The World and Everything in It: November 1, 2024

PREROLL: For more than 40 years, Joel Belz provided timely words of wisdom seasoned with grace for our readers, listeners, and staff. Today, we return to a commentary he shared with us in 2013 encouraging us to pray. Seems timely. I’m Paul Butler. Stay tuned.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: How close is too close for a relationship with artificial intelligence? And how strong is religious liberty in this country, are we really freer than ever?

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by. We’ll talk about that and reflect on political stewardship as Election Day approaches.

Also today:

WRIGHT: We’re getting the band back together. Come on!

The cast and crew from Forrest Gump return for a trip down memory lane. But does it tell a worthwhile story? WORLD arts and media editor Collin Garbarino has a review.

BROWN: It’s Friday, November 1st. 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: Russia latest » The United States and its allies are watching Russia very closely, where some 10,000 North Korean troops are now on the ground: most of them deployed near the border with Ukraine.

Secretary of State Tony Bllinken told reporters:

BLINKEN - We've not yet seen these troops deploy into combat against Ukrainian forces, but we would expect that to happen in the coming days.

Blinken's comments came during a meeting with South Korean officials visiting Washington. He said it was the first time in 100 years that Russia has invited foreign troops onto its soil, and added that it reeked of desperation.

BLINKEN - Putin has been throwing more and more Russians into a meat grinder of his own making in Ukraine. Now he's turning to North Korean troops. And that is a clear sign of weakness.

CHO - In Korean

South Korean Foreign Affairs Minister Cho Tae-yul also condemned the troop deployment as a violation of U-N Security Council resolutions.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to tighten its military ties with another key ally: Iran.

LAVROV - In Russian

Speaking from the Minsk Security Conference yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow plans to sign a new strategic partnership with Iran.

Spain flooding » The death toll continues to rise in Spain from monstrous flash floods. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: In Valencia, tree branches, downed power lines and household items litter the streets in muddy mounds of debris. And cars have been left stacked atop one another, many upside down. … That after torrents of water raged through city streets.

And responders now have the grim task of searching those cars — and sodden buildings — for bodies.

The flooding was blamed on Thursday for at least 158 deaths. And that number could rise further.

It’s still unclear how many people remain missing.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Presidential politics » It is the final weekend before election day, and both presidential campaigns are making a full court press in key swing states.

Kamala Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rallied supporters just outside of Philadelphia:

WALZ:  We have to go out and fight for this thing, because I'll tell you what, the vice president is right when she says this, when we fight, we win. Now for the next five days, when we vote, we win. Pennsylvania, win this thing for America. Let's go!

The latest polls give Donald Trump a narrow 1-point advantage in Pennsylvania.

And the former president is looking to expand the electoral map, campaigning in a state where Vice President Harris has held a comfortable lead in the polls. He told supporters in Albuquerque Thursday he believes he can win New Mexico… 

TRUMP: But you have to turn out the record numbers that we need in order to really demand a better future. And you have to go out, you have to vote. We want to win, win win.

An average of recent polls still gives Trump at least a slight edge in every major swing state, with two exceptions, Michigan and Wisconsin, where the polls suggest the race is a dead heat.

House and Senate politics » And the battle for control of House of Representatives is every bit as tight. In fact, it may be a virtual coin flip.

An analysis by FiveThirtyEight.com puts the percentage odds at 52 to 48 with Republicans holding the slight edge.

And GOP Senator John Thune says the race is tight in the upper chamber as well. 

THUNE:  I think every one of those races is just really, they're tighter than a tick right now and it is all going to come down to that handful of undecided voters and the closing arguments our candidates are able to make.

About a half-dozen Senate races are considered toss-ups right now. Polls suggest races in Ohio and Wisconsin are the tightest of all, with polling margins of 1 point or less.

Still, most forecasters believe Republicans will likely claim a narrow majority in the Senate.

Musk sweepstakes » A judge in Philadelphia has put a state challenge of Elon Musk’s $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes on hold … while lawyers for Musk’s political action committee try to move the lawsuit to federal court.

Philadelphia’s district attorney filed a suit to halt the giveaway. John Summers is an attorney with the DA’s office.

SUMMERS: We will proceed to federal court, and we will address the issues there and seek to have the matter remanded back to the state court.

Musk is giving away a million dollars a day to registered voters who sign a petition supporting the Constitution.

