The World and Everything in It — November 18, 2020

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

The election pollsters got things wrong again this year. We’ll talk why that is and about lessons learned this time around.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday.

Also today World Tour.

Plus, we’ll introduce you to a man who’s devoted himself to helping women in dire need.

And learning to see clearly.

REICHARD: It’s Wednesday, November 18th. 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 has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: States and cities impose new coronavirus measures amid surge » More cities and states are putting new restrictions in place while warning residents about holiday gatherings as COVID-19 cases surge nationwide.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti… 

GARCETTI: The situation in LA is more concerning than it’s ever been. I don’t say this to scare you. It is just the truth that right now is the toughest moment we have faced. 

He urged residents to not share Thanksgiving with people outside of their household. 

His warning comes as California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s pulling the “emergency brake” on plans to reopen the state’s economy. 

He said that daily cases in the state doubled in the span of just 10 days. 

NEWSOM: Where are we seeing an increase in the spread? It’s not just households. It’s also businesses. 

Newsom is reinstalling tough restrictions that will halt indoor worship and force most indoor businesses to close or operate at partial capacity.

Newsom said he is also strengthening a mask requirement and is considering a curfew on business hours.

The state of Michigan and the City of Philadelphia are putting similar measures in place. And New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced Monday…

MURPHY: Last week we asked indoor dining to close at 10. Today we’re going to reduce the amount of folks that could gather indoors for an event down to 10 people. 

Delaware is also limiting indoor gatherings. And Iowa and Pennsylvania have widened their mask requirements. 

Trump campaign argues case in Pennsylvania » Meantime, in a courtroom in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign argued its case Tuesday as it looks to stop the state from certifying the results of the presidential election. 

The president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani joined the campaign’s legal effort this week. He said the Trump campaign was—quote—“prepared to call witnesses to demonstrate” that many “ballots were counted surreptitiously.” And he added…

GIULIANI: This will be now our first established vehicle on our way to the Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania’s Democratic Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar wants the case thrown out. She said what the Trump campaign is casting as fraud is—quote—“at best, garden-variety irregularities.”

And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered a legal blow to the campaign Tuesday. The court ruled 5-to-2 that election officials did not wrongly block the campaign from observing the counting of mail-in ballots. 

Georgia uncovers 2,600 uncounted ballots during recount » Meantime, the vote margin in Georgia may tighten in the president’s favor after officials discovered an election error. 

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said more than 2,600 uncounted ballots surfaced during a state recount. He said they were not initially counted because officials failed to upload votes from a memory card in a ballot-scanning machine. 

RAFFENSPERGER: The county election official, he was out and he assigned a person that was inexperienced for a very critical role, and they messed up. It was human error. It wasn’t the machine. And we’ve asked for his resignation and so have the county commissioners as I understand it. 

Floyd County Republican Party Chair Luke Martin called the discovery of the uncounted ballots “concerning.” But he said it “doesn’t appear to be a widespread issue.” 

The newly discovered ballots won’t tip the election there. Prior to the recount, Biden was leading Trump in Georgia by about 14,000 votes. 

NATO chief warns against withdrawal from Afghanistan » NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday warned against a hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan. That after a report that President Trump is expected to withdraw a large number of U.S. troops from the country soon.

Stolteberg said “no NATO ally wants to stay any longer than necessary.” But “the price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high.”

Nearly 12,000 NATO troops from dozens of countries are in Afghanistan training and advising security forces. Less than half are American troops.

Back in Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also warned against a pullout. 

MCCONNELL: The spectacle of U.S. troops abandoning facilities and equipment, leaving the field in Afghanistan to the Taliaban and ISIS would be broadcast around the world as a symbol of U.S. defeat and humiliation and of victory for Islamic extremism.  

The expected plans would cut U.S. troop numbers almost in half by Jan. 15th, leaving 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.

Iota continues to pound Central America » The storm that was Hurricane Iota is drenching El Salvador this morning with heavy rain. 

