The World and Everything in It - November 11, 2022

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday, the cultural significance of Election 2022. We’ll talk ballot issues and motivations.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet joins us in just a few minutes.

Plus WORLD Arts and Media editor Collin Garbarino reviews Black Panther II.

And we’ll meet a musical couple who express their love of literature and theology through music.

BROWN: It's Veteran’s Day, November 11th. 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: Hurricane Nicole »

SOUND (Hurricane NATS)

The storm that was Hurricane Nicole is pushing into Georgia this morning.

Nicole has weakened considerably, but it’s still packing heavy rain and winds of nearly 40 miles per hour.

Meantime, Florida is once again cleaning up and assessing damage after the storm slammed the state’s east coast Thursday morning. Governor Ron DeSantis:

DESANTIS: We are ready, and we have resources to respond to whatever post-storm needs may arise.

Hurricane Nicole sent some Florida homes toppling into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday. It also threatened a row of high-rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away the beach and destroyed seawalls only weeks ago.

The storm is blamed for at least two deaths.

Nicole is expected to drop heavy rain in the Carolinas starting tonight.

Kherson / Aid to Ukraine » The United States is sending another $400 million dollars in military aid to Ukraine. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said that includes Avenger air defense systems.

SINGH: These are mobile short-range air defense systems that can protect against cruise missiles, helicopters, unmanned aerial systems.

Also on Thursday, Russia said it began withdrawing troops from the city of Kherson, creating a potential turning point in the war.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan...

SULLIVAN: This is a signficant military milestone for the Ukrainians, if in fact it happens that Russia follows through and withdraws to the far side of the Dnipro River.

But he said nobody’s simply taking Moscow’s word for it. And a Ukrainian official voiced concerns that it could be a trap and Russian land mines could turn Kherson in a “city of death.”

A forced pullout from Kherson would mark one of Russia’s worst setbacks in the war.

Elections » In Nevada, election workers have counted 84% of the ballots. So far, incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is lagging nearly 2 points behind Republican Adam Laxalt.

LAXALT: We are going to win this race!

Laxalt heard there on election night. But the result is still very much up in the air. Some analysts believe outstanding ballots could favor Masto.

They’re still counting and signature verifying ballots in Arizona as well. There the incumbent, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is leading his GOP challenger Blake Masters. The margin there is 5 points with 76% of the votes in.

Inflation » Has the wave of inflation crested in the United States? WORLD’s Mary Muncy has more.

MARY MUNCY, REPORTER: New inflation numbers have made some economists cautiously optimistic about rising costs, even as the economy slows.

Consumer inflation reached 7.7% in October compared to a year earlier. That number was down from 8.2% in September.

Stripping out volatile food and energy prices so-called "core''  inflation rose 6.3% over the past 12 months.

The data released Thursday raises the possibility that the Fed could at least slow its interest rate hikes — a prospect that sent U.S. markets soaring.

For WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

Sotomayor rejects bid to prevent NYC enforcement of vax mandate » Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor turned away an emergency appeal from city workers in New York City who are challenging a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The workers were asking the court to block the policy while appeals proceed in lower courts.

The city fired teachers, firefighters, police officers, and others for not complying with the mandate … after rejecting their requests for religious exemptions.

Sotomayor was not required to consult with her colleagues on the matter, and she did not. The justice also did not explain the decision.

UN agency: Iran increases highly enriched uranium stockpile » Iran continues to build the stockpile of the highly enriched uranium it needs to build a nuclear weapon. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has that story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, REPORTER: The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that as of October 22nd, Iran had 137 pounds of uranium enriched to up to 60% fissile purity. That’s a 5% increase from the month before.

But the IAEA can’t provide an exact amount because Tehran continues to block officials from monitoring nuclear sites.

Enrichment to 60% purity is just one short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Experts warn that Iran now has enough enriched uranium to reprocess into fuel for at least one nuclear bomb.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Biden to meet with Xi » President Biden will meet Monday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of next week’s Group of 20 Summit in Indonesia.

Biden on Thursday described the purpose of that meeting.

BIDEN: Understand what he believes to be in the critical national interests of Chinas, and what I know to be in the critical interests of the United States and figure out if they conflict with one another, and if they do, how we work it.

The face-to-face meeting comes amid increasingly strained U.S.-China relations.

It will be the first in-person meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest economies since Biden moved into the Oval Office.