Critics say it’s an effort to get around a federal law that prohibits paying people to register to vote.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner says it’s illegal in his state … because it’s basically a lottery, and only the government has authority to operate lotteries in Pennsylvania.

Dodgers World Series parade » The Los Angeles Dodgers will celebrate their 8th World Series Championship today … with a downtown parade followed by a celebration at Dodger Stadium.

They defeated the New York Yankees this week in 5 games. Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy described the feeling. 

MUNCY: Unbelievable. It’s pure, spectacular enjoyment. Top of the world. It’s hard to explain.

The Dodgers will travel through downtown atop double-decker buses before trekking to Dodger Stadium. 

I'm Kent Covington.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 1st of November, 2024.

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 time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, the New York Times and other outlets have reported on this incredibly dark and tragic story of the death of a teenager, a 14-year-old boy who’d been led into a deep, emotional relationship with an AI-generated chatbot, a character modeled after a character from the show Game of Thrones.

This online platform is Character AI, and the boy’s mother is suing, making the case that the chatbot led her son to take his own life. Among her claims: that the platform’s lack of safeguards and manipulative features encouraged her son’s detachment and despair.

Question for you: Do you see these AI companionship apps reshaping concepts of friendship and reality for younger generations?

STONESTREET: I don’t think it actually reshapes them at all. I think actually that what it does is worsen a pre-existing condition.

This is the disembodiment that is a feature, not a bug, of early 21st century, late- to ultra-modern Western culture.

We have created our digital worlds. We have created them with replacements for real, embodied existence—from, you know, thinking for us, to feeling for us, to relating for us. And, you know, these are habits that are deeply ingrained, and, you know, the same sort of stories can be found at almost every stage of the digital revolution.

This is tragic. It’s terrible. And there may very well be some sort of guilt that Character AI, this platform, has.

But there’s a particular sort of kid who is vulnerable to this sort of influence. There’s a particular sort of kid who has a kind of pre-existing, elevated likelihood of self-harm, and that doesn’t have to do with AI. AI comes and worsens the situation. AI comes and spreads the infection. AI comes and becomes an even more compelling substitute for reality, but not a sufficient substitute for reality.

There’s so much about modern life which makes us relationally inept. And, of course, there’s also those bedrock relationships that people are supposed to have, which gives us our real sense of identity, our understanding of meaning, our basic worldview, and those things are in crisis. And we’ve seen especially young men become lost in this particular cultural milieu.

And it makes sense, because it’s an untethered existence. We’re untethered from the body. We’re untethered from our most essential catechizing relationships. We’re untethered from truth. We’re untethered from community.

You add all that together and say, “well, what could go wrong if we add in, you know, a direct kind of intravenous influence of a disembodied conglomeration of the worst that’s on the internet? You know? What could possibly go wrong?”

Yeah, we should have seen this one coming, and it won’t be the last one, tragically. It’s terrible, but this has been in the works for quite some time.

BROWN: John, just a few weeks ago, you, me, Nick, all of us were talking about a final victory for cake artist Jack Phillips. He’d won his long fight for religious freedom. I remember categorizing it as a very big victory, but I don’t go as far as New York Times columnist David French goes. He put up an online video, basically saying, not to worry, things are just hunky-dory.

FRENCH: By any reasonable definition, American Christians are not persecuted. And the legal protections for religious liberty are stronger than in any time American history. People of all faiths or no faith at all enjoy an immense amount of protection against government interference. That doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges or injustices. But it remains the case that the American Christian community is arguably the freest Christian community in the world.

Does he state it right, John?

STONESTREET: No, I think that’s a misstatement, and I don’t think it’s true at all, unless you think that religious freedom and our basic freedoms rely only upon Supreme Court decisions.

Has the Supreme Court repeatedly come down on religious freedom, especially since the court was remade by President Trump’s first term? Yeah, but why did it have so many decisions in front of it?

Let’s take Jack Phillips. Does anyone really think that Jack Phillips would have faced these challenges to his personal freedoms 25 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 40 years ago—before this string of Supreme Court wins?

The answer is, of course not.

And what’s the difference? It’s not the Supreme Court. The difference is culture, and culture either serves to help sustain our freedoms or it works against them.

So no, it isn’t.

And I’ll give you the number one reason I think that David French’s statement about religious freedom being more safe now than ever before is flat out not true, and that’s because it’s not only opponents of religious liberty that don’t understand religious liberty. It’s the general cultural imagination in which the idea of religious liberty has been defined down.

