be Christians actually say something about it. I can't imagine that they would ignore that, but maybe they will. And that will say a lot. And all of this then fits into what we might call the theology of getting fired. Right. So we've talked about before that now you have professional athletes that are going to have to make some hard decisions. Let's all look to their hockey players, because they apparently there's a whole group of hockey players that seem really clear about it.

TYNEISHA HERRING: Hello, my name is Tyneisha Herring. I'm from Royal Palm Beach, Florida, and I am at WJI this week. How do we reconcile accomplishments of transgender people, despite our beliefs as Christians. The big debate now is about athletes and as an athlete this affects me personally. And I know that biological men competing against women is absolutely unfair. But if it comes down to other accomplishments, like in the arts and sciences, what do we do about them getting more over people who are not transgender, like if they were to get a role in a show or a play? How do we reconcile okay, they chose them because they're transgender, or are they genuinely more talented?

STONESTREET: Well, I think you're asking the right question. And I think that the accomplishments that humans are able to accomplish is because they're made in the image and likeness of God, it's because that is who they really are. And it's completely appropriate to point to those accomplishments as accomplishments in and of themselves. It's not an accomplishment, to have an identity crisis, it's not an accomplishment to be confused about who one is and to embrace an ideology that really has nothing to do with, you know, courage or something else. But you actually have to be willing to say that, and I think that's going to be the task of Christian journalism in the days ahead, let me say, let me be a little more specific there. I think that is the task of truthful journalism in the days ahead, making that distinction that you're making, you know, this was a historic performance. And that has nothing to do with who one chooses to sleep with, or who want chooses to identify as or whether one dresses appropriately or inappropriately. And that's a very different thing than actually calling it as you see it. And I think, you know, for example, Lea Thomas, this, this swimmer, that's not an accomplishment that has to do with athletic prowess. That has, that's an accomplishment that has to do with he's a man, competing against women. And that is not something then that you highfive somebody over, journalistically or personally. And you're gonna have to, I think, make those really hard decisions and do that analysis if this is your world going forward journalism, and especially sports journalism, or journalism in the arts.

ALEX CARMENATY: Alex Carmenaty of WRSU Rutgers Radio at Rutgers University in New Jersey, currently here at Dordt for the WJI program. For someone who was a, you know, student radio reporter at Rutgers in New Jersey, in a Rutgers is not a Christian school, very woke very left wing leaning, you know, lots of CRT being taught, lots of non Christian things, and especially in journalism, definitely not biblical objectivity. How would you encourage someone like myself to persevere through those things, and how would you try to fight back against it if there's a possibility to do so?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways to do this, in this world of journalism, whatever form that it takes. The first is you have to be deeply grounded and what's true about reality in which true about human nature. That's different even than just having kind of a gut level sense, or even an educated sense about morality, what's right and wrong, because the fundamental distinctions here are not just distinctions on how to behave, their distinctions on who we are, what does it mean to be human and the sort of world we live in? Are we in a world that is socially constructed, a world that exists because of whatever we make it to be? Or are there givens? That's the big philosophical crisis point right now. Is there anything given in the world that no matter what I feel, I can't change. And to be clear on that is, first and foremost, what you got to do. Because it's one thing to believe what you believe in a Christian environment. And as you've learned at Rutgers, it's another thing to believe what you believe in a hostile environment, it's a completely different thing to believe what you believe in an environment that's not only hostile to your beliefs, but in some situations hostile to you, because you hold those beliefs, right. It's one thing to be mocked, it's another thing to be called Hitler. And that's the sort of dynamic that some people I think are experiencing in their day to day life. The second thing that I would tell you is that you can point and highlight the truth of the world in various ways. Either I, you know, in service to others, or in just kind of celebrating good stories that are good and a good definition. So to go back really to the last question, when you do find a human accomplishment and hold it up and ask why. I'm just reminded of a wonderful story years ago, where a radio station, since you're representing radio, basically had a contest for original songs. And this 86 year old man who was a widow for about five years who missed his wife had written his wife a song. And it was beautiful, except he sang it and it was terrible when he sang it. And so he sent it to this radio station, and they were so moved by his lifelong commitment to his bride, they produced it professionally and gave it back to him as a gift. What a wonderful way to point to something that can only be explained in terms of something ultimate that can ground this emotion that we have called love and commitment and faithfulness and fidelity and things like that. The last thing I'll say, and this is huge and take advice from one of the great communicators in world history, but especially in the 20th century, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who in his last piece written to his fellow countrymen before he was exiled, said look You don't have to fight everything and I appreciated your question. You know, I should take the opportunity to fight back when it's a possibility. Now, I don't think that every fight is a Christian fight. I think you have to distinguish between what's essential and what is a derivative. And to his point, you don't have to show up at every street corner. You don't have to join every protest. But here's the very minimum. Don't say something that's not true. Don't be co opted into saying something that's not true. And man, what a lesson for anyone who's involved in language or words or communication, don't say something that's not true.

