The World and Everything in It: May 4, 2026

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Legal Docket: Roundup, cancer lawsuits, and how to warn the public—one national label, or fifty?

KAVANAUGH: The label subjects you to liability in one state and does not subject you to liability in the other state. Is that uniformity?

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: Spirit Airlines goes belly up, but a blocked merger may be to blame.

And the World History book: a sideshow that saved preemies—and changed medicine.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, May 4th. 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: Iran latest » Hundreds of cargo ships begin moving out of the Strait of Hormuz today under U.S. Navy escort. President Trump is calling it 'Project Freedom' — a mission to guide ‘neutral and innocent’ vessels from dozens of countries — through the waterway, which is under threat by Iran. He warned any interference will be—his words— 'dealt with forcefully.'

Iran effectively shut the strait when the war began in February. The U.S. has answered with a naval blockade of Iranian ports. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told Fox News on Sunday:

HASSETT: The blockade is working, it's putting an enormous amount of pressure on Iran and Iran's, uh, threats to, uh, put mimes in the straits have even made it so that humanitarian aid that of course we would let through to Iran, that there are a lot of those ship captains that are wary of going to Iranian port.

Tehran is reviewing Washington's response to its latest peace proposal.

But Iran's foreign ministry says it still isn’t willing to end its nuclear program. And President Trump says until it does, the U.S. military isn’t leaving.

The president on Sunday pointed to the damage already done to Iran's nuclear program:

TRUMP: If we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild, but we're not leaving right now. We're gonna do it. So nobody has to go back in two years or five years.

Fox News reported last night that President Trump is rejecting Iran’s latest offer.

A delicate ceasefire has thus far held up as talks continue.

Gas prices » Meanwhile, gas prices continue to rise as Iran holds the Strait of Hormuz hostages. The national average for a gallon of regular unleaded is now $4.45, according to AAA. That's up more than 30 cents from one week ago.

Chevron CEO Mike Wirth explained to CBS' Face the Nation:

WIRTH: The energy system, uh, has lost an incredible amount of flexibility. Uh, the global economy consumes about a hundred million barrels of oil every day. Mm-hmm. A barrel is 42 gallons. About 20% of that moves through the strait of Hormuz.

But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is echoing the president’s assurances that the pain at the pump is only temporary. He says once the strait reopens, gas prices will drop immediately, at least to some degree.

DUFFY:   Um, and again, there's going to be a tail to that. It's gonna take time to get back to where we were, um, before this conflict began. But you're gonna see, I think, immediate, uh, relief once the straight opens.

Some Democrats care calling for a suspension of the federal fuel tax until prices moderate. Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff told NBC’s Meet the Press:

SCHIFF:  We could suspend the gas tax, but we needed to pay for it with a windfall profits tax on the oil companies that are making money hand over fist. So I would support a proposal like that, uh, that won't deplete us of revenue to fix our roads.

Schiff again called for an end to the war, calling it “illegal.”

Spirit Airlines reaction  » The closure of the strait has also had a big impact on the price and availability of jet fuel. And that was one factor in the demise of Spirit Airlines—or at least the timing of its downfall. The discount carrier, which was already buried under a mountain of debt and red ink, shut down operations Saturday. Democrats say the war in Iran—and by extension— President Trump is to blame.

But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent notes that the Biden administration successfully shot down a Spirit merger with JetBlue.

BESSENT:  If JetBlue had merged with Spirit, we would have all, all these jobs that were lost yesterday. We had 30 airport, 30 regional airports who have lost service.

A federal judge sided with the Biden administration in ruling against the proposed merger over concerns that the deal would drive up prices.

Mullin on recovering from DHS shutdown » The Dept of Homeland Security is now fully funded after President Trump signed a bill last week to end the partial government shutdown.

But Homeland Security Sec. Markwayne Mullin says things won’t return to normal overnight.

MULLIN:  Well, after 76 days of, of shutdown, which is historic shutdown, longest government shutdown, uh, in history, it, it's gonna take some time to recover. I mean, were we able to still be mission capable? Yes. Were we able to pick up everything that was being brought to us? No.