For example, about the rights of people of faith to not participate in same sex weddings and not fully endorse and affirm alternative lifestyles. Then suddenly, in a whole lot of people’s minds, and you might even say the cultural imagination is clearly and unequivocally headed this direction, religious freedom then becomes not a net good, but a net bad.

It actually is, in the cultural imagination, thought of as a “license to discriminate.” And you know what? That is a devil’s bargain right there, if I ever heard one.

And I think that’s what a lot of people of faith think of religious liberty: that, yes, it’s our ability to be bigots in our own homes, in our own hearts, in our own houses of worship.

But it really doesn’t belong in the public square. We don’t really need a robust marketplace of ideas. That’s the classic understanding of religious liberty. That is not the current understanding of religious liberty. And as long as it is the current understanding of religious liberty, religious liberty is not safe, certainly not safer than it used to be.

EICHER: Well, here we are, going into the final weekend before Election Day, or with all the early voting and mail-in voting we do nowadays, we should say the final weekend before the election deadline on Tuesday. Nevertheless, I want you to reflect on Christian stewardship of the vote.

What do you hope will be the outcome of the 2024 election? And I don’t mean, Who do you hope wins? I mean, what long-term outcomes should Christian voters prioritize beyond immediate political wins?

STONESTREET: Well, look, I think in a democratic system, including a democratic republic like ours, elections are more mirrors than anything else. In other words, they reflect more than they determine. In fact, I wrote that in a contribution to the WORLD Opinions symposium on this. And I think that the reflection is, we’re not okay, and what we’ve got currently is not sustainable. And so our most significant problems are pre-political, and our most significant solutions have to be pre-political as well.

It has to be upstream in the kind of the cultural work.

Now, I absolutely think this is the most consequential election in our lifetime. And I think it’s a bad thing that it is the most consequential election in our lifetime, because elections should not be that consequential. They should not be this consequential.

When so much is up for grabs, that means that a society is weak and it’s shriveled, and it’s in decline. This is what we know. So that’s one thing.

The other thing I think I would love to say is, I hope that, you know, even though the Democratic ticket was replaced, in a sense, we are still in the same race that we were in 2020 and in 2016 and for that matter, 2018 and 2022. So just as a citizen, on a purely pragmatic level, I hope that this election means we can all collectively move on.

It is true what Solzhenitsyn said in his speech at Harvard, that the sign of a declining culture is the lack of great statesmen. And it is time to move on from the sort of statesmen and women, therefore, that we’ve had, to new ones. And I hope that this marks a turn, at least, to “Everyone take a breath and go, ‘Yeah, we really don’t want to get stuck again.’”

I hope that’s the case. That’s my thought on a purely pragmatic level.

EICHER: Careful there. We may look back 4 years from now and remember these days fondly. Things can get worse, you know?

STONESTREET: Haha, those were the days!

EICHER: Well, I’ve mentioned ballot measures in 10 states that among other things would potentially liberalize abortion laws, and in my home state of Missouri we have a proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy with virtually no restrictions. The way it’s written–that’s how judges are going to have to interpret it when the lawsuits start–it would end up nullifying parental consent laws. It would leave parents powerless to intervene when their children seek permanent and life-altering procedures known as so-called gender-affirming care. The scope of this thing, I’ve never seen anything like it. Which is why I wrote about it in the November WORLD Magazine.

Anyway, John, a big prize for the pro-abortion side is Florida and we offered an opinion column to a pastor down there … William Rice … who said, and I’ll quote him here: “Pastors must awaken and find their prophetic voice and spiritual courage. This is the time to get political because politics just got theological.” I’ll put a link in our transcript to that column and the one I did on Missouri if you want to read those.

But I thought Pastor Rice really said it well.

STONESTREET: You know, last week in our staff meeting with all of our writers at the Colson Center, we had that same observation: that for years, people have been saying, “You know, keep your theology out of our politics.” And we’re saying, “Keep your politics out of our theology.”

In other words, every single one of these issues that people say are too political for Christians to care about are fundamentally moral issues. They reflect deeper realities. And no, they’re not purely political issues, but they are moral and theological and anthropological and ontological issues with a political face right now.

And again, this isn’t the sort of thing that people should be voting on, but here we are. So, sit it out and somebody else’s theology or lack thereof takes over these issues, and that’s what we’ve already seen.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. You’ve been really great to keep coming back and speaking to WORLD’s listeners, so well and so faithfully, all these years, and I’m grateful. I don’t say it often enough. Thank you, John. We’ll see you next time.