MARY HARRISON: Hi, Mr. Stonestreet. My name is Mary Harrison. I'm from Southwest Georgia and a student at Berry College. And I'm here this week at WJI. I have a question about perspectives and representation in news reporting. As sports editor of our student paper, I choose which pictures to run in our section. As every reporter, I also have to choose which sources to interview for my stories. When making these decisions, I often find myself trying to balance perspectives based on ethnicity or gender. Do I interview the white or African American senior soccer player? Do I run a photo of the men's or women's lacrosse team on an article that addresses both genders especially given previous coverage? Is there a time to take these qualities into account when sheer equality of treatment might overlook unique perspectives? Or is any consideration of ethnicity or gender giving into unbiblical intersectionality? PS…I saw you at Summit session one last year and you recommended I apply for WJI. Now I'm here and loving it. Thank you.

STONESTREET: Well, Mary, thanks! Great to see you. And I know Barry college. It's the college with more deer than people. And I also am a little stunned and taken aback that somebody actually listens to what I say. So thank you for doing that. And I'm glad it turned out well, for you at WJI. I think this is actually a crisis that we have in Christian thought right now. Because the over emphasis and the wrong framing of race and racial division and the understanding of essential human nature as being racialized, that also then pre-determines, you know, one's moral status. That's the problem with the way we talk about race. Another way to say it is the problem isn't that we talk about race. The problem is that we talk about race in the framework of critical theory. So it's the critical theory that's the problem, not the race problem. We do have a race problem, there is a racial history to America, there's no question about it. And unfortunately, in a kind of hyperpolarize, we, you know, who do you belong to, to even bring up questions of equal opportunity, and access and representation is to then be accused of accommodating or smuggling in critical theory, and I think we're gonna have to do both. Christians, of course, know that sin is structural. We believe that about abortion, right, that this is a structural thing. It's embedded in law. It's embedded in cultural norms. It's embedded in the way the media talks about issues. It's that framing that misses that question, that essential question of worldview, which is what does it mean to be human? And so I think if you can get the question, right, what does it mean to be human, and you can then understand, where ethnic diversity and difference and racial diversity and difference and sexual diversity and difference and what I mean by that is men and women, not sexual choices, then you're going to actually be able to better represent and tell that story. You know, and you're going to have a framework that you're going to be able to tell, oh this is where a group that someone either belongs to or identifies as matters in the story. And here's where it doesn't. And here's what it means to get both sides. So you have to think clearly, in an age of lies. You have to think clearly, in an age of confusion, you have to have the intellectual foundation, fundamentally answering correctly the questions of what kind of world do we live in? What are human beings? What's wrong with the world? What's the solution to what's wrong with the world? Whose job is it to fix it? These are kind of the fundamental worldview questions. And if you get those wrong, you're going to get the application wrong. But I think if you get it right, you're going to be able to tell better stories, right? Christianity is not just true, because all the other systems are wrong. Christianity is true because it is the best explanation of reality, the best explanation of the human predicament. It gets human beings, right. I oftentimes think of Blaise Pascal, who called humans the glory and the garbage of the universe. And, you know, the problem is, in a humanist framework, humans have the glory of the universe. In a nihilistic framework where the garbage of the universe Christianity gets both of those things, right. Christianity said we're made in the image of God and we act like animals that seems closer to reality.

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

STONESTREET: Thanks, Nick and Myrna and good to see all of the WJI students.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Ok, Myrna, you might be able to relate with this story given your background in TV.

Chelsea Ambriz is a meteorologist at Florida TV station N-B-C-six. On Monday, she was giving an update on weather at the beach when video of a live cam appeared on the wall behind her.

Suddenly, a pigeon swooped in for the camera. Here’s Ambriz’s reaction.