He said it could take six months to catch up.

While immigration enforcement was at the center of the funding debate, DHS also oversees the TSA, Secret Service, Coast Guard, and FEMA, among other agencies.

Kenya flooding » Kenya is bracing for more rain — after a week of flooding killed another 18 people. The Interior Ministry says floods have hit more than 50-thousand households.

Schools and hospitals are underwater. Mudslides have driven thousands from their homes in the western Rift Valley, and officials are urging people downstream of two major rivers to head for higher ground as hydroelectric dams rise. Forecasters expect more heavy rain through mid-May.

More than 100 Kenyans have died since the rainy season began in March.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Legal Docket Plus, a closer look at the demise of Spirit Airlines on the Monday Moneybeat. This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 4th day of May, 2026. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Legal Docket, and today, a major Supreme Court case that may decide whether cancer patients can continue to sue the maker of a pesticide they say caused the cancer.

John L. Durnell used the Monsanto product Roundup for years before he received a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He sued the company, which is now owned by Bayer.

REICHARD: Durnell argued the company should be held responsible for failing to place labels on Roundup, warning customers that Roundup could cause cancer. It’s misbranding, he contended, and for that a jury in Missouri awarded him $1.5 million dollars.

Some background: Roundup’s key ingredient is glyphosate. It’s sprayed on millions of acres of farmland.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says glyphosate is not likely carcinogenic. But the World Health Organization says it “probably” is. Many European countries have restricted or banned glyphosate; more than 150 citiesin the U.S. have also limited its use.

EICHER: Bayer has paid or has committed to pay around $18 billion dollars to settle about 100,000 lawsuits. Thousands of others are pending for people who opted out of the settlement or cases on appeal from individual trial verdicts.

But the legal question now is this: Who gets the final say on safety warnings?

The relevant federal law is the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, said easier, FIFRA.  It gives the EPA authority for what goes on pesticide labels.

For the narrow purposes of this case, the argument is not over the merits of the cancer claim. It’s over a conflict between state and federal law. Monsanto says the EPA approved its product label, and by law companies cannot change it without permission. That’s called registration and companies are bound by it, because the EPA says adding a cancer warning would be false and misleading.

REICHARD: Missouri law requires a plaintiff to prove that a product was “unreasonably dangerous” because the manufacturer failed to provide an “adequate warning of the danger.” So courts and juries are saying that NOT adding a cancer warning is misbranding because they believe the cancer risk is real.

So when the jury in Durnell’s case agreed Roundup should’ve had a warning label about cancer, that created the conflict between state and federal law.

EICHER: Monsanto’s lawyer Paul Clement argued the jury got it wrong. Federal law is supreme over state law. That’s called pre-emption.

CLEMENT: Respondent's label-based failure-to-warn claim is preempted twice over. First, it is preempted by the express terms of FIFRA's express preemption clause, which forecloses state labeling claims that are in addition to or different from those imposed under FIFRA. Here, a Missouri jury imposed a cancer warning requirement that the EPA does not require. That additional requirement is preempted. 

[….much later…] Ignoring Congress's clear direction here would open the door for crippling liability and undermine the interest of farmers who depend on federally registered pesticides for their likelihood.

Representing the federal government in support of Monsanto’s position is lawyer Sarah Harris:

HARRIS: Missouri forces Petitioner to add cancer warnings or face tort liability. But federal law requires Petitioner to stick with the label EPA approved in registering a product unless EPA approves a change. EPA registers pesticides only if EPA approves their labels as adequate to protect health. Federal law then requires manufacturers to keep using that label.

Monsanto argues it’s in a catch-22 with conflicting laws. Modify the label, risk the ire of EPA. Don’t modify the label, risk the ire of state law and state juries.

Besides that, glyphosate is what makes modern farming so successful, they say. Farmers save billions of dollars and a stable food supply chain is another positive result.