Iota slammed the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua Monday night as a strong Category 4 storm packing winds close to 160 miles per hour. 

It then tore across Honduras on Tuesday. 

It was a devastating blow for a region just hit by Hurricane Eta just 2 weeks ago. 

Eric Blake with the National Hurricane Center said the only good news is the speed of the storm. 

BLAKE: The only saving grace for this system is that it’s moving a lot faster, so maybe the rainfall effects won’t be as bad. However, the infrastructure has been significantly weakened, and Iota was stronger.

The extent of the damage in Nicaragua and Honduras was still unclear on Tuesday because communications are down and roads are blocked across much of the region.

Sen. Grassley tests positive for COVID-19 » Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley has tested positive for COVID-19. 

The 87-year-old Republican said in a statement Tuesday that he’s “feeling good” and will continue working from home. 

He missed Tuesday’s votes in the Senate—the first votes he’s missed 27 years.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: 2020 election polling errors.

Plus, Katie Gaultney on gaining a new perspective.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 18th of November, 2020. 

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: presidential polling.

In the days leading up to the election, political analysts predicted we would have an early night. At the very least, they said we’d know the winner within a few days of polls closing. But, two weeks later, several key states still haven’t certified their votes. And election uncertainty drags on.

REICHARD: Analysts who predicted a big win for Joe Biden relied on polls to make those predictions. And as the returns slowly came in on Election Night, it became clear the polls underestimated Trump’s support again. So why do pollsters have so much trouble projecting election results in the Trump era?

Joining us now to talk about it is Karlyn Bowman. She studies polling and analyzes public opinion as a senior fellow for the American Enterprise Institute.

Good morning, and welcome back!

KARLYN BOWMAN, GUEST: Good morning. I’m delighted to be with you.

REICHARD: For months leading up to the election, polls predicted Joe Biden would win pretty decisively. To say the least, that didn’t happen! He did win about 4 million more votes overall than President Trump. So, what did the pollsters get right, and what did they get wrong?

BOWMAN: I think it’s premature to make any judgements at this point about what the pollsters got right and wrong. The American Association for Public Opinion Research has convened an expert panel not only of practitioners but of statisticians and methodologists and they’re going to dig deep to try to figure out what went wrong this time.

But the polls are having an increasingly difficult time. This isn’t true just in the Trump administration. It predates that overall. Response rates are down very significantly. About two decades ago the response rates were about 36 percent to a well-designed poll. That’s now below 10 percent. And we keep asking ourselves whether we can create samples that look like America. The pollsters still feel pretty confident about that, but there are a number of things that could have gone wrong in 2020. And some of them are things that went wrong in 2016 and I know the AAPOR committee—the American Association for Public Opinion Research—will be revisiting that.

A couple of things that they learned in 2016 that I think were very important—some of which apply to 2020, some of which do not—to begin, in 2016 there were a lot of late deciders, people who made up their minds in the last two or three days of that election. And usually late deciders are not a very big group, but they usually break pretty evenly for one candidate or the other. Now, in 2016 they broke overwhelmingly for Donald Trump, so that contributed to the polls’ error—particularly in the industrial midwestern states. There don’t appear to be as many undecided voters in 2020 as there were in 2016. All the pre-election polls showed a very small number of voters who hadn’t made up their mind. So, that’s one thing the pollsters will have to look at again.

There are other problems. We’ve heard so much about a shy Trump vote. The idea of voters just not responding honestly to the polls goes back a very long time to Tom Bradley’s election in California where the polls showed the black candidate winning and in fact he lost. The Doug Wilder race in Virginia, a similar pattern there. But, again, there are reasons in different elections why some people just choose not to respond. So, that is conceivably a problem.

Another problem, and we saw this in the Australian election where voting is mandatory in Australia and yet all of the major pollsters got that election outcome wrong, as did the exit pollsters—a very significant miss. And we’ve seen a lot of those around the globe. But one of the phenomena that you saw in the Australian election is something that we call herding, where all of the pollsters seem to move in one direction together and there are very few outliers, and that’s what we saw in this campaign overall. So it’s possible that that was another factor. But there’s still many unknowns at this point.