Report: No election fraud in Brazil »

A report from the Brazilian military highlighted flaws in the country’s electoral systems and proposed improvements. Id did not, however, substantiate claims of fraud from some of President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters, who continue to protest against his Oct. 30th defeat.

Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by less than two-points. That was the narrowest margin since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy.

I'm Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the cultural significance of Election 2022.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s the 11th day of November, 2022.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday!

Joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John!

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: John, what a surprise Election Night, or maybe I should say “culmination of Election Month.” Everyone’s talking about the congressional races and the lack of the widely expected “red wave,” but I want to dive into some of the ballot initiatives with you and I think you know where I’m headed, that pro-life didn’t fare very well. Pro-abortion amendments, as you know, passed in California, Vermont, no big surprise, but also Michigan. So is it kind of back to the cultural persuasion drawing board?

STONESTREET: Absolutely. I mean, that's really what the I think the primary lesson here is, is that without a larger kind of cultural level of support, political changes, political movements, political progress doesn't last, that's unsustainable. If you look at how these ballot initiatives fare, it kind of brings to mind prohibition, you know, here's the political move we're going to make, but the culture is not ready to support it.

The cultural imagination has been shaped way more by individual personal freedom and individualism, what Carl Truman has described in his book as an expressive individualism, and that basically won the day. And it was fascinating because right after the overturning of Roe and the Dobbs decision, there was a big spike in the polls, and then the polls changed and the narrative was this isn't really going to affect what's happening. And in most places, what we saw is that a pro-abortion position out-voted, progressive politicians. And I think that that is something that we just have to reckon with. This is the landscape of where we're at.

That also tells us that look. And we all said this, after the Dobbs decision, like, this isn't the end. This is the beginning, or the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning. And now we're on to the next chapter. But okay, the celebration is over. Now, there's a lot of work to be done. And it's a lot bigger than what we think it is.

And, and by the way, I think when you look at something like for example, prop three in Michigan, this is the most radical not only pro abortion law, but it's going to smuggle in all kinds of other socially progressive things under that label reproductive freedom. And it tells you, too, that most people can't think about what sex is for what it means to be human, the idea of sexual distinction where that even comes from. In other words, we don't have any sort of intellectual worldview foundations right now to communicate across our position. And we're in a really bad place until we can, at least in terms of protecting the unborn and protecting children from mutilation and all the other things that are going to come along with Prop three in Michigan. And, you know, I think that's going to be a model legislation for other states. That's going to that's the reality. I think if we pretend it's anything less than that, we're just deluding ourselves. That's the reality. Face the facts. Let's get to work.

BROWN: I’ve heard some say the reason it wasn’t a red wave is younger voters, suggesting that forgiveness of student loan debt was a motivator.

Now, you’ve been a critic of higher education, do you see this loan payment giveaway as simply turning a bad situation into a worse and even more-expensive situation?

STONESTREET: Well, look, I don't know if the younger voters and this prospect of debt forgiveness was what was behind the election results. The way more interesting number that I saw had to do with the loyalties of unmarried women versus married men and unmarried men, and that you have now a political allegiance among unmarried women that is bigger than we've seen. And this is from Brad Wilcox at UVA. And, you know, we've talked about how the breakdown of the family how much that impacts and I think that's going to be a an interesting narrative coming out of this and it's going to be worth looking at, but your questions a little bit different.

And look, you know, how much education cost and who pays for it and whether it's a good investment for the state to do that or not? All of those questions are kind In a pragmatic questions, but they're assuming that the product that you're actually getting from the education is making things better and not making things worse. I think that a far bigger problem than whether or not the state's going to cover these loans - and I think that is a bad strategy. Don't get me wrong. But the product that is being produced and that students are being given for free, is extending their adolescence, moving them further away from a moral framework by about which to think about life, turning the more into narcissistic individualists and oftentimes introducing them to self destructive behaviors and certainly self destructive ideas. But other than that, it's a great product.

EICHER: Before we go, John, I want to come back around to ballot initiatives. I remember when your home state of Colorado legalized marijuana and it was a big deal when that happened. Going into Election Day, 19 states have so-called recreational marijuana legalization, and two more just approved, so that makes 21. But what surprises me is one of those states is the one I live in, Missouri. Deep red state. That seems culturally significant.