Take it off the market? Monsanto says the result will be higher food prices, lower yields, and reliance on foreign suppliers.

REICHARD: But Durnell’s lawyer argues EPA approval doesn’t mean a product is safe for all time. If new evidence emerges, then companies ought to be held accountable for harm their products cause.

Durnell’s lawyer, Ashley Keller:

KELLER: You unanimously held in Bates that a pesticide can be registered and nevertheless misbranded, even if it uses the label that EPA approved at registration. Yet Monsanto now asks you for the opposite holding, that Roundup cannot be misbranded as a matter of law because EPA found for the first time 50 years ago as a matter of fact that it is safe, based on information Monsanto submitted.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked Monsanto’s lawyer about that:

JACKSON: …could we have a world in which a product that has been registered, the label is consistent with what the agency has said is appropriate at the time of registration, but let's say a new research study comes out at some point between when the EPA is statutorily required to look at it again that casts doubt on the safety of this product?

I heard skepticism toward Monsanto from the bench elsewhere. Here’s Justice Neil Gorsuch, who leans strongly to the federalist side of things, that states should retain power unless Congress explicitly takes it away.

GORSUCH: So you're saying….a registered product can never be misbranded?

CLEMENT: I'd say --no, I --I wouldn't say that. What I would say is a registered product that is marketed as labeled and approved by the agency is -

GORSUCH: Right. Can never be misbranded?

CLEMENT: --is not misbranded.

GORSUCH: Can never be misbranded.

CLEMENT: Well, I -- I mean, right. But -- but, of course, the easiest way to –

GORSUCH: Okay. No, no, I just want to make sure I understood --

CLEMENT: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is my position.

EICHER: Other justices were concerned about the practical effects if every individual jury gets to decide what goes on a label. Listen to this exchange between Durnell’s lawyer and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who seemed more sympathetic to Monsanto:

KAVANAUGH: You think it’s uniformity when each state can require different things?

KELLER: I don’t think each state can require different things. The law has to be uniform. So if Missouri law was in addition to the…

KAVANAUGH: No, if the label is illegal in one state and legal in another state. That's uniformity?

KELLER: I don't agree with that. The label is not illegal in one state and legal in a different state. A jury has found the facts to say -

KAVANAUGH: The label subjects you to liability in one state and does not subject you to liability in the other state. Is that uniformity?

KELLER: I don't think it's state by state. I think it's jury by jury.

Justice Kavanaugh pushed back hard, too, against the idea that a company should be held liable for a label the EPA ordered it to use. This exchange with Monsanto’s lawyer.

KAVANAUGH: New science. You're saying the way you account for new science is on a process that changes the requirements going forward, not on a process that retroactively tells you that what you did yesterday as ordered by EPA is somehow illegal.

CLEMENT: Absolutely. And it's an agency process that takes into account all of the various factors, costs and benefits. And, of course, the agency has incredible resources at its command, including peer-reviewed panels, cancer review, and -- and the like.

Chief Justice John Roberts saw an upside to that, noting the lag between scientific discovery and government regulation:

ROBERTS: What if the agency, EPA, says we've got this new information and we're …reviewing it. You know, as soon as we get to a point where we feel comfortable recommending something, we will. In that situation, the state can't make a determination that, well, we have this new information so that it's perhaps the EPA's determination of the label shouldn't be given such determinative effect? In other words, …..they're responsive to the new information more quickly than the federal government is.

REICHARD: The Chief Justice perhaps signalling he is looking for middle ground, helping Monsanto avoid chaos in regulation and letting federal law set the floor—without freezing the company’s duty to warn when new evidence comes in.

However the court decides, this is bigger than just Roundup the pesticide.

It’s about who decides risk: federal agencies or local juries?

If Monsanto wins, it will shut down thousands of lawsuits from cancer patients because state-level “failure to warn” claims will be barred.

If Durnell wins, those cases stay alive, and Monsanto may have to pay out billions of dollars and settle for even more.

This fight isn’t just in the courts, either—Congress is weighing similar questions about liability right now.