REICHARD: Right. The last time we had you on the program, you noted that pollsters did a pretty good job in 2016 of forecasting the national vote but a terrible job predicting state outcomes. Would you say they learned from their mistakes this time around?

BOWMAN: Some of the state polls were wildly off in this election campaign. I think what we’ll be looking at is how they constructed their samples this time, whether or not they address some of the problems they had in 2016. For example, in 2016 we know a lot of the state pollsters underestimated the percentage of people in those industrial midwestern states with less than a college degree. Most pollsters tried to correct for that, but perhaps they didn’t correct enough or perhaps there were other problems with the polls in 2020. But there were certainly some significant misses across the country. There were also some states where the polls were absolutely spot on. I think of Colorado. I think of several other states like that where throughout the campaign, the polls hit it on the nose.

REICHARD: You mentioned earlier about the shy Trump voter. There are reasons for that. Some people have privacy concerns about it. Some people fear reprisal. That kind of thing. But do you think that idea of a shy Trump voter explains the discrepancy between predictions and the election results? Can you comment on that some more?

BOWMAN: I doubt if the shy Trump voter phenomenon—to the extent that it’s real—would explain all of the misses that we saw in this election campaign. The shy Trump vote, if you look back to the analysis in 2016 and what went wrong, the pollsters didn’t see any difference in the way that people responded to anonymous online surveys and to live telephone interviews where they were speaking to a person and might have been more cautious about their own view. So, they didn’t see any significant differences in 2016. Perhaps there were much more significant differences in 2020, but I don’t think it can explain all of the errors. Let’s look at a state like Maine where every single poll conducted in the course of that election campaign in 2020 showed Collins losing, but yet she won by a fairly comfortable margin. So, something is seriously wrong in the state polls at a certain level.

REICHARD: What adjustments do you think polling companies ought to make based on what happened this year?

BOWMAN: Well, what we saw going back now for eight years is some of the major polling companies have gotten out of the business and I’m not sure I would urge that, but I think they would have to think very carefully if they’ve had problems in the past whether they should go ahead and do election polling. Polls are valuable in many ways. I’ve never thought their best use was to make policy or to make predictions. And so in that sense I would like to see the pollsters move away—to some degree—from the prediction business. But, of course, it’s been around for a long time. George Gallup asked the first questions in the 1930s: “If the election were held today, for whom would you vote?” So those questions have been around for a very long time.

REICHARD: We look to polls to tell us about lots of things besides elections. Should we be reluctant to believe polls going forward? How can we know they’re accurate?

BOWMAN: Well, I think if you look at a lot of them that ask different kinds of questions about policy issues or about personal preferences, you can learn a lot. They’re a blunt tool. They’re a very blunt tool. They’re a crude instrument. But that said, if you look at a lot of polls—never look at a single poll—I think you can learn a lot about what makes a complex country tick.

REICHARD: Here’s a philosophy question for you: humans seem to want to predict the future, know what’s going to happen. That kind of drives our emphasis on polling. But when they’re wrong, it causes so much angst. Do you think what happened this year is going to change that?

BOWMAN: It’s really hard to know. I guess people pay casual attention to these pre-election polls. I just have never been certain how much attention they’re paying. I think the pollsters now have a black eye for the second time. And in that sense perhaps people will pay a little less attention to the polls going forward. But if you use them properly and see them just as one of many tools to understand this very complex country, I think they can serve us well.

REICHARD: Karlyn Bowman is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where she studies polling and public opinion. Thanks so much for joining us today!

BOWMAN: Thank you very much. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD Tour with Africa correspondent Onize Ohikere.

ONIZE OHIKERE, REPORTER: Mozambique ISIS beheadings—We start today here in Africa.