STONESTREET: I think it's culturally significant. I think it's another thing that's pointing to something we said earlier, which is that we are a people defined and shaped by radical individualism. Ross Douthat said something about this in the New York Times about, you know, kind of the sexual freedoms, you know, promoted by the progressive left, and then also the fast and loose handling of the truth on an individualistic basis by the right. We're going to see a study coming out here. And we've kind of seen a telegraphed tweet on this, about the lack of church attendance among the majority of Republican voters. So here you have this party that calls itself, you know, identifies itself mainly as Christian, but they're not Christians together, there's, there's a deep seated individualism that strikes at the heart of the American people and takes different forms on both the right and the left.

What we saw in Colorado, wasn't suddenly that there was a bunch of progressives that decided to turn the State Blue. There was a bunch of libertarians, as one of my friends put it when he was actually in office at the time at the state level. He said, you know, Colorado is kind of like a lesbian couple sitting on their front porch, cleaning their guns while smoking pot. And you put all that together, and you're like, well, there you go, you know, it has way more to do with kind of a commitment to individual freedom and doing what I want, particularly in some areas, and it has to do with a coherent ideology. And conservatism, at its best, has always historically acknowledged the mutual dependency that we have on each other as citizens, particularly in local context, and that there's a whole other set of players, other than the big state and the individual, you know, the isolated individual.

But I think the by and large, the new conservatism is largely lost that, you know, significance of what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons of society," the mediating structures that help us govern ourselves. And so I think that's reflected in some of these laws. I think we got a taste of that too in Kentucky, where a pro-life, you know, state measure went down. I think we'll see it, you know, as doctor assisted suicide and other things go on the ballot state by state and more states get behind, you know, the marijuana bus. This is a basically passing, not on the merits of the behavior itself, but on the promise of individual freedom, and then a whole bunch of money. That tells you right off the bat, that these are laws that appeal appealing to the worst of us, not the best of us. And that tells you something about the voter way more than about the issue itself, I think.

BROWN: Well, John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thank you, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Have you ever been stuck in the TSA line as airport security rifles through someone’s bag looking for contraband?

Usually, it’s nothing.

But for one recent air traveler, it was something.

TSA officers at a South Florida airport this week found a raw chicken inside someone’s luggage--though believe it or not, the raw chicken wasn’t the issue.

Turns out you can do that so long as it’s on ice.

No, what really got the TSA’s attention was the fact that inside the raw chicken was a handgun.

That you cannot do. If you’re packing heat, no amount of ice is going to clear you.

TSA didn’t report whether this particular traveler got arrested. But I’ve got to believe this passenger is skating on thin ice if you know what I mean.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, November 11th.

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: the most anticipated superhero film of the year.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever debuts in theaters today. The first Black Panther movie smashed box-office records and became a worldwide phenomenon. But can this sequel live up to the original—especially considering it lacks the beloved actor Chadwick Boseman who died of cancer in 2020? Here’s reviewer Collin Garbarino.

M’Baku: Wakanda!

Shuri: Forever!

Voices: Wakanda forever! Wakanda forever!

COLLIN GARBARINO: Let’s be honest. It doesn’t really matter what I say about Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. You’ve probably already made up your mind about whether you plan to see it. That first Black Panther movie was one Marvel’s best superhero films. And director Ryan Coogler set the bar pretty high for himself. I won’t try to convince you not to see this sequel. But I will warn you to keep your expectations low.

Chadwick Boseman gave such an iconic performance as Black Panther that when he died of colon cancer two years ago, Marvel Studios decided they wouldn’t recast the character. Prince T’Challa the Black Panther died with Boseman. Coogler attempts to turn this sequel into a tribute to Boseman, while at the same time taking the fictional African country of Wakanda in a new direction.

Ramonda: We know what you whisper. They have lost their protector. Now is our time to strike.

Angela Bassett plays Queen Ramonda, the grieving mother of the late Black Panther. Her scientist daughter Shuri is once again played by Letitia Wright. The two women wrestle with the loss of their son and brother. And they struggle to protect Wakanda from outsiders who desire to exploit their most precious resource—the magical metal vibranium.

Ramonda: Stop right there! Who are you! And how did you get in here?

Namor: This place is amazing. The air is pristine. And the water. My mother told stories about a place like this. A protected land with people who never have to leave. That never have to change who they were. What reason do you have to reveal your secret to the world?