EICHER: Before we go, one more note on a decision we flagged last week: First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v Davenport. Mary, let’s talk about your interview with attorney Erin Hawley. She argued that case back in December. Her client won 9-0, a decision saying, New Jersey’s attorney general overstepped by issuing a subpoena of private donor records from a pregnancy care center.

REICHARD: Right, I mentioned to her that this felt so familiar because I recalled a case from five years ago called Americans for Prosperity Foundation v Bonta. That’s one where California’s attorney general was rebuked for demanding donor lists from nonprofits. And the court smacked him down for that.

So why didn’t New Jersey’s attorney general learn that lesson already?

HAWLEY: So I think it’s a combination of a Supreme Court decision that didn't maybe say as much as it could have in Americans for Prosperity and really aggressive and hostile blue state attorney generals who have gone after ideological opponents …

New Jersey’s AG had claimed the subpoena was just about preventing fraud. But Hawley says that didn’t clear the constitutional bar.

HAWLEY: …Under the Supreme Court's precedent….the government has to satisfy something called exacting scrutiny. So in other words, they have to show that there's a really important reason to get that sort of information. Here in the First Choice case, what the government was saying was that you can’t even get into federal court at all, which is really crazy.

Of particular note is how the subpoena arose in the first place. Had there been public complaint about the pregnancy center deceiving the public?

HAWLEY: Absolutely not. The government investigation wasn’t triggered by a single complaint. There was no allegation of wrongdoing. First Choice has done amazing exemplary work in New Jersey since 1985.

Hawley said the implications of this decision will extend beyond this single nonprofits—it’ll include political donations or freedom of association more broadly.

Writing for the court, Justice Gorsuch pointed to NAACP v Alabama, which was the landmark ruling that protected membership privacy during the civil-rights era.

He asked: would it have been enough if the state merely promised to keep those membership lists confidential?

I think we all know the answer to that. And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he's here now. Good morning, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, two years ago, federal regulators … in the Biden administration … blocked a merger between Spirit Airlines and JetBlue in the name of protecting competition. Saturday morning, Spirit announced its winding down operations—17,000 jobs affected, travelers stranded.

So how to think about this: a deal in the private economy that might’ve kept these planes in the air, the government steps in and says it’s anticompetitive … and now you’ve lost an ultra–low-cost competitor.

BAHNSEN: Well, it’s one of the most atrocious stories of government intervention into the market that I’ve ever seen. And the reality is, the judges who, the DOJ blocking that JetBlue merger, said a private market solution was not good enough because a certain thing was going to happen. And what that thing was is that consumers would lose a low-price option, potentially. And so their fear of something that may have happened led to it guaranteeing that it happened.

And it is just outrageous that JetBlue was willing to be the risk taker. They were going to put up $3.8 billion in debt and equity to take over the beleaguered airline. They probably would have made it work, because the cost synergies that their combined airline, with more capitalized strength behind JetBlue’s more established brand and business operation, and they blocked it on something that made no sense whatsoever.

And then now, who were the people they were trying to protect? Consumers that liked paying $49 for a subpar airline. Well, now they don’t have that option anymore.

So it will be sold for parts, essentially, and they’ll have an orderly liquidation. And I’m very grateful that a government bailout didn’t happen. I’m very grateful that they didn’t try to go claim national security emergency, which is what was being proposed for a couple days. But I’m really upset that what should have happened a few years ago that would have protected jobs, protected consumers, protected financial actors. Whether it be investors or lenders, a JetBlue merger, it was the right solution that the free market presented, and the government blocked it, and now here we are with more people hurting.

EICHER: Last week’s Fed meeting had a bit of an end-of-era feel—Jerome Powell’s final meeting as chairman, but not his final meeting … he’s staying on as just a member, which is highly unusual. As for the meeting itself? Again, no reduction of interest rates, but we did get a strong signal of division at the central bank. Dissenting views published among the members of the FOMC … the Federal Open Market Committee … suggesting some possible turmoil, a little palace intrigue at the Fed. What’s the story there?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, we’ll have to see if it becomes turmoil. I think it is certainly not what we’re used to. I think that the stage is being set for some potential turmoil because you’re just used to there being a fair amount of consensus amongst Fed governors. There’s disagreement, there can be some dissent. It’s usually one vote that’s against the majority. There’s been two.

