The World and Everything in It: May 30, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday, John Stonestreet takes student questions on persuasive evangelism, living truthfully in a post-Christian world, and divisions among campus pro-lifers.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today WORLD Arts and Culture editor Collin Garbarino reviews a hard hitting martial arts sequel that doesn’t quite live up to the original.

LI FANG: What happened to two branches one tree?

MR. HAN: One branch stronger than the other.

And WORLD Music Critic Arsenio Orteza takes us inside the world of a composer who helped to make minimalism mainstream.

REICHARD: It’s Friday, May 30th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Tariff ruling reaction » An appeals court has reversed a block on many of President Trump's tariffs, at least for now.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a stay on a ruling earlier this week from the U.S. Court of International Trade.

That earlier decision said the president had exceeded his authority.

Director of the White House National Economic Council Kevin Hassett:

HASSETT:  The bottom line is that we are very, very confident that we are gonna get this positive result and we're even more confident that we're gonna win at the end.

The matter is likely to be ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says trading partners are still looking to make new trade agreements to avoid the tariffs.

BESSENT:  They are coming to us in good faith and you're trying to complete the deals before the the 90 day pause ends.

President Trump announced a 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs last month to give trading partners time to negotiate new deals.

Harvard » Meantime,  a federal judge in Boston is blocking the Trump administration’s effort to bar Harvard from enrolling international students. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs says she intends to issue a broad injunction keeping in place the status quo. She has already put a temporary order in place stopping the government from revoking Harvard's ability to enroll foreign students.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem says The Ivy League school has allowed foreign students to create an unsafe environment for Jewish students.

But Harvard says the Trump administration’s move is unconstitutional.

Harvard is challenging the Trump administration on multiple legal fronts, including a separate case over the freezing of federal grants and other funding.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Israel-Gaza latest » The White House says there is renewed hope for a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt :

LEAVITT:  I can confirm that, uh, special Envoy Witkoff and the President submitted a ceasefire proposal to Hamas that Israel backed and supported Israel signed off on this proposal before it was sent to Hamas.

Leavitt says the Hamas terror group has not accepted the proposal yet, but that talks are still ongoing.

Hamas says it’s studying the latest peace proposal.

That comes after Israel this week announced that it killed senior Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar in a strike earlier this month.

Musk leaves Trump admin (second-day) » Karoline Leavitt also reacted to news that Elon Musk is leaving his role with the Trump administration as the head of the Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE.

LEAVITT:  We thank him for his service. We thank him for getting Doge off of the ground and the efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse will continue.

Musk has been the public face of DOGE since President Trump established the office in January.

The department has since rooted through federal government agencies in a quest to identify and end government overspending, corruption, and fraud. But Musk and the agency have come under heavy criticism from Democrats… Who called the resulting cuts reckless and destructive.

Special government employees are only permitted to work up to 130 days in a 12 month period.

Jewish museum reopening »  Just over a week after a gunman killed two Israeli embassy staffers in front of a museum in Washington, that museum is reopening to the public.

Officials with the Capital Jewish Museum held an event Thursday to mark the occasion and honor the victims. Board Chairman Chris Wolf:

WOLF:  In these difficult days, we have grappled with profound sadness and search for meaning in the face of such reckless violence.

The 31-year-old suspect is behind bars. He was allegedly caught on video shouting "Free Palestine" as he was arrested.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said prosecutors will seek the death penalty against the accused shooter.

House panel probing Biden aides, medical staff » The House Oversight Committee wants answers about former President Biden’s health during his time in office.

Chairman James Comer says lawmakers need to know whether some in the White House took part in hiding Biden’s cognitive decline.

COMER:  We're gonna start with the, with the low level staffers, the unnamed staffers that nobody ever heard of prior to my, my, uh, request to come in before the committee.