STONESTREET: Thank you both. That was very kind.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Take away the “S” in “dimes,” and you’ve got less money, right? Well, in this case, no. That missing “S” is where the value is.

Three sisters in Ohio just auctioned off a 1975 dime so rare, there’s only one other known to exist. What makes it special? This dime was struck by the San Francisco mint but is missing the “S” mark usually stamped right above the date.

The sisters inherited the coin from their brother, who’d stashed it in a bank vault as a family financial safety net—and what a sturdy one.

After 40 years, it paid off handsomely. The final auction price: $506,250—not a bad return on a dime.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 1st.

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

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new movie tries to tap into audience nostalgia while at the same time offering something they haven’t seen before.

Here’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino to talk about Here, debuting in theaters this weekend.

COLLIN GARBARINO: The marketing campaign for the new movie Here boasts: “From the writer, director, and stars of Forrest Gump.” Director Robert Zemeckis, who won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump, reunites with screenwriter Eric Roth, who also won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump, and actors Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. Oh, did I forget to mention that Tom Hanks won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump as well? In an interview Wright expressed how excited she was when Zemeckis called her with the idea.

ROBIN WRIGHT: Bob, I would do anything with all of you again. We’re getting the band back together. Come on!

You can tell right away that Here shares some of its DNA with Forrest Gump. A central gimmick undergirds the story. And the film relies heavily on Americana nostalgia, especially for the boomer generation.

Here depicts the lives of the various inhabitants of one particular place through time. We see a Native American couple living in a woodland. We see a stately colonial home occupied by a loyalist during the American Revolution. Then a couple of families occupy the spot in the early 20th century. But the bulk of the narrative follows the Young family, who buy a house on the spot right after World War II.

Paul Bettany plays Al Young, a veteran looking to start life with his new bride Rose, played by Kelly Reilly. Soon they have a baby boy named Richard, who will grow up into a young man played by Tom Hanks. And then Richard falls in love with Robin Wright’s Margaret.

RICHARD: Hey, dad. I’d like you to meet Margaret.

AL: Nice to meet you, Margaret.

MARGARET: Nice to meet you, Mr. Young.

Opportunities are scarce for the young couple so they live with Richard’s parents, raising their own daughter in the same house Richard grew up in. The narrative jumps back and forth through time, but the bulk of the action takes place during the 60s, 70s, and 80s with the home’s radio and television setting the vibe with nostalgia-driven needledrops.

We see Al and Rose, and then Richard and Margaret, go from newlyweds to elderly and infirm. It’s the kind of movie that shamelessly pulls on the audience’s heartstrings.

RICHARD: This was our home. We lived here.

Remember when flashback scenes in movies used to use different actors for the younger version of characters? Through the magic of computers, Tom Hanks plays Richard all the way from 18 to 80. It’s the kind of thing that wasn’t possible even just a few years ago. In an interview director Robert Zemeckis talks about the technology.

ROBERT ZEMECKIS: We now have a tool that allows a really great actor like Tom Hanks or actress like Robin Wright to perform their characters as young people, and we can digitally put youth makeup on them.

Going into the film, I had my doubts as to how well the de-aging technology would work, but it seems to have improved quite a bit since Harrison Ford wore a young face for Indiana Jones 5 last year. The young Tom Hanks was especially convincing. The young Robin Wright didn’t look like her 18-year-old self, but I didn’t find it too distracting. I actually found Paul Bettany’s looks more distracting. Bettany’s something of an old soul, so his movements felt convincing enough as his character aged, but he never seemed to age as fast as the other characters. And thinking about the actors’ real ages pulled me out of the story. Bettany and Reilly are 53 and 47 respectively, playing the older generation to Hanks, who’s 68, and Wright, who’s 58.

RICHARD: Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?

MARGARET: It sure does.

But the use of de-aging technology is only part of the gimmick. When I said the entire movie takes place in one spot, I meant it. The camera stays fixed for the film’s entire runtime, with the house sort of appearing and changing as the story moves back and forth through time. Here’s Zemeckis again.

ROBERT ZEMECKIS: I always like to bend the form. I always like to bend the art of cinema in ways that I have never seen before.

He’s certainly done that. The audience essentially stares at one living room that morphs and changes over hundreds of years. The perspective never shifts or changes. It’s a big swing for Zemeckis to depart from traditional filmmaking technique. Does it pay off?