But the idea that we might get to a place where almost every Fed vote is a 50/50 or near 50/50 situation, I haven’t seen it. It hasn’t happened in my adult lifetime. I don’t know that it will go there because it’s very possible some votes that governors have been giving will go differently with a new Fed chair. There is a tradition of a lot of deference to the Fed chairperson.

And by the way, Kevin Warsh, incredibly convincing and persuasive person who now is going to have a chance to go make an argument and persuade his fellow colleagues, who are themselves quite accomplished senior people. He’s going to attempt to make an argument. And that’s what the point of Federal Open Market Committee deliberations is, is to make an argument.

The thing of Chairman Powell staying is very unfortunate, and I’m somewhat sympathetic to his argument in that I am so appalled by, I think, some of the lawfare overreach that took place here. But there are traditions and norms that I would have expected him to care about, and I still believe he will end up leaving. But I think he feels that this is the only leverage he has to make sure that there’s not some bogus criminal thing brought against him, and I think he’s using that leverage.

I hope he’s telling the truth that he doesn’t intend to, that he intends to be quiet and allow Chairman Warsh to do his job. But these are just new things, and so we haven’t really seen them before. And I think there’s enough drama in our society and so many other things. The one thing I’d prefer there not be drama in would be the deliberation of monetary policy. Let’s keep monetary policy boring, shall we?

EICHER: Yes, definitely … we need to do our part. But I do have one more on this, on the rate policy. I went over to the FedWatch site, the federal funds futures market, to see what the betting was on rates, and it doesn’t look like traders are pricing rate cuts anytime soon. If anything, there’s a long hold and even some probability of hikes. All that pressure the president applied to get Powell to cut rates, then to try to pressure him out … well, he’s sticking around … and FedWatch doesn’t see rate cuts coming either. Is it safe to say that backfired on the president?

BAHNSEN: Well, it’s most certainly backfired, and I think that this was pretty predictable if the objective was not punitive, if it was just simply to kind of put your thumb on the scale to make sure you got some control over interest rates. It’s definitely backfired. If it was just merely to be punitive, which I don’t think it was, I think it was an attempt to try to use leverage, and I think that that has not gone well.

But if it was just to be punitive, it’s definitely created a lot of disruption and punished some people, but now it’s resulted in what you probably would have had if there had been no intervention at all, is Kevin Warsh being named chairman, Stephen Mirron getting an open position, Chairman Powell leaving, and the administration having more Trump appointees than other appointees on the Fed committee.

But this is where they are now, and we’ll see if cooler heads can prevail. I really don’t know exactly how it’s going to shake out. But people mistake criticism of the way the administration handled it as defense of all the monetary policy that Chairman Powell has given us, and I don’t agree with that. I all at once feel very comfortable being critical of some of the monetary decisions that Chairman Powell made and believing that nobody seriously thinks that there was criminal activity in the government going over a budget on a building.

EICHER: This one comes as no surprise, but it does feel like a milestone worth reflecting on—U.S. debt has now crossed 100 percent of GDP. In plain terms, that means we now owe about as much as the entire economy produces in a year.

So is there some educational value in pausing to mark that moment?

BAHNSEN: Well, let’s be clear that we had crossed 100% debt to GDP a few years ago as well, and then it did dip back below it. But I think that the round number of it is what it is. But just economically, is there really a difference between 101% and 97%? I mean, they’re both 100%. It’s just a staggering number.

And let’s be clear too, when people say, no, I heard it was 120 or 128%, it’s the difference between the public debt as a percentage of GDP, which is the 100% number you’re speaking to now, and the total debt. And the difference between public debt is money that we owe to others. It’s called our bondholders, and it includes the people who own the bonds of the United States Treasury, which includes you and me and retirees and banks and insurance companies and foreign governments and just investors, people that own the debt.