He said the panel also wants to know if someone other than the president was pulling the strings on orders that bore Biden’s auto-pen signature:

COMER:  We want to know who actually gave the authority to do these executive orders and pardons. Because, uh, mm-hmm. Again, I think the American people have seen, uh, uh, up close and personal, especially during that debate with, with Donald Trump that, that Joe Biden wasn't at the top of his game.

Weeks after Biden’s last debate against Donald Trump last summer, the incumbent president pulled out of the race over concerns about his mental fitness.

Comer asked to speak with several former Biden aides and his longtime physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor.

The panel wants to begin interviewing former Biden staffers next week.

The committee could issue subpoenas if they don’t appear.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: John Stonestreet answers more questions from journalism students. Plus, a review of the latest Karate Kid movie.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Friday the 30th of May.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher in Northwest Iowa, the final day of the 2025 World Journalism Institute collegiate course hosted by Dordt University.

Well, nothing says “almost done” like smoke in your hair and a song in the air, students gathered ’round the bonfire at the end of the day as they close in on their final projects.

Hey, it’s been a great couple of weeks—as is typical. And I’ve said this before I always come away from WJI feeling optimistic, meeting smart, young people who sincerely want to honor the Lord in their work.

And … speaking of work … I do want to thank you for supporting our work during this New Donor Drive. It’s the last day for WJI and the last day of the New Donor Drive.

REICHARD: Yeah, so a quick word on the importance of that. WORLD is a nonprofit and more than half our revenue is from listeners and readers like you who believe in what we’re doing. Listeners and readers convinced that continuing this work is a priority.

But you know compared to the number of listeners we reach with this program each month, only a relatively small fraction actually help support it. Thus, the emphasis on encouraging new donors to join with the thousands of faithful donors who power this mission on a regular basis.

EICHER: So on this final day, if you’ve benefited from WORLD, and you’ve thought about it but never quite made the leap, let me encourage you to make this the day you do.

The matching gift is there for two primary reasons: One is practical—to double your impact. The other is motivational—to demonstrate that giving to support WORLD is a team sport, that no one gives alone, no one person carries this effort.

Those providing the match want you to know that.

REICHARD:  Would you visit wng.org/newdonor? We’re all deadline driven and this is the deadline, midnight tonight, so I really hope you’ll not let the day go by without casting a vote in favor of this journalistic project.

EICHER: wng.org/newdonor, and thank you for making trustworthy, Biblically grounded journalism possible. 

Well, it’s Culture Friday, student edition, round two.

John Stonestreet joins us now. John, of course, is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning to you.

STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: Let’s get right to the questions, John, we’ve got a lot!

CLAIRE PERKINS: Hi, Mr. Stonestreet. I’m Claire Perkins. I’m from East Tennessee State University, and I was wondering how I should biblically approach the conflict between the abolitionist movement and the pro life movement. On my campus, there is a pretty harsh conflict between the two groups, and as vice president of the students for life group, I’m struggling to handle that conflict with both grace and truth as these are fellow believers.

STONESTREET: What a great question. And thanks for your leadership of that wonderful group. The students for life organization is just one of the bright spots for a lot of us looking at young people, and all of us old people look at young people and think they're the ones that are ruining the world, but it really was us, and you guys have a lot of hope. So let me just say that.

EICHER: No kidding, guilty. Guilty, yeah.