CHELSEA AMBRIZ: It’s a great beach day, looking at the sky conditions, a mix of sun and fair weather clouds—Whoa! Oh, my gosh, the bird startled me! There we go.

And there we go. She posted on Twitter and got lots of response.

AMBRIZ: I've got a lot of people that are kind of chuckling along with me. I definitely did not think it was going to explode like it has.

Explode indeed! This video now has over 100 thousand views.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Now that’s how you boost ratings!!

Or at least ruffle some feathers.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, May 26th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Summer movies.

Memorial Day marks the beginning of summer for many Americans, and the movie industry knows it. Film studios save their biggest and best movies for the summer, and this season is no exception. Here’s WORLD arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to give us the rundown.

COLLIN GARBARINO: Audience’s expectations for summer movies get pretty high. We don’t just want movies. We want spectacle, and in most cases, we want the spectacle to feature characters we already know and love. Movie studios have answered the call, and just about every weekend for the next couple of months, a new film will arrive in theaters hoping to become the next blockbuster.

Kicking off the summer, we have Disney’s live-action The Little Mermaid arriving in theaters this weekend. It stars Halle Bailey as Ariel and Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric.

MUSIC: [“Part of Your World”]

I’ll admit I went into this film expecting to hate it. The follow-your-heart theme of the original film always struck me as dubious advice. Also, recent Disney movies haven’t been great. Then, there was the whole black mermaid controversy that absorbed social media and Disney’s recent tendency to sneak LGBT references into its content. My expectations couldn’t have been lower. But to my surprise, I kind of liked it. I mean, it’s not the best Disney movie ever, but it certainly isn’t the worst.

MUSIC: ["Under the Sea”]

Let’s start with the bad. At two hours and 15 minutes, the movie is at least half an hour too long. Disney added three new songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, two of which, I’m sorry to say, are totally forgettable. The first part of the movie, when Ariel is still a mermaid, isn’t great. The computer-generated mer-world looks a tad plastic, and the actors don’t deliver their lines with enough whimsey. But Melissa McCarthy makes a decent Ursula.

URSULA: So, here’s the deal. I’ll whip up a little potion to make you human for three days. Got that? Three days.

Often these live-action remakes stick too close to the animated movies, making me ask, “What was the point?” The Little Mermaid has plenty of scenes that replicate the original shot-for-shot, but it also puts a fresh spin on the story. The parts where it abandoned its source material are the parts I enjoyed the most.

The setting has moved to the Caribbean. Eric’s adoptive mother rules over a multiethnic island of castaways, and the island scenes have a colorful multicultural vibe. The shift means Ariel’s dark skin makes sense in the context of the plot. To be honest it was kind of nice to see a cast that looks like my city of Houston.

I also really liked the voice work from Awkwafina and Daveed Diggs as Scuttle and Sebastian.

SEBASTIAN: Are you listening to me?

SCUTTLE: Yes. uh.

SEBASTIAN: You won’t tell him. I won’t tell him. And I will stay in one piece. You got it?

SCUTTLE: Got it. Sorry, what'd you say again?

SEBASTIAN: I’m a dead crab.

The movie tries to update the story in various other ways—and some viewers will love certain changes and probably hate others. Ariel comes across a little more noble—she actually pauses to wonder if what she’s doing is wrong. Ursula is a little more treacherous. Some other changes bring the movie more in line with 21st-century expectations. There’s a little more female empowerment. Ursula’s lines about how men don’t like talkative women get cut, and Sebastian changes his tune too. In 1989, “it don’t take a word, not a single word,” to kiss a girl. Now, Eric’s told he needs to use his words to ask her for that kiss.

There’s no hint of an LGBT agenda in the movie, but some viewers will probably still call the live-action The Little Mermaid woke. I don’t think it’s woke. It’s just a solid contemporary update with a few clumsy scenes.

But whether or not The Little Mermaid sounds like your cup of tea, there’s plenty of other movies coming up.

In June, theaters will get a bunch of franchise films. Next weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters. It’s a sequel to 20-18’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. My expectations for this PG animated movie are sky high since the original is one of the best superhero movies ever. I’m probably setting myself up for disappointment.

We’re also getting three PG-13 movies. A 5th Indiana Jones movie comes out June 30. The reviews coming out of the Cannes Film Festival aren’t great, but Harrison Ford said it’s a good movie, and I can’t imagine he’d lie about that. Earlier in the month, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts plans to once again exploit Gen-Xer nostalgia with a new adventure, this time set in 1994. And DC Studios will release The Flash, one of the last installments in its comic-book universe before its imminent reboot.