Ramonda: I am not a woman who enjoys repeating herself.

Wakanda has a new powerful foe. A flying merman with super strength and super speed, who also has an entire army of aquatic warriors.

Who are you?

Namor: I have many names. My people call me Kukulkan. My enemies call me Namor.

Namor is played by Mexican actor Tenoch Huerta. He and the Wakandans race to see who can capture a genius scientist teenager first. She’s the only one who knows how to make a vibranium detector.

Riri: Get out of my dorm. Get out.

Shuri: Hey.

Riri: I’m warning you. Do not take another step toward me.

Okoye: See how they teach the children to treat their guests!

Shuri: You brought a spear in here!

Riri: You brought a spear in here.

Okoye: I like her.

When Queen Ramonda refuses to hand the girl over to Namor, he declares war on Wakanda. Watery fight scenes follow. Strong violence and a little language merit the movie’s PG-13 rating.

Despite the film’s 2-hour-and-40-minute running time—you heard right, 2 hours and 40 minutes—Wakanda Forever doesn’t have much in the way of plot. And what it does have feels derivative and full of holes. The movie contains at least half an hour's worth of scenes meant as tribute to Boseman. They might make you a little sad and wistful, but they don’t further the story. The movie also has about half an hour of scenes with the American CIA that merely set up future films in the Marvel franchise.

Things dragged on so long that by the time the mantle of Black Panther was passed to its new owner, I was like, “Okay. So that happened.” What was meant to be the movie’s big moment elicited little more than a shrug.

Everything ends up feeling so tedious in this nonsensical war between Wakanda and the merfolk.

M’Baku: His people do not call him general or king. They call him Kukulkan, the feather serpent god. Killing him will risk eternal war.

And a lot of the messaging left me either cold or confused. In the comics, Namor is from Atlantis. This movie reimagines him and his followers as Mayans who migrated underwater when Spanish conquerors arrived in Mexico. It’s hard not to think there’s a political subtext here. Is Coogler telling black and brown people to stop fighting each other and unite against their real enemy—white folks? There’s lots of talk about colonizers and resisting exploitation. America and France get called out as bad guys. African and Mesoamerican indigenous religions are good—Christianity, bad. Coogler offers a trite “noble savage” stereotype.

And then there’s definitely a sense that girl power will save the world.

Okoye: Aneka, where is your spear?

Aneka: Shuri gave me these to try. You know, I like them better.

Okoye: Our foremothers gave us the spear because it is precise, elegant, and deadly. It will not change under my watch.

Aneka: Yes, general.

Ayo: I told you not to bring them.

The crux of the movie hinges on whether the main characters will embody the noble spirit of Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa. Or will they seek vengeance? This might have been an interesting question, but Coogler totally botches it. At the climax, the characters not only give up on vengeance, they just completely give up. The movie ends with a cringey cliched moment that feels false. After 160 minutes, the supposed heroes can’t be bothered to care about justice.

See Wakanda Forever, if you like. It has some entertainment value. There’s plenty of spears and explosions and high-tech gadgets. But don’t expect anything else. Certainly don’t expect it to make sense.

For WORLD, I’m Collin Garbarino.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, November 11th. 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. Next up…The Gray Havens. You might be familiar with the fictional harbor on the coast of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. But these Gray Havens are landlocked, smack in the center of the U.S. Nashville, to be precise.

BROWN: The Gray Havens is a musical group. A husband-wife duo who take much of their inspiration from writers like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. They also present theological truths packaged in story form. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown says that’s what sets the group apart, providing rich source material for one album after another.

AMERICAN IDOL - RADFORD SINGING: Oh the Autumn wind and the Winter wind, they have come and gone...

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Back in high school, Dave Radford was a crooner. At age 17, he broke into the top 24 on American Idol, season five.

Audition: Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, all that rat pack age, that’s totally who I am.

AMERICAN IDOL - RADFORD: My fickle friend the Summer wind.

But then Radford started writing his own music. A different set of musicians informed his songwriting.

RADFORD: And all my favorite singer songwriters were storytellers like Paul Simon and Cat Stevens and James Taylor.

And a specific set of authors informed his lyrics. Writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and the way they wrote theology into stories.

Soon, Radford wasn’t crooning anymore.

CLIP: JACK AND JILL PART 2

RADFORD: We call the music narrative pop folk.