STONESTREET: Exactly! But somebody did it to us first, I guess, Nick. But listen, this is a tragic conflict, and it's something that is happening across the pro life movement, where there is a lot of division, which is really a shame, because we really need all hands on deck. Everyone shares the same goal, which is the abolition of abortion, saving as many lives as possible, changing hearts and minds is incredibly important work, doing it with people who do not have the ethical, moral or worldview framework to think like you do about life requires that sometimes we shock, sometimes we argue, always we love and love in particular ways, and sometimes we show compassion. And I think that the “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” and that kind of describes some activist on these movements where they want everyone to do it exactly like they are. Let me just tell you right now, be in it for the cause. Don't be in it to be right against this other group. Be in it for the cause. The cause of life is worth standing for. And you keep your focus the way that Nehemiah and those who are working on the wall kept their focus against the critics. It's like, you can call me dumb, you can call me an idiot all you want, you know, but I've got important work to do, so I'm going to keep doing this work, and that work is going to bear fruit. I'll give you an example of this that seemed very innocuous in the history of the pro life movement for years, but has proven to have one of the most significant impacts in saving actual lives. You see, what happened was when Roe v Wade was pushed forward, the argument was often like, we have to have abortion, because who's going to take care of these women and children? And what happened in the wake of Roe v Wade was that in every town in America, people stood up and said, Yeah, I'll take care of these women. I'll take care of these children. And they organized and they opened places where these people can come. Now, were laws passed because they showed up? No. Would laws have been passed if they hadn't shown up? No. See, that's the thing. Is that we need all hands on deck, hitting it at every level that we can. And so stay at the work, do the right thing, smile and don't respond to the criticism.

JANE AUBREY PAGE: Hi, John. My name is Jane Aubrey Page. I’m a student at Taylor University, and I had a conversation with a friend just about her wanting to know the Lord. She has the desire, but she doesn’t know how to muster that desire within herself, and she doesn’t think she can. Yet she feels like the Lord isn’t reaching back out to her, if that makes sense. So what would you tell someone who is trying to get to know God by reading scripture and praying but doesn’t feel like he’s revealing himself to that person? What would you say?

STONESTREET: Yeah, it's really hard when these kind of questions come. I always wish there was a one line. Was a one line. If you say this, it'll change their hearts and minds, but that's not how this sort of thing work. But I will point out something, that this person is only expecting the Lord to speak to her. I guess I'm assuming, in some kind of voice or something, through prayer and through Bible reading, what we know is that God has spoken to her in the Bible. It's right there. In other words, the Bible itself is the word of God. It's not a vehicle for the Word of God, like the mid 20th century Neo liberals taught, it actually is the word of God. So when Proverbs says, “A soft answer turns away wrath.” That's God speaking to her, telling her a soft answer turns away wrath. When John says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever can believe,” God is saying that if she believes, she will have eternal life. And I'll also point out that that same Bible, which is God's word, actually God's language to her, to your friend, is also saying that the heavens declare the glory of God. It's more like a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who said the earth is crammed full of heaven, and every bush is on fire with God, but only those who look will take off their shoes. Is, in other words, God's talking all the time, and it has to do with whether we are willing to hear what he has said, instead of forcing what we think he should have said or how he should have said it.

ISRAEL GOLE: My name is Israel Gole, and I go to Baldwin Wallace University. I know a philosophy professor who seems open to Christ, but his worldly philosophy is keeping him from believing. I have given him some Christian philosophical arguments, and he recognizes that some of them, you know, they have some weight to them, but he’s still there’s something in his heart or in his mind that’s keeping him from believing. And I’m wondering, is more Christian philosophical arguments? Is that the way to go, or is there another way to work around his mental blockade and continue to witness to him?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the answer is yes. It's not one thing. It's all of those things. And good for you for being willing to talk and to have those conversations, and you're going to find yourself probably in moments over your kind of philosophical head, and your willingness to acknowledge that and to say, you know, let me go study. It's going to make you better. It's going to make you sharper. It's going to introduce you to a wonderful richness of Christian thought. The whole thing reminds me of C.S. Lewis, you know, who had become intellectually convinced for a while, but then when he talks about his conversion, talks about like, oh, this means an awful lot like, this requires me to give up this and to stop doing this. And you might remember that Lewis called himself the grumpiest convert in all of Britain because he knew what it required of him, and that's what Romans one says. So you're never dealing with just a brain that cannot embrace the arguments for God, you're dealing with a heart and a mind, a life, a set of relationships that have been impacted by selfishness and sin and so on, and those things put up barriers that are pretty significant. So the answer is, you need to do all those things. You need to show up. You need to be willing to hear and listen. There are some wonderful philosophical things you can appeal to. For example, some of the stories of guys like Lewis, I think of Anthony flew, who didn't fully convert before he died. But his last book is as the most prominent atheist philosopher of the 20th century, who his last book was called, there is a God. And he let N. T. Wright write the Epilog to his book about the evidence for the resurrection. And the evidence for the resurrection is not the same as the traditional kind of proofs for God's existence, but it's a really interesting thing, because you have to reckon with if you take things at face value, God has left himself a very strong case that he raised Jesus from the dead, and that requires a response, and that's what you need to understand. Embracing Christ is not just a matter of assent to a particular set of beliefs. It is a surrender. And you know another person you might look at as a high profile conversion who talks a little bit about this, although it's brand new, is Ayaan Hirsi, Ali, a political philosopher, but she talks about that surrender aspect being a part of this as well. So God bless you and sharing Christ with your prop, that's really wonderful stuff.