ISIS jihadists turned a soccer field in Mozambique into an execution ground last week. The militants beheaded more than 50 people in a village in the Cabo Delgado province. The latest attack is part of a violent campaign that has forced more than 400,000 people to flee the area. Insurgents loosely affiliated with ISIS have beheaded dozens of people over the past two weeks, wiping out whole families, and kidnapping women and children. The attacks have drawn international condemnation.

AUDIO: The situation is desperate. Those who remain have been left deprived of basic necessities and are at risk of being killed, sexually assaulted, abused, kidnapped, or forcibly recruited by armed groups.

Cabo Delgado is rich in oil. And its $60 billion dollar natural gas industry is heavily guarded by the nation’s military. But the region has become increasingly unstable, sparking fears that ISIS may be gaining dominance in the area. 

Ethiopia fires missiles at Eritrea—Next, we go to Ethiopia.

AUDIO: [SPOKESMAN, AMHARIC]

A spokesman for rebels in the Tigray region has confirmed firing missiles at neighboring Eritrea. The rockets targeted two airports in the country’s capital.

The Tigray spokesman threatened more airstrikes, and said the region would continue to fight efforts to, quote, “subjugate the Tigray people.” The rebels claim Eritrea sent tanks and troops into Tigray to support the Ethiopian government’s attempt to quell unrest. Eritrea denies those claims.

The attacks mark a huge escalation in Ethiopia’s brewing civil war. Fighting broke out two weeks ago when Tigray forces attacked a government military base. The conflict could lead to an all-out civil war, fracturing Ethiopia, and destabilizing the entire Horn of Africa. Thousands of Ethiopians have already fled to neighboring Sudan.

Mexico floods indigenous area—Next, we go to Central America.

AUDIO: [PEOPLE TALKING]

Mexico’s president is facing criticism for ordering a dam release into an impoverished region of the country.

Hurricane Eta brought record floods to the country earlier this month, submerging streets and homes. A dam in the Tabasco region quickly filled to capacity, and officials said they needed to strategically release some of the floodwater.

Instead of releasing the water into the region’s capital, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador ordered it released into nearby plains. They are home to about 83,000 indigenous people. López Obrador said more people would have suffered if he had flooded the city. The strategic flooding forced thousands of families from their homes.

U.S., Israel kill top al Qaeda leader—And finally, we end today in the Middle East.

Israel and the United States teamed up earlier this year to kill a senior al-Qaeda leader in Iran. Officials confirmed the operation over the weekend.

Abu Mohammed al-Masri was al-Qaeda’s second in command. The United States gave Israel intelligence on his location and alias. And Israeli assassins killed him on August 7th. That was the anniversary of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Al-Masri was widely believed to have orchestrated those attacks.

That’s this week’s World Tour. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Ohikere in Abuja, Nigeria.

NICK EICHER, HOST: As if 2020 could get no stranger.

Police in Scotts Valley, California, asked folks to keep an eye out for Bigfoot. Yes, Sasquatch. 

Locals were pretty distressed over this—if not a bloodthirsty creature on the loose, then the idea that police want the citizens on the lookout for a myth.

But some good news came early Thursday: officers found Bigfoot and he was a little banged up, but he was definitely still intact. His hair was perfect.

And you’re thinking, wait. This is a hoax, right?

Actually, no.

This particular Bigfoot’s guarded the entrance to a museum devoted to lore about him, the Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton, California. Thieves apparently made off with the 200 pound, four foot wooden sculpture of his likeness. 

But when word got out that authorities were on the trail, they dumped Bigfoot by the roadside. 

So say what you want about 2020. But at least you can say this: We’ve found Bigfoot!

AUDIO: Aaahhhhoooooo!

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 18th. Thank you for joining us today for WORLD Radio! 

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: an important, yet difficult topic and one that you may consider unsuitable for young ones.

So we want to give you a moment to grab your device and press pause, and invite you to revisit this later on.

EICHER: All right, well, fair warning. And we have another 30 seconds before we start the report. For now, I’ll start to set it up. 

