The World and Everything in It: May 8, 2026

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! 

Today on Culture Friday: A women’s college deals with the fallout from its admissions policy, allowing in some men but not others.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet will be along in just a few minutes.

Also today, WORLD’s Joseph Holmes reviews a family-friendly murder mystery hitting theaters this weekend, featuring sheep as detectives.

AUDIO: You think you’re brave enough to leave home? None of you have ever left this meadow! Your hooves have never touched anything but grass.

Later: WORLD music critic Arsenio Orteza on a classical-music label that takes a different approach.

BROWN: It’s Friday, May 8th. 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!

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

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran » The U.S. struck Iranian targets Thursday — after Iran's military attacked three U.S. Navy destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian forces fired missiles, drones, and small boats at American ships. The pentagon says none were hit.

The U.S. military responded by hitting Iranian launch sites and command centers.

At the United Nations Thursday, the U.S. asked the Security Council to act on Iran's chokehold of the strait. Gulf ally Bahrain backed the push. Its UN Ambassador Jamal Fares Alrowaiei:

ALROWAIEI: The draft resolution calls for Iran to immediately cease all attacks and the threats against merchant and commercial vessels. The draft also addresses the placement of mines, illegal tolling in the strait.

Russia and China vetoed a similar U.S. resolution in April.

U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz:

WALTZ: I know what decision the United States is making. Um, and we're choosing to stand with the freedom of navigation, we're choosing to stand with international law.

Iran on Thursday created a new agency to vet and tax shipping in the strait.

Despite Thursday's clash, the U.S. says it's not seeking escalation. Trump said Wednesday a deal could come within a week.

Iran is still reviewing the latest U.S. proposal.

Hezbollah leader killed in Israeli Beirut strikes » Meanwhile, in Lebanon:

SOUND: [Rescue teams in Beirut]

Rescue teams searched through rubble Thursday after officials say an overnight Israeli airstrike destroyed a residential building.

The Israeli military says the strike took out Ahmed Balout, a top commander in the terror group Hezbollah. Hezbollah did not immediately comment on the claim.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the terrorist leader likely thought, incorrectly, that he had immunity from Israeli attacks in Beirut.

Wednesday's attack was the first time Israel struck inside of Beirut since a ceasefire was announced on April 17.

Rubio-Pope meeting » Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat down Thursday with Pope Leo the 14th at the Vatican.

It was the first sit-down between the Trump administration and the new pope in nearly a year.

LEO: Mr. Secretary.

RUBIO: It's great to see you. Good morning. It was almost a year ago — was here with you.

The visit followed weeks of friction between the White House and the Holy See over the Iran war.

The two leaders talked about persecution of Christians around the world, and peace in the Middle East, among other things.

Pope Leo gave Rubio an olive-wood pen, calling it the plant of peace.

Mississippi tornadoes » Powerful storms spawned at least three tornadoes tore through several Mississippi counties. Authorities say the storms damaged nearly 500 homes and injured at least 17 people. WORLD’s Kim Henderson visited the storm-ravaged area and files this report:

KIM HENDERSON: As tornados tore across the South Wednesday night, phone alerts pushed Mississippi residents Josh and Maura Pugh to take cover.

JOSH: Imminent threat, which I've never received from anything.
MAURA: It was like three. It was like three back to back to back. Notifications of “you need to get in a safe space.”

They huddled in a closet, the storm raging outside.

JOSH: The ground was shaking. It was, it was rumbling.

Their scare lasted barely 30 seconds, but in the light of day the Pughs' neighborhood is almost unrecognizable. Hundreds of trees are on the ground, power lines tangled in their limbs. Metal roofing litters yards and fields. The steeple on the church down the street is hanging from its roof.

While Mississippi reported no fatalities Thursday, recovery is expected to be slow. Impassable roads have delayed workers trying to reach the hardest hit areas. And many residents remain without electricity. Some without running water as well.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Monticello, Mississippi.

Cruise ship hantavirus » Health officials on four continents are racing to track down passengers from a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak.

Tests now confirm the strain is the Andes virus — the only known hantavirus that can spread person to person.

Three passengers have died, and the head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Ghebreyesus, said Thursday:

GHEBREYESUS: Given the incubation period of the Andes virus, which can be up to six weeks, it's possible that more cases may be reported.

The ship left Argentina last month. About 30 passengers disembarked at the remote island of St. Helena before the outbreak was detected — and authorities are tracing their contacts.

But officials say the global risk remains low.