The total debt is another 20-something percent of GDP, which is about $7 trillion that we owe ourselves, that the right pocket is borrowed from the left pocket, almost entirely from the Social Security Trust Fund. There’s a few other odds and ends in there as well with Medicare. But they’ve taken from their own piggy bank as well.

And the reason we don’t include that is because it isn’t comparable to other countries. We use the debt-to-GDP ratio to be apples to apples with Japan and with Europe and other places, and they don’t have this intergovernmental borrowing. So it kind of skews the numbers.

I basically think it’s bad enough at the 100%. We averaged something between 50 and 60% most of my adult life. When we were seeing our total debt go up substantially, a lot of people were very critical of the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration, because debt went up a lot, but debt to GDP did not. And then the financial crisis came. We broke trend line growth. We have no longer been growing at our normal trend line that had existed for about 70 years since World War II.

And at the same time that we broke growth trend line, meaning we’re declining in the numerator, the denominator flew higher, the total debt. And so this has been a disaster, and it’s the single biggest economic metric that matters to Americans, to our children, to our grandchildren, for years and decades to come.

And it is, by definition, when you have a fraction, there are two numbers at play, and they both matter. And people that only want to address the growth and do not address the debt are not seeing the whole picture. But people who want to address the debt and not address the growth are not seeing the whole picture. We’re getting it wrong on both counts.

EICHER: Let me try to squeeze one more in. We saw a wave of May Day demonstrations on Friday. Schoolteachers threatening to call in sick … pressuring schools to close … kids being bused to participate in these socialist-communist protests around the country. Just so discouraging to see in so many ways … but you spent some time last week lecturing on the wonders of the free market and are seeing evidence of a heartbeat of economic liberty. So some positives amid the negatives.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I had a chance to speak at Taylor University in Indiana last week and just see their launch of a Center for Innovation and Flourishing. I was at Biola University the week before, where they’re making a lot of steps to promote human flourishing and freedom.

A lot of the colleges, they’re inviting me, and it’s not just colleges. I see it in some Christian high schools too. Nick, let me just say very quickly, because I really hope this makes it in. You cannot promote freedom and markets and enterprise without attaching it to our faith and transcendent truths.

Now, the Christian schools that have a moral framework and a creational theology to explain free markets have a chance to be a full antidote to the radicalism of May Day and protest and communism and all of these other failed experiments, but we have to do it fully armed with the Christian worldview. And I’m really heartened to see that some colleges are taking on this task.

EICHER: All right. David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at dividendcafe.com and at World Opinions. David, thanks so much. I hope you have a terrific week.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, May 4th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book… how a carnival sideshow helped save lives. A century ago, many doctors thought premature babies couldn’t be saved. But one man disagreed.

WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry takes us to Coney Island.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Lucille Horn and her twin sister were born prematurely in New York in 1920. Her sister died and Horn told Story Corps she had to fight to survive.

LUCILLE HORN: My father said I was so tiny he could hold me in his hand. I think I was only about two pounds.

At the time, hospitals were ill-equipped to care for premature babies and many doctors believed that trying to keep them alive was pointless. Some said they were “weaklings” and not worth spending time and money to save them.

But Horn’s father was determined to save his daughter.

HORN: When I was born my father was looking for a blanket or a towel to wrap me up in, and somebody said, “where are you going?” And he said, “I’m taking her to the incubator in Coney Island.”

The incubator was part of Martin Couney’s exhibit at New York City’s Coney Island. Horn said her parents first saw it on their honeymoon.

CLAIRE PRENTICE: People would pay 20 cents and come in and see these babies basically fighting for life.

Claire Prentice is a journalist and author who researched Couney and his exhibits for her book Miracle at Coney Island.

PRENTICE: You’d see these big incubators that are kind of like probably the height of a person, a little glass and steel box on legs.