JACOB VANDER WEIDE: Hi, John. My name is Jacob Vander Weide, and I’m from Montreat College. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the Christian view on euthanasia. The Bible seems to have a good degree of clarity on it. I was wondering how we can articulate our opinions on euthanasia with people who might disagree with us in a way that is respectful and honors God.

STONESTREET: Yeah, listen, I think that there are very clear statements about human dignity, and the implications of those have been brought out in theology. So I think you're right on that. But remember, if something is true, it aligns with the way the world is. And I think that there are a number of things that can be pointed to, at least in terms of preventing this policy from moving forward. And I think your best case right now is to point to North Canada instituted medical assistance in dying, and all the slippery slope stuff we talked about with euthanasia when it comes to Belgium and Netherlands, apparently Canada, slope is straight up and down and is greased with Crisco. Because it has been unbelievable how quickly the so called right to die becomes the so called duty to die, and the expectation to die and the expectation to participate in someone else's death. So what you're seeing there is a whole kind of collapse of freedom, and that collapse happens because these words, and this is another thing I think we can point to. You can point to that as a real life case study, and then point to what's behind it. What do these words mean? What is the right to die? What is unworthy life? How is that different than what the Nazis talked about in terms of unworthy eaters or life, unworthy of life, as they put it, if we sanitize it, does that make it any different? And how is it that this grants additional freedom without putting the financial pressure on people? That's what you're also seeing too an incredible amount of financial pressure. And by the way, is it right to do. Do this at a time of historic mental complications, mental illnesses, comorbidities. In other words, we're not talking about people who are in the right state of mind to begin with, a lot of times. And so I think we need to point out all of those things, and at the very least on a policy level, they equal pause. Interestingly enough, I think you haven't seen the big push in the United States towards doctor-assisted suicide or euthanasia since Canada. And I think it's because we're worried we're getting on that same path, because we will.

JOHNNY KNIGHT: Hey, John. My name is Johnny Knight. I recently graduated from Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’m currently living in Twin Cities, Minnesota, and my question is, how do we live out Paul’s statement that he has become all things to all people, in order that we might save some? I live in a very liberal, immoral city with lots of people living non-Christian immoral lives. How do I become all things to them in order to save them without affirming what they’re doing?