The city is Houston, Texas. It’s known for many positive things: the oil industry, aerospace with NASA, professional sports. It’s also known for one very negative thing: human trafficking.

But for the last three years one man has walked the streets of one part of town pointing women from the darkness to the light.

REICHARD: WORLD correspondent Bonnie Pritchett spent an evening with him and other volunteers. Here’s their story.

BOB WICKER: It’s cold out here. You want some warm stuff? We’ve got some gloves, scarves…

REPORTER, BONNIE PRITCHETT: It’s a chilly 60 degrees tonight on a busy, 6-lane thoroughfare on Houston’s east side. Bob Wicker is handing out scarves, gloves, snacks, and the love of Jesus to women walking by.

The dropping temperature is usually a welcome respite from Houston’s oppressive heat. But the cooler weather only reminds the scantily-clad prostitutes that their working conditions will only become increasingly insufferable.

WICKER: So, The Track here is Bissonnet. Most of the women walk on Bissonnet but they get picked up on one of the side streets…

The Track is a mile and a half loop of busy streets where women who hide behind false identities sell themselves to men who don’t care to know who they are.

WICKER: That’s The Track…

Wicker volunteers with Elijah Rising, a faith-based, non-profit ministry that offers women rescue and recovery from human trafficking.

Every Friday night from 8 until midnight—sometimes, later—Wicker and a small band of volunteers join the women on the sidewalks and offer them a kind word, small gifts—tonight its scarves and gloves—and a business card with a phone number for safe passage out of the sex trade. Wicker calls it the Golden Ticket.

They ask each woman her name and offer to pray with her. Most of the women are affable and accept the offer. Others decline, politely, and keep walking. They’re busy.

WICKER: God I want you to show both of them there is nothing they’ve ever done that can possibly keep your love away from them, Lord. That you love them so much…

Earlier, at the Elijah Rising office, Wicker explained how a 55-old husband, father, and security and fire safety director can minister to women whose relationships with men have been tumultuous.

WICKER: I think it’s an advantage in many ways because God has given me a father’s heart. But there are those women that have never known a father’s love and can’t see God yet. And, so, they need a Christian man with a father’s heart to represent that for them so they can see that. And they respond to that.

And there is something that only a man can tell these women.

WICKER: When, as man, I can look one of those women in the eye and I can repent to her on behalf of men for every man that has yelled at her, screamed at her, abused her, raped her, attacked her, beaten her, it has a huge, huge impact. But those women need to know that there are men out there who do not treat women like that because they’ve never seen it. They’ve never seen unconditional love. And when you show it to them, it’s beautiful.

AUDIO: [SETTING UP TABLES AND TRAFFIC]

VOICES: Do you want some snacks…

Back at The Track, Wicker is greeting women passing by.

VOICE: God bless you…

WICKER: We’re busy early. Hang on. Let me get names here for our prayer list. Let me get my notes set up…

He takes out his phone and opens a notes app and types in the names of the four women he’s greeted in the last five minutes.

He can’t recollect the name of the first woman he prayed with, so he types what he thinks is correct…

WICKER: God knows her real name. So, it’s all good. Sometimes they don’t tell us their names and its OK. We make up names for them and God knows their real name.

In the coming week the Elijah Rising staff and volunteers will pray over each name. Before this night is over, Wicker will have 29 names on the list.

Next Friday, he’ll have a new list.

Most of the women walking by the ministry volunteers appear to be in their 20’s. Others look older. Some younger.

Wicker doesn’t excuse the women’s behavior but explained the cycles of abuse have left them with few, if any, choices.

WICKER: When your choices are horrible or horrible and you don’t understand what the choice you’re making leads to until its way too late, it’s really not a choice at all…

He said, his job isn’t to judge them but show them the unconditional love of Christ and help them leave this place.

By 9 PM four more Elijah Rising volunteers arrive. Wicker gathers some gifts and snacks from the table and begins walking The Track. He recounts the history of prostitution in this part of town. He points to a parking lot where he said pimps keep a watchful eye on the women. He prays with them too.