Well, I don’t know. The gimmick starts to wear thin after a while… Maybe there’s a reason movies aren’t filmed like stage plays. And, to be honest, the story isn’t really interesting enough. The storyline dealing with Richard’s family feels like we’re watching a stranger’s home movies. Something entertaining might happen every now and then, but do you want to spend an hour and a half like that? The flashbacks to previous generations are even worse because they just pad the runtime without adding anything meaningful.

On the whole, Here isn’t really a successful movie. Perhaps the die-hard fans of Forrest Gump will enjoy this quirky glimpse at American life, but sometimes when the band gets back together for that reunion tour the show isn’t as good as we remembered.

MARGARET: I could spend the rest of my life here.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 1st. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Up next, Ask the Editor for November. Here’s WORLD Radio executive producer Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: More than 40 years ago WORLD founder Joel Belz wrote a column encouraging readers to see our stories as something more than just “keeping up with the news.” In 2013 Joel recorded that commentary. Here’s about two minutes from it:

JOEL BELZ, FOUNDER: Wasn’t that a wonderful answer to prayer!” exclaimed someone after a remarkable development.

“Indeed it was,” responded an overly honest friend. “Don’t you wish we had prayed about it?”

I first mentioned that exchange in a magazine column almost 30 years ago. It’s a little embarrassing now to admit I still haven’t fully learned the lesson.

A sovereign God doesn’t need us, of course, to help unfold world events. He is quite capable of keeping the Middle East from total conflagration, or softening the cruelty of human traffickers in big American cities, or comforting families of loved ones killed in an accident. He is quite capable of doing all that, and more, without us.

The wonder is that God could do all that alone, but that He chooses not to. Instead, He calls on us to participate. The King of the universe invites us to sit in on His cabinet meetings. The tragedy is that we so rarely accept that invitation.

Even when we do pray, pray too generally. If your petition is a very broad “Give wisdom to all the world’s leaders,” you’ll probably be hard-pressed to recognize the Lord’s answer when He sends it. 

With all that in mind, let me invite you to use this news program, The World and Everything in It, as a very practical and specific kind of prayer list. When you sit down to eat and thank the Lord for a meal, take another minute to pray for one news item you’ve heard about on this program. Such a habit might well provide good mealtime conversation with your family.

Or, to take all this a significant step further, think about helping organize a small group that might meet during the Sunday school hour at your church. Find half a dozen or a dozen people who would enjoy discussing world events — and then take God seriously by joining with each other in 15-20 minutes of specific prayer for those issues.

Either way — whether at home or in such a small group on Sunday morning — you’ll never have to worry about hearing someone say with disappointment and remorse: “What a great answer to prayer! It’s just too bad we never took time to pray about it.”

I’m Joel Belz.

PAUL BUTLER: And now to give you a chance to live that out a bit. After a very long and contentious presidential campaign season, we are finally approaching election day. Next week we’ll have a lot of stories from on the ground reporters and expert analysts, but in the spirit of Joel’s encouragement, I want to make sure we include something more—a call to prayer.

On a number of occasions in the past, we’ve had you send in prayers and scripture readings to include at the end of our program. We’d like to do that again a few times next week. Would you consider recording a short reading or prayer for our country, for God’s work in and through this election, and more importantly, for spiritual renewal across our land—regardless who wins or loses?

Send your audio recordings to: editor@wng.org. Please keep them short, as we’d like to include as many of them as we can. Also, when you record, please start by identifying yourself by name, and identify where you live. We may not be able to feature all of them, but we’ll play as many as we can. That email address again is: editor@wng.org.

Thanks. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who helped put the program together this week:

Jenny Rough, David Bahnsen, Lindsay Mast, Mary Reichard, Addie Offerins, Daniel Darling, Leo Briceno, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Oduah, Emma Freier, Janie B. Cheaney, Mary Muncy, Les Sillars, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, and Collin Garbarino.

Thanks also to our breaking news team: Kent Covington, Lynde Langdon, Travis Kircher, Lauren Canterberry, Christina Grube, and Josh Schumacher.

And thanks to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Our producers are Paul Butler, Kristen Flavin, and Harrison Watters, with assistance from Lauren Dunn and Benj Eicher.

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 Psalmist writes: “Praise the Lord! I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them.” —Psalm 111:1-2.

Be sure to worship Him with brothers and sisters in Christ in church on the Lord’s Day.

And Lord willing, we’ll meet you right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.