STONESTREET: Well, that is the challenge of living in a pagan society. So welcome to the club. You know, Johnny, this is kind of where all Christians have found themselves to various degrees. And let me hit a couple things. Number one is be aware of your own proclivities to sin. I say that because we have, as Chuck Olson said, an infinite capacity to self rationalize. In other words, we'll use, I want to be a minister to others as an excuse to indulge the temptations we kept protected and hidden on the side, the Puritan writers talked about this. So just know that we're going to be highly susceptible to use that as an excuse to sin. That's Romans one. But the second thing I think we can do is look back on church history, and I will say this, that anytime that the church has found itself in a tough pagan cultural context, which has been most of the time, it's always seemed to lead to the protection and defense of children, I think that's where we're at now. That's hard. Like all things to all men, what does that mean? We should never sacrifice individuals on the altar of “humanity or culture,” and the unique value of every single life, particularly children, means we have to be all things for them so that they're not victimized by a culture that will dehumanize them either through making them hate who they are, lead them to mutilation in the name of kind of “medical care” or something like that. So I think it's going to always be the protection of children, and I think that's the moment we're in. I think we see that across the board. The final thing I'll say is, stand for truth and don't get as Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “Don't participate in lies.” So a clear line between being all things to all men and doing it in a way that crosses the other clear instructions that Scripture gives is don't participate in lies. You know, doesn't mean you have to fight every fight. Doesn't mean you have to protest every protest, but don't participate in lies, lies about who people are, lies about what's right and wrong, lies about the categories of reality. So those are three things I think, that we can maybe take and apply to this.

EICHER: Excellent, John, that was terrific, and I'm so grateful to you for taking a pause from your national conference to answer these questions. So from one conference to a journalism institute, you've been a busy man, so I appreciate your making time for the students, and I know they do too.

John Stonestreet, president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint podcast, thanks again, John.

STONESTREET: Well, thank you. These were great questions.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, May 30th.

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

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It…a 41-year-old franchise returns to theaters.

It’s been quite a year for the Karate Kid franchise. The final season of the popular Netflix series Cobra Kai wrapped up back in February.

EICHER: And now we have a new feature-length film picking up the story 15 years after the last movie was released. Here’s Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino on The Karate Kid: Legends.

[The Karate Kid theme]

COLLIN GARBARINO: Karate Kid fans might be tempted to start practising their crane kicks this weekend because the franchise has a new movie arriving in theaters.

Between 1984 and 1994, Pat Morita played Mr. Miyagi, a soft-spoken karate sensei, in four Karate Kid films. In the first three movies, he trains Ralph Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso. In the fourth, Hilary Swank’s Julie Pierce… but it’s best not to think too much about that fourth movie. Then in 2010, there was a Miyagi-less remake starring Jackie Chan as a Kung Fu master named Mr. Han. The newest movie merges the Miyagi legacy with Mr. Han’s in what looks like an attempt to pass the theatrical torch to a new generation.

MR. HAN: I did not come looking for Sensei Miyagi. I came looking for you.

The Karate Kid: Legends begins with some nostalgic continuity. In a flashback to the second movie Mr. Miyagi and Daniel discuss the origins of karate. A voiceover tries to bridge the gap between the original movies and the remake.

The real story begins when a Beijing boy named Li Fang, played by Ben Wang, moves to New York City. He’s got some of the same problems Daniel had in the original movie… albeit he’s a Chinese boy in Little Italy, rather than an Italian boy in California. Li has trouble fitting in at school. He likes a girl whose ex-boyfriend is a bully. The solution to all these problems? Entering and winning a karate tournament.

LI FANG: I’m doing this for all of us. Whatever it takes.

Li’s old Kung Fu teacher, Mr. Han realizes that his student will only have a shot at winning the tournament if he augments his exuberant Kung Fu skills with some uncomplicated Miyagi-style karate. So Mr. Han flies to California to get some help from Mr. Miyagi’s best student.

DANIEL: I can’t.

MR. HAN: You can.

DANIEL: You’re not listening to me. I’m not coming to New York.

MR. HAN: I see you in the Big Apple.

But this isn’t just another warmed-over version of the master-student story. Li has a past that haunts him, but he only ends up in trouble because he is trying to help some friends in need. On the whole, he seems like a fairly well-adjusted kid who doesn’t need the same level of mentoring Daniel did back in the ’80s.

MR. HAN: Li means to me what you meant to Sensei Miyagi.