Person-to-person spread of the Andes virus is rare — only two to five percent of cases.

Tennessee redistricting » Tennessee Republicans passed a new congressional map Thursday — one that could flip the state's last Democratic-held U.S. House seat … possibly giving the GOP all nine Tennessee districts.

That came as Democrats loudly objected and protesters shouted outside:

SOUND: [Protests]

It's the first major redistricting since last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that limited the use of race in drawing district lines.

Republican State Sen. John Stevens said in no uncertain terms:

STEVENS: The maps were drawn to maximize the potential Republican partisan advantage.

Governor Bill Lee signed the map. It splits Memphis's congressional district — held by Democrat Steve Cohen — into three Republican-leaning districts.

Louisiana, Florida, and Texas Republicans have also moved to add more Republican-leaning seats. While Democrats in California and Virginia have moved to do the same — for their party.

Day of Prayer » On Capitol Hill:

KICKLIGHTER: Lord, we pray for a revival in this nation

Political and faith leaders marked the 75th National Day of Prayer in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

WORLD’s Harrison Watters has more from Washington.

HARRISON WATTERS: House Speaker Mike Johnson told attendees the event’s theme, taken from 1 Chronicles 16:24, is not rhetorical.

JOHNSON: It says tell of God's glory among the nations, his good deeds to all people. As Americans of faith, we see that as our responsibility.

Several prayed not only for the United States but for Israel as well and a Jewish rabbi joined Christian pastors and lawmakers in asking for God’s blessing.

But others questioned whether God can continue blessing a nation that denies his authority and fails to respect the sanctity of human life. Presbyterian Pastor Robert Pacienza:

PACIENZA: I believe it will require the people of God to rededicate themselves to repent and get on their bended knee before Almighty God, and once again, acknowledge God as the Lord.

Congress first established an observance for the National Day of Prayer in 1952 under President Harry Truman. This year, more than 19,000 coordinators organized prayer events nationwide.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. And later, a classical-music label that takes a different approach.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, May 8th. 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.

John Stonestreet is here. He’s President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Good morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, a long-running cultural debate is now colliding with federal law.

The Trump administration this week opened a civil rights investigation into Smith College, the women’s college in western Massachusetts. But here is the twist: Smith is not being investigated for excluding women. It is being investigated for admitting some men—but not others.

The issue is transgender admissions. Smith admits male students who identify as women. The administration’s argument is that once a women’s college expands the word “woman” to include men, then the legal category becomes a nullity. It just collapses.

So imagine this … you’re general counsel for Smith College … and you’re facing this inquiry: If a women’s college admits some men, on what basis does it exclude the rest?

How do you deal with that, counselor?

STONESTREET: If I were general counsel for Smith, what I would say is, if you’re at the point of actually putting yourself in a multilayered administrative mess, and then complaining because you’ve got to figure it out. This is all pretty predictable, because the reality is still what reality is.

If you can rightly claim that it is discrimination not to allow some men, then you have no basis upon which to say it’s not discrimination when you choose some and not others based on some other random category.

So look, you could see this in Senate hearing after Senate hearing when folks ask, “Can you define what a woman is?” And the questioner just pretends like it’s a nonsensical question that doesn’t need to be answered, or it’s above their pay grade.

This is not a mess that the people who are asking the question made up

This is a fabricated conversation made by those who are confused by these things, and then they complain about having the conversation.

So I guess my advice as an attorney: you made this bed, you’ve got to … sleep in it.

EICHER: One part of the story as The New York Times bravely framed it was the careful assignment of black hats and white hats. This sentence was a beauty: “The inquiry broadens the Trump administration’s bid to limit rights for the nation’s transgender students by targeting school admissions for the first time.”

That sentence is doing a lot of work, is it not?

STONESTREET: A ton of work. A ton of historical work, a ton of revisionist work. So what were all the other previous administrations prior to three or five years ago doing by having these fixed categories?

This is a conversation that was forced on the American people against our will. And now that the conversation has been forced on us, legitimate questions are being asked, and those who forced the conversation don’t want to have it.

That’s the strange math behind all this.

EICHER: You mentioned congressional hearings a moment ago, and I want to bring in another one.

This one involves Congressman Brandon Gill of Texas questioning a witness brought in to defend the pro-abortion position. He did not ask about slogans or legal abstractions. He asked about methods. And the exchange forced the question that abortion rhetoric usually works very hard to avoid: What exactly is happening inside the clinic?

A warning here: this is difficult to hear.

GILL: You’re an advocate for abortion, for abortion policy. What's your favorite type of abortion?