Narrative pop folk isn’t anything like contemporary Christian worship music. You won’t hear it on a radio station like K-Love: A catchy pop beat, usually with stringed folk instruments, but paired with allegorical, storytelling lyrics.

In 2012, Radford married his wife Licia. In 2015, the duo recorded their first full album, “Fire and Stone.” It’s an eclectic mix of folksy songs, rich with charm and allegory.

JACK AND JILL PART 2: We were feeling new, we were feeling new...

“Jack and Jill Part 2” tells the story of Jack who falls down a hill, hits his head, and goes to another kingdom…where he meets other nursery rhyme characters, all tipping their hats to Biblical double-meanings. Like Mary who had a lamb and he was white as snow.

JACK AND JILL PART 2: He cried, no I saved my robe and my ring for you. Yes, I'll throw you a feast as soon as the cow gets back from the moon...

Most of the songs on the first album were from Radford’s college days, written here and there over years. But as the duo started looking ahead to more albums, Radford started running into a problem. The music came easily. The lyrics, not so much.

RADFORD: There's nothing more, I don't know discouraging in to me in music, then sitting alone at a piano with a chord progression that you like and the melody that you like, and no idea how to say the thing that you want to say.

He calls it playing matchmaker. Here he is in The Gray Havens Podcast, explaining his process.

GRAY HAVENS PODCAST - RHYTHM OF THE EAST: I’ll come up with all these different lyrical ideas or phrases and I’ll bring it to the music and kinda say, eh? Like is this what you want?

The uniqueness of Radford’s new style was both a blessing and a curse. Finding an audience was tough. The Gray Havens used a grassroots approach, doing home concerts and Kickstarter funding. When they landed a collaboration with a more well-known hip-hop artist, things started to take off.

HIGH ENOUGH: Freeze the moment in time…

In later albums, the duo settled on a more cohesive musical style. Their music became less acoustic, more polished and blended. And the lyrics, chock full of Inklings influence, became more sophisticated.

Sometimes, the songs can be a little too hazy, with fewer solid melody lines to hum along with. But the lyrics continue to offer profound truths wrapped in narrative, often allegorical form.

The Gray Havens’ most recent album is called Blue Flower. Radford says it’s a riff on C.S. Lewis’ autobiography “Surprised By Joy.”

RADFORD: And that book is basically Lewis's life story as told through the lens of this one recurring experience that he calls joy. And he defines as an unsatisfied desire, more desirable than any satisfaction.

At one point, Lewis uses a symbol to represent that longing: The Blue Flower. It’s a symbol from German Romantic literature meant to represent that wistful, bittersweet longing for a thing we don’t fully comprehend. For Lewis, it hit him often when he was out in nature looking at a landscape or a tiny garden in a tin.

THE BLUE FLOWER: Saw you blue flower and who’s to say where you come from…

RADFORD: And the continual question that he keeps asking, is, does this feeling or experience have a source?

His conclusion?

RADFORD: Lewis would say that it primarily serves as a signpost to who God is and the New Jerusalem ahead.

THE BLUE FLOWER: Felt you blue flower in my soul

You got me longin' for somethin' more,

Now I want somethin' more.

At the end of his autobiography, Lewis writes that the bittersweet longing has lost much of its fascination for him.

RADFORD: Because he knows where it comes from now. Once he believed in the place itself, the signs on the side of the road felt less important than the destination itself.

Right now, Radford is in the middle of writing a new album. This time, a collaborative project. He hopes that having other musicians involved will spark new ideas and keep the lyrics flowing.

RADFORD: So it might just that I get bored easily and when I always try new stuff, but we're always trying to serve the song and ask ourselves what is the song need to be more like itself? And that's always exciting to me.

THE BLUE FLOWER:  If only I could finally reach you,

The garden’s where you grow....

For WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who put the program together this week: Kent Covington, Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Paul Butler, Lauren Dunn, Leah Savas, Kim Henderson, Whitney Williams, Josh Schumacher, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Ohikere, Anna Johansen Brown, Janie B Cheaney, Cal Thomas, Collin Garbarino, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, Mary Muncy, and John Stonestreet.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And thanks also to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early…Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz. Production assistance this week from Emily Whitten, Lillian Hamman, and Benj Eicher.

Paul Butler is our Executive Producer.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible reminds us, Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but give grace to the humble.

Remember to worship in your local church alongside your brothers and sisters in Christ.

God 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.