The Karate Kid: Legends contains depictions of Eastern spiritualism and it’s rated PG-13 for some bad language and martial arts action. But to be fair, the PG-rated original film had more coarse material than this one.

And while this story might be set in the Karate Kid universe, it has all the hallmarks of a Jackie Chan Kung Fu film. Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi had a wry sense of humor, but Chan plays the role of Mr. Han with his typical broad comedic approach. Most of the fight scenes use over-the-top wire work rather than the more straightforward karate we saw back in 1984.

DANIEL: Jodan zuki. Punching block. Stronger base.

MR. HAN: Windmill block. More dynamic.

Though The Karate Kid: Legends offers a certain nostalgic appeal, it’s not destined to be a classic. At only 94 minutes, the film keeps the story moving, but the central conflict needs a rewrite. Li’s new friends in New York City find themselves in trouble with a loan shark who also happens to own a karate dojo. The film spends so much time on the loan shark bit that it fails to develop the personal animosity between Li and his karate rival.

Also, don’t expect much Ralph Macchio in this movie. He only shows up in the last 30 minutes.

MR. HAN: Everything is a kung fu.

DANIEL: Yeah, well… no.

LI FANG: What happened to two branches one tree?

MR. HAN: One branch stronger than the other.

Once Macchio enters the picture, the tone shifts, and the movie starts to focus on the relationship between Daniel and Mr. Han and their humorous attempts to get Li ready for a tournament. And having two teachers with different styles ends up confusing the poor Li. The high flying Hong Kong–style martial arts and wire work are competently executed, but there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before.

One of the reasons the original Karate Kid became a classic was that the martial-arts action remained simple and straightforward, allowing the audience to identify more closely with Daniel’s emotional journey. This update has its humorous moments, but no one’s going to attempt the outrageous leaping-spinning slide that Mr. Han and Daniel concoct as Li’s secret weapon. And in fact, few people will remember this story at all. We’re a far cry from 1984, when kids everywhere, including me, were perfecting their crane kicks.

I’m Collin Garbarino

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, May 30th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next: an ear—and eye—opening 27-disc box set.

Early minimalist composers took lots of heat from classical music critics and purists.

But WORLD’s music critic, Arsenio Orteza, says maybe minimalism isn’t all that highbrow after all. Maybe it’s just pop music in disguise.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Classical-music critics aren’t usually known for their sense of humor, but it’s hard not to laugh when reading the late Harold C. Schonberg’s takedown of the classical sub-genre known as minimalism. He called minimalism– which emerged in the mid-1960s as a reaction against the complexity of Anton Webern and Arnold Schönberg–a “kind of baby music.” He wrote that “[o]ne could listen to this flow of sequential patterns with no intellectual strain at all.” He went on to call it “anti-intellectual” and compared it to floating in an “amniotic sea of sound.” He concluded that “All it seems to demand is stamina on the part of the listener.” Schonberg may very well have had something like this piece in mind….

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM “PIANO PHASE” (DISC 1, COLLECTED WORKS)]

This is a composition called “Piano Phase” by the minimalist pioneer Steve Reich. Schonberg may have had a point about stamina— the piece goes on for over 20 minutes. It’s on the first of 27 discs in the new box of Reich’s work on Nonesuch Records, Collected Works. Some of what it collects is even more minimal. There is, for instance, “Clapping Music”…

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM “CLAPPING MUSIC” (DISC 1, COLLECTED WORKS)]

In case you can’t tell, it’s made up of two performers who repeatedly clap a pattern of 12 eighth notes. Over nearly five minutes, they slowly go out of phase with each other—then slowly come back into phase. But despite the radical simplicity of this approach, minimalism took root in the classical-music community, making that community seem experimental, edgy, and cool. It also gave listeners who never thought that they’d like traditional music reasons to explore the classical sections of record stores. In other words, Harold Schonberg’s criticisms notwithstanding, minimalism may have kept interest in classical music alive at a time in which rock and roll was telling Beethoven to roll over.