WITNESS: I am an advocate for patients having access to the full realm of reproductive health care.

GILL: But do you have a preferred method of abortion that you like?

WITNESS: I do not.

GILL: I’m going to read through a couple different methods, and I want to get your take on on how much you like these. …
How about this one? It’s called the saline injection. It’s when a 20% salt solution is injected through the mother’s abdomen into the baby’s amniotic fluid. The baby’s skin is burned off. The baby ingests the solution and dies of salt poisoning, dehydration, and hemorrhaging of the brain. Do you prefer that method?

WITNESS: I would prefer to talk about the subject of the hearing.

GILL: This is the subject of the hearing. This is about protests outside of abortion clinics. I'm asking you about abortion.

WITNESS: I stand by my prior testimony.

GILL: I wouldn't want to talk about this either if I were you

John, people complain about performative politicians and grandstanding in congressional hearings, and often with good reason. But this seemed different to me. If you are going to use the hearing room to make a point, make this point. Do it this way, right?

STONESTREET: Do it this way, because the conversation was about a witness talking about how morally reprehensible it was for anyone to prevent access to an abortion clinic or even be within a certain range of it and express disagreement.

That was something morally beyond the pale. The ability of the abortion issue to obscure the real moral questions has always been remarkable.

It would be interesting in the history of etymology and social conditioning if it weren’t talking about something like dismembering a pre-born child.

The moral outrage from the witness was about prohibiting access to the clinic while saying she had no moral comment about what was happening in the clinic.

The ability of advocates to obscure the horrific nature of surgical abortions is an incredible part of this story. Hidden evil flourishes. Hidden evil has to be exposed.

That’s always uncomfortable. It seems like a bad day when it happens, but it’s always a better day than the day before when it remained hidden.

BROWN: When I was a girl I played with dolls. My little 17-month-old granddaughter plays with dolls. It’s the cutest thing…it’s child’s play. But I’m not sure what to call what I’ve been reading about recently.

Grown women, collecting very life-like baby dolls, which by the way are quite expensive…thousands of dollars….but not only collecting them…. participating in some very elaborate role-playing…Putting the dolls to bed, giving them baths, strapping them into car seats and running errands with them…. All of which is recorded and posted to social media.

Is this yet another example of a culture that devalues babies and children? Or should we just chalk it up as an expensive hobby?

STONESTREET: I wish I could do a psychological analysis. Maybe for some it is just an expensive hobby. But what makes an expensive hobby like this even thinkable or plausible?

Dolls have been present across generations, but you don’t have elaborate scenarios like this, where grown women who in other times would be mothering real children are pretending.

The exception I know is a community in Japan—a dying town—where older women populated it with dolls. It was about missing the noise and presence of children. But the reality behind it was demographic winter.

There are too many connected trends in our anti-natalist society—impulses to only have children if you want them—that put this in a larger context.

BROWN: John, you’re a sports fan, so I want to ask you about a piece by WORLD Opinions contributor, Ray Hacke on WNBA romances and reporters reporting on them.

The scenario: two WNBA players on the same team go public with their lesbian relationship. At a press conference, a reporter asks one of the players, had she sought advice from other couples in the league.

The PR person immediately shot the question down, sparking a hot-button topic in the sports world. As one outlet put it…

“You drafted a literal power couple to be your backcourt. You cannot market the chemistry for ticket sales and then act shocked when people ask about the drama.”

What do you think?

STONESTREET: It’s a marketing technique—except when it’s not.

There’s a desire to use it for marketing, but not deal with the consequences. This is a unique situation, but in the larger context, the WNBA’s ongoing lesbianism is a known reality.

The dynamics that develop in these relationships are not healthy. This reflects a broader ideological framework that men are the problem and women can get along without them, as opposed to the biblical design.

The WNBA also has financial and marketing problems. These aren’t bugs; they’re features of the system.

It’s a shame, because the league is seeing new talent and excellence but undermines itself.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, May 8th.

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

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new family-friendly murder mystery hits theaters this weekend. It’s racking up rave reviews from critics. But WORLD reviewer Joseph Holmes says the film has some problematic secular messages.

JOSEPH HOLMES: The Sheep Detectives is the new family-friendly murder mystery from Amazon and MGM about sheep who solve their shepherd’s murder. It’s the kind of movie that’s both enjoyable and a little disappointing.

Hugh Jackman plays George, a shepherd who loves to read murder mysteries to his sheep, never suspecting they can understand him. When George dies under mysterious circumstances, the sheep decide to solve the crime themselves, even if it means facing the fact that the human world isn’t as simple as it appears in books.