If you’re suffering from franchise fatigue this summer still offers a few options.

EMBER: Meet the residents of Element City.

In June, Pixar will release the PG-rated Elemental—a movie about elements that don’t mix living alongside each other. Who knows? Maybe the once-great Pixar will escape its five year malaise with this one.

July will bring Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. But be warned, Oppenheimer is his longest movie to date clocking in at 2 hours and 49 minutes. Also Margot Robbie stars in Barbie, but don’t let your little girls get too excited about seeing it because it seems aimed at teens and adults.

MUSIC: [Mission: Impossible theme song]

I, however, am not suffering from franchise fatigue. The movie I’m most looking forward to is the seventh Mission: Impossible movie, Dead Reckoning, which opens July 12. Mission: Impossible is my favorite series of spy movies, and other than the somewhat mediocre second film, Tom Cruise has never let me down. It would be impossible for me to pass this one up.  

I’m Collin Garbarino

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, May 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. I think everybody loves these:

AUDIO: [MONTAGE OF PREROLLS]

Our prerolls! Or, more properly, your prerolls. But I’m reliably told that the pre-roll cupboard is seriously thin and we need to stock up.

BROWN: Yes, we do. You know, it’s so encouraging to hear your voices from all over the country, mostly. But also from around the world.

EICHER: So make your voice heard and create a preroll, would you? The basic structure is simple enough [instructions found here].

BROWN: “The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us.” Tell us your name and where you’re from, maybe your vocation. And then, “I hope you enjoy today’s program.” Within that very basic outline there’s room for additional creativity. Have fun with it.

EICHER: Then email the audio file to us at editor@wng.org. All right?

BROWN: Up next, listener feedback for May. We begin with a couple corrections. The first one comes from our May 8th program. Listener Andrew Stevens pointed out this particular error to us. In his email he started by saying how much he loves our approach to the news and the fact that we include a scripture passage at the end of each program. But at the end of the program we gave the wrong reference for a well known verse:

MARY REICHARD: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

That’s of course from 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We said it was chapter 12. Andrew, thanks for catching that.

BROWN: Next an error from our May 17th program. We misidentified a soundbite from Ohio Representative Jim Jordan — saying instead that it was Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. We had originally selected clips from both men to include in the segment on the Durham report, but in the end only played one, and we cut the wrong one from our script leading to the mistake.

EICHER: One more correction this morning. Betty Joe Keenan from Fallbrook, California recorded this message for us.

BETTY JOE KEENAN: My three boys and I enjoy listening to The World and Everything in It and your stories from around the world. We're always especially excited when we hear stories from places where we know people. One of those places is Bangladesh. And we notice that you're saying the name of the country incorrectly. Because “bang” [ryhmes with tang] means “frog” in Bangla. I've included a little message from our friend there.

BANGLADESH CITIZEN: Our country name is Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a beautiful country we speak in Bangla. Bangala is our language. Bangladesh means the country where the people speak in Bala. Thank you.

BROWN: I love this! Not only does Betty Joe and her Bangladesh friend teach us how to pronounce the name of the country—Bangladesh—but we’ve learned the Bangla word for “frog” as well!

EICHER: “Bangla” means frog—and “Bangla” is the south Asian language spoken in Bangladesh. We learn something new everyday!

BROWN: I love our listeners! Here’s one more voicemail that came in recently that was such an encouragement to us all. It’s short and sweet…

TWILLEYS: Hello, this is Lester and Bonnie Twilley on the eastern shore of Maryland.The WORLD team continues to bring us outstanding coverage of what's happening in God's world. We appreciate all of you.

BROWN: Thanks Lester and Bonnie. And we appreciate you! Thanks for your kind words.

EICHER: Well that’s it for this month’s Listener Feedback. Thanks to everyone who wrote and called in. If you have comments to share with us you can send them to editor@wng.org. And if you’re writing, why not take a moment and record your comments on your phone and send those along as well. We’ve included instructions on how to do that on our website: wng.org/podcasts. Or you can phone in your feedback. Our listener line is ‪(202) 709-9595.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week: Mary Reichard, Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Leah Savas, Kim Henderson, Steve West, Onize Ohikere, Ryan Bomberger, Leah Johansen, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

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

And because it takes a late night to ensure your early morning routine, thanks to Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 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: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 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.