In addition to “Piano Phase” and “Clapping Music,” Collected Works also contains two recordings of Reich’s best-known work, Music for 18 Musicians. Composed in the mid-1970s, the piece brought Reich’s minimalist fascination with repetition, pulse, phase shifting, and patterns to a wider audience.

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM MUSIC FOR 18 MUSICIANS (DISC 5, COLLECTED WORKS)]

The work made such an impact that it paved the way for the acceptance of Philip Glass. He would become minimalism’s most successful proponent. Listen to “Floe,” from Glass’s 1982 album Glassworks, and the influence of Reich is clear.

MUSIC: [“FLOE” BY PHILIP GLASS, GLASSWORKS]

So far, you might be thinking that the critic Harold Schonberg was right, and that to treat minimalism seriously is to fail to see that the emperor has no clothes. But Steve Reich, who turned 88 last October, has been composing for over 60 years. And like any devoted craftsman, he has developed beyond the rudiments of his beginnings. Besides, what if, instead of a broken link in the evolution of serious music, minimalism is really an unusually experimental kind of pop? What if the anti-intellectualism and amniotic comforts that Schonberg decried are practically necessary ingredients? If you take the 20-or-so hours necessary to absorb Reich’s Collected Works, the thesis certainly seems possible.

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM THE CAVE, ACT III, SCENE 2: “WHO IS SARAH?” (DISC 13, COLLECTED WORKS)]

Discs 12 and 13 of Collected Works contain the audio of The Cave, a 1993 multi-media opera. It sets the reflections of various Jews, Muslims, and men and women on the street to speech-inflected music. They ponder Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac. It’s one of several large-scale works in which Reich began making greater use of harmony and melody. It also has more in common with performance art than it does with Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach.

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM TEHILLIM, PART IV (FAST): (DISC 7, COLLECTED WORKS)]

The set also contains Reich’s 1981 work Tehillim, vocal settings—in Hebrew—of four Psalms, and his most recent works, Jacob’s Ladder and Traveler’s Prayer, both also based on scripture.

MUSIC: [EXCERPT FROM TRAVELER’S PRAYER (DISC 27, COLLECTED WORKS)]

The Biblical motifs are no accident. Reich, who has described himself as a “traditional Jew,” has been exploring the faith of his fathers for decades. So for him, the scriptural texts that he uses are not public-domain tropes but markers along a path that he has not only taken but taken seriously. They make the last two thirds of his career seem like a spiritual quest. Heard from this perspective, many of his “collected works” don’t feel “minimal” at all.

[EXCERPT FROM TRAVELER’S PRAYER (DISK 27, COLLECTED WORKS)]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right, time to recognize the team that made The World and Everything in It happen this week:

Caleb Bailey, Hunter Baker, David Bahnsen, Leo Briceno, Myrna Brown, Bob Case, Janie B. Cheaney, Emma Eicher, Emma Freire, Colin Garbarino, Kim Henderson, Zoe Miller, Mary Muncy, Onize Oduah, Arsenio Orteza, Jenny Rough, John Stonestreet, Cal Thomas, and our hard working students at WJI these past two weeks.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Lauren Canterbury, Kent Covington, Christina Grube, Travis Kircher, Steve Kloosterman, and Lynde Langdon.

And thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early. Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Lindsay Mast and Leigh Jones are our feature editors, Paul Butler is executive producer, and Les Sillars our editor-in-chief. I’m Nick Eicher.

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.

Remember- midnight tonight is the deadline for new donors to help support this program and get a double match! WNG.org/newdonor  is where to give. Quick and much appreciated!

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians of Thessalonica: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.” —I Thessalonians 4:16-18

Now, we’re not meant to walk the Christian life alone, so here’s your weekly reminder: Go to church this weekend. Be encouraged, and be an encourager. We need each other.

And Lord willing, we’ll be right back here with you on Monday. Go now in grace and peace.

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