GEORGE: I like to pretend they follow along with the story. But, I know in my heart that, as special as they are, they’re still sheep.

SHEEP: Bahh!

GEORGE: No more! Go on, the lot of you. I’ll read the ending tomorrow.

SHEEP 1: Ugh! Why would he stop there?

SHEEP 2: He was just about to say who the killer was!

The Sheep Detectives is a fun film from start to finish. The jokes come at a rapid pace, and almost all land. The characters—both the sheep and the small town inhabitants found in every classic murder mystery—are well-developed and engaging. The elements of the murder mystery stay simple and light for children, but the film doesn’t lose any of the great twists or stakes. Characters—including George—die and stay dead, but the deaths are no more difficult to watch than those in other kids movies like The Lion King or The Incredibles. Most characters are admirable and sympathetic, but also flawed. Lily, voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, is the smartest sheep and the leader, but she can sometimes be cowardly. Sebastian, voiced by Bryan Cranston, has a moral spine but is too pessimistic to lead.

SEBASTIAN: You think you’re brave enough to leave home? None of you have ever left this meadow! Your hooves have never touched anything but grass.

LILY: What’s so hard about leaving home?

MOPPLE: We’re not scared.

LILY: Mopple, what is that?

MOPPLE: I think it’s a road.

LILY: But what’s it made of?

MOPPLE: Well, not grass. I can tell you that.

The movie uses its sheep-centric narrative for some moral themes that are surprisingly mature in a good way. In this film, sheep have the superpower of being able to forget things by choice, which they use when things make them sad. But instead of forgetting the sadness of their owner’s death, they make the heroic decision to remember the sad truth to bring his killer to justice and save their flock. We’re reminded of our own responsibility to choose sad truths over happy lies.

SEBASTIAN: Lily? Are you coming?

LILY: It’s… you go on ahead!

SEBASTIAN: Why are you yelling? I’m only a few feet away from you!

LILY: But it seems so far.

Sadly, the filmmakers also seem to include anti-religious messages. One of the feel-good fantasies the sheep abandon is that sheep become clouds instead of dying. This new “facing reality” about death doesn’t involve replacing it with a true understanding of the afterlife. Rather, the film says the sheep keep the person they love alive through their memory. This assertion makes other references to Christianity feel less in good faith and more like mocking dismissal. A flawed priest features prominently in the story, and when he admits his own sins he refers to himself as a “bad shepherd.” And in an extended joke the sheep express confusion over biblical metaphors. God is a shepherd who’s also bread but also invisible.

The film also pushes other ideas parents may find questionable. The sheep partly solve the case by deciding to ignore evidence because one of the sheep looked into a suspect’s eyes and “knew” they weren’t guilty. The sheep’s instinct, we’re told, is more reliable than the evidence—or even other sheep’s intuition—because he’s been marginalized. The implication? We can—and should—ignore evidence if it contradicts the intuition of someone who’s historically marginalized. It’s an ironically anti-intellectual message for a movie that implies religion is anti-intellectual.

MOPPLE: Lily, what are you up to?

LILY: It may be nothing. But I just can’t stop thinking about George’s hat and raincoat.

MOPPLE: What hat and raincoat?

LILY: Exactly. He went out in a storm. Why didn’t he put them on?

On the whole, The Sheep Detectives is one of the most entertaining family movies I’ve seen in a while. But viewers will have to decide if its attitude toward religion is an opportunity for fruitful conversation or a reason to dismiss the film the way the film seems to dismiss Christian belief.

I’m Joseph Holmes.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: 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.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: classical music without compromise.

Edgardo Vertanessian and his wife, Marina Rebeka, made a name for themselves early on in their respective musical fields. But before long, both were ready for a change. Together, they launched their own classical music label: Prima Classic, and decided to do things a little differently.

WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza got the inside story.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Edgardo Vertanessian first got acquainted with the mechanics of recorded sound as a high-school student in Argentina. He still had a typical teenage boy’s tastes.

MUSIC: [“Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth]

This is “Symphony of Destruction” by Megadeth, one of Vertanessian’s favorite bands at the time. He also liked Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, and German power metal.

But at 18 he got a job at a classical-music studio. And he made what he calls a “mind-blowing” discovery about the roots of his favorite metal musicians.