On a dark side street where buyers pick up the women, Wicker offers one woman a scarf. She declines. He asks her name.

BONNIE: Did she give her name?
WICKER: No. She said, “Don’t Matter.” So, I put her down as “Matter” for now. God knows her name…

On Bissonnet, the first woman Wicker prayed with tonight—the woman whose name he couldn’t recollect—approaches and asks for more prayer. He readily agrees, calling her by the name he wrote in his app. Seeing her surprised response, he figures he got it wrong.

WICKER: I’m horrible with names.
WOMAN: You know what? That’s crazy. Cuz I told him…

She had given Wicker a fake name. But he had called her by her real name.

WICKER: Do you know, God often tells us real names out here or leads them to do that.
WOMAN: My God, that’s crazy. But I need it right now.
WICKER: Father, in Jesus name, God, right now, God you know what she needs. God that you would protect her and guide her out of this darkness into your light. In the almighty name of Jesus, I pray…
WOMAN: Thank you guys.
WICKER: Can I give you a hug.
WOMAN: Yes, you can! Because you just…
WICKER: God bless you.
WOMAN: You didn’t no guess my name. You said my name!

WICKER: That happens all the time. They either confess their names initially, and then they go, ‘Oop. I mean. You heard it. It’s too late.” Or, in her case, what happened? So I will note that is her real name.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett in Houston, Texas.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, November 18th. Good morning to you! This is The World and Everything in It, supported by listeners like you. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Katie Gaultney now on how a trip to Disney World in January helped prepare her for the rest of 2020.

AUDIO: [DISNEY WORLD CROWD]

KATIE GAULTNEY, COMMENTATOR: Back in January, before “COVID-19” was a part of our collective vocabulary, my husband and I took our family to Disney World. We spent our first day at the Magic Kingdom, running from ride to ride with a fully loaded double stroller and two small kids on foot. By midday, we were whipped, and we thought we’d take a break in one of the park’s theaters. It was showing a 3D movie starring Donald Duck. 

MICKEY’S PHILHARMAGIC: Oh boy, oh boy! [MUSIC]

It’s funny to think back now on the park attendants handing us 3D glasses as we walked in, recycled from the guests before us. I didn’t even think about whether the glasses were sanitized. I was too focused on trying to get my 2-year-old daughter, Daisy, to wear them. She was fussy and didn’t like having something on her face. As my older kids gasped and giggled at the items apparently jumping out at them from the screen, Daisy whined and thrashed, confused by watching a 3D movie without the 3D glasses that would have made sense of it all. 

“Daisy, trust me! Just wear the glasses. Then you’ll see how cool this is! You’ll see what the rest of us see!” We all tried to convince her, to no avail. She may have rested her legs for a bit, but she was grumpier than ever leaving the theater.

I think back on that moment from time to time. And I wonder if my Father in Heaven sometimes pleads with me the way I did with Daisy: “Trust me. You can’t see what I see right now, but follow my lead, and eventually this will make sense.”

Of course, there are no special glasses to give us the perspective to make sense of this tumultuous year. No lens to bring the image of 2020 into focus—a year that has left business owners hurting, taken loved ones, sickened tens of millions, and led many to unhealthy coping habits. 

NBC: America’s new normal/ We are dealing with a crisis that we have never seen in our lifetime/ Do not send your children to schools/ No one should be on the streets/ The healthcare system braces for the worst…

Or is there? 

Doesn’t God’s word act as a light in the darkness? I find myself clinging to these truths amid so many unknowns: 

In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart; I have overcome the world. 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Oh, and here’s a good one from the mouth of that fussy babe herself. 

DAISY: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. [Laughter]

I’m Katie Gaultney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: We’re hearing that cases of COVID-19 are on the rise. But so, too, are opioid overdoses and mental health challenges. We’ll tell you how the pandemic has created a crisis of despair.

And, we’ll introduce you to a family driven by unique designs.

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.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Go now in grace and peace.

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