There, Couney and a team of nurses and doctors cared for premature babies whose parents came from miles away for help.

PRENTICE: It looked like a little hospital ward and it was certainly run very strictly and very ethically.  

Martin Couney gets this idea likely from seeing exhibits because there were exhibits like this in France and other parts of Europe.

Paris obstetrician Stephane Tarnier invented the first modern incubator in 1880. The primary goal was to keep babies warm - a problem for all newborns who can’t yet regulate body temperature.

Tarnier’s successor Dr. Pierre Budin helped refine the design and publicize its effectiveness in 1888. But the medical establishment remained skeptical of the devices, so Budin displayed them at the Berlin World’s Fair in 1896.

Couney claimed to have worked there alongside Budin … formulating his idea to create his own incubator exhibits.

PRENTICE: He claimed that he’d studied medicine with all the kind of leading doctors in this area. That he’d studied in Leipzig and Berlin.

But during her research, Prentice discovered that Couney had immigrated to the United States in 1888 - at just 19 years old. Far too young to have as extensive an education as he claimed.

PRENTICE: His story kind of falls apart when you start to look at the dates and what he claimed he’d done.

He was always quite evasive about his early life.

The most shocking discovery Prentice made – there is no evidence that Couney ever met the requirements to become a physician. Here, or in Germany where he said he’d studied.

PRENTICE: He doesn’t actually initially refer to himself as Dr. Couney. He had just surrounded himself with people who he then learned from. I think it just kind of stuck and then he adopts the title himself.

By 1930, Couney was referring to himself as a doctor. Prentice believes that may have been to give legitimacy to his incubator exhibits. His facilities garnered national attention and leading doctors regularly sent premature babies to him for care.

Couney initially operated two exhibits in Coney Island … another in Atlantic City and at fairs and expositions across the country. He had been saving babies for decades, but incubators still did not reach widespread use in the U.S. until the early 1940s.

Couney gained respect in the medical community, but not everyone believed his exhibits were ethical. Early in his career, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children accused him of exploiting babies.

PRENTICE: He wasn’t averse to showman’s tricks of, “let’s get the babies dressed up in clothes that are too big for them to emphasize just how tiny they are.”

Some people might say he was just exploiting them and making money. But he was constantly plowing his profits back into his exhibit.

The money Couney made off the exhibits went directly into funding the facilities and his staff and no parent ever paid for their child’s care. Police never found any evidence of mistreatment and Couney continued his work. By his own reports he saved 6,500 of the 8,000 babies brought to him over the course of four decades.

PRENTICE: There’s no way to verify if that’s true or not, but all the anecdotal evidence and the later more rigorous record keeping suggests that he did have a very high rate of survival, certainly well over 50%.

By the time he closed his last exhibit in 1943, incubators had gained broad use in mainstream hospitals, due in large part to Couney’s work. He died in 1950.

Lucille Horn credits him for her own long life:

HORN: Ninety-four years later, here I am. All in one piece. And I’m thankful to be here.

Horn passed away in 2017 at the age of 96.

Over a century after his methods first gained fame and notoriety, Prentice says Couney’s work undoubtedly changed neonatal care for the better.

PRENTICE: He did a lot to publicize the plight of these tiny babies and to show they could be saved and should be saved.

To have saved thousands of lives and then you think of all the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and just all these people walking the earth who would not be here if it weren’t for Martin Couney.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Lauren Canterberry.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: The United Arab Emirates leaves OPEC. We’ll have a report. 

And, big events—such as the Kentucky Derby this past weekend—bring big crowds, and with them, increased demand that fuels exploitation. On Tuesday’s program, you’ll meet some of the people working to reach women caught in it. 

That and more tomorrow. 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.

The Bible says, “Praise the LORD! Praise, O servants of the LORD, praise the name of the LORD! Blessed be the name of the LORD from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the LORD is to be praised!

The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens! Who is like the LORD our God, who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?

He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.

Praise the LORD!” —Psalm 113

Go now in grace and peace.

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