VERTANESSIAN: All those guys practice with Vivaldi and with Bach, and that's how they do all the—the really, really fast solos, all those scales. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is it’

Vertanessian was working as an assistant mastering engineer and would’ve continued doing so. But the pay wasn’t great. So he moved to Cleveland and began working for the live-audio giant Eighth Day Sound. He rapidly became an in-demand designer and calibrator of large-scale live sound systems, with satisfied clients including Taylor Swift, Madonna, Jay-Z, and Drake. Then he made another discovery.

VERTANESSIAN: Every time I had a day off, I would go to the opera theater, whatever city I was in, and—so in a way, I was paying the bills with live sound, but at some point in life, my heart moved on to opera and classical music.

In 2018, he married the Latvian operatic soprano Marina Rebeka. And together they founded the label Prima Classic.

MUSIC: [“Norma: Casta Diva...Fine al rito” by Marina Rebeka]

This is Rebeka performing a selection from the Bellini opera Norma on Prima Classic’s debut release, Spirito. It’s the first Prima Classic music that anyone heard, and it set the label’s quality bar pretty high.

VERTANESSIAN: Our identity is beauty. Our mission is we distribute beauty in the form of music. And although we do some contemporary, more abstract things, we tend to stay in music that anyone can listen to and find it beautiful.

An example of the “more abstract things” is Gratitude, an album of Latvian compositions performed by a Latvian saxophonist.

MUSIC: [“O Salutaris Hostia” by Oskars Petrauskis]

An example of “music that anyone can find beautiful” is “Daylight,” by the Latvian pianist Dzintra Erliha.

MUSIC: [“Daylight” by Dzintra Erliha]

In case you’re wondering, Prima Classic doesn’t release music only by Latvians. Of its more than 100 albums, about 75% are by musicians of other nationalities. But it’s hard to deny that an exceptional amount of exciting music is currently coming from Latvia.

VERTANESSIAN: There are a million-and-a-half people living there. And their output per capita is, I think, is the highest of top-level classical musicians. It's the highest in the planet. You get some of the best singers in the world come from there, opera singers.

Perhaps what most sets Prima Classic apart from other classical labels is its business model. Every year, thousands of new classical recordings get released. But, because of relatively low consumer demand, the economics only “work” because most musicians shoulder the recording and production costs themselves, leaving labels with the relatively easy—and relatively inexpensive—tasks of manufacturing and distribution.

VERTANESSIAN: We don't believe in that. We're going to produce it, and we do, you know, great sound. We’ve got great equipment. We're very particular with edits. We want always the best takes to go into the recording. So if we need a little more time to do it, we'll take more time.

Beauty, in other words, not profit, is the label’s primary goal. And it seems that if you aim for the former, the latter will take care of itself.

MUSIC: [“Gymnopédie No. 1” by Anders Miolin, Ji Wei]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hey, before we go, congratulations are in order to our WORLD Runners who competed in the Media Capital Challenge three-mile race in Washington. We had two teams entered from WORLD, the first one: Team “Thou Shalt Not Pass.”

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Yes, and that group featured WORLD Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino and reporters Will Fleeson, Josh Schumacher, Joanna Insco, and Julia Chan Erikson …

EICHER: By the way, I need to add, that group that outpaced NPR, so we left them in the dust. That’s great, I love that. 

The other team from WORLD was Team Godspeed … that group included an individual achiever, our Washington producer Harrison Watters. He took the title “fastest podcast journalist.” That will forever be yours, man, way to go. How 'bout that?

BROWN: Yay, Harrison! And along with him, and a few strides behind, his wife and WJI assistant director Naomi Watters, Film Reviewer Max Belz, Legal Beagle Jenny Rough, and Reporter Lauren Smyth. 

Congratulations y'all, you made us proud!

EICHER: Alright, and time now to name the rest of the crew who helped with this week’s programs:

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Lauren Canterberry, Mary Muncy, Hunter Baker, Amy Eytchison, Janie B. Cheaney, Daniel Suhr, Cal Thomas, Joseph Holmes, John Stonestreet, Arsenio Orteza, and Josh Goniea.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Steve Kloosterman, Travis Kircher, Daniel Devine, and Christina Grube.

Thanks also to the Moonlight Maestros: Tech producers Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz.

Emma Eicher is assistant producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Lindsay Mast is producer. I’m Executive Producer Nick Eicher…no runner am I!

BROWN: And I’m Myrna Brown, waiting for the bike race!

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, all nations! Extol him, all peoples! For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD!” —Psalm 117

Well, be sure to praise and worship with your brothers and sisters in Christ in a Bible believing church on this Mother’s Day weekend. And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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