The World and Everything in It: November 18, 2022

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday: a special guest who’ll talk about how satire can advance a Biblical worldview.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Right, the King Bee of fake news you can trust: Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon.

Also today a review of WORLD’s Book of the Year.

And Word Play with George Grant.

REICHARD: It’s Friday, 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: The news is next. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Pelosi » It is the end of an era for Democrats.

A standing ovation on the House floor Thursday for Speaker Nancy Pelosi after she announced that she’ll step down from leadership in January.

PELOSI: Now we must move boldly into the future, grounded by the principles that have propelled us this far, and open to fresh possibilities.

The 82-year-old San Francisco lawmaker has led House Democrats for nearly 20 years. Pelosi is the only woman to wield the speaker’s gavel. And while she’s stepping aside from leadership, she will remain in Congress.

House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries appears to be the frontrunner to replace Pelosi.

GOP senators grill Wray » Also at the Capitol on Thursday: 

AUDIO: [gavel] The committee will come to order.

Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Senator Ron Johnson said numerous FBI employees have come forward to lawmakers …

JOHNSON: Blowing the whistle on corruption and some of the highest levels of the FBI. Do you commit that the FBI will not retaliate against whistleblowers?

WRAY: Senator, we will not retaliate against whistleblowers … 

Among other things, Republicans allege that FBI officials engaged in a politically motivated cover-up of damaging information about the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

House Republicans have vowed to launch an investigation into Biden family business dealings when the new Congress is seated in January.

Threats to homeland » Wray testified to the committee about threats to the nation. He said China remains a top focus. He cited examples of Chinese operatives in the United States pursuing and harassing Chinese dissidents.

WRAY: We’ve had situations where they’ve planted bugs in Americans’ cars, for example. And one of the things we’re seeing more and more is they’re hiring private investigators here in the US to essentially be their agents. 

That comes two days after a panel of experts issued a report to Congress warning about China’s cyber warfare capabilities.

Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas also testified at the hearing. Republicans pressed him about the border crisis. Ranking Member Sen. Rob Portman:

PORTMAN: Mr. Secretary, is it true that when President Biden took office, is it true that the number of migrants trying to unlawfully enter the United States has increased substantially, yes or no?

MAYORKAS: It has, and there are many different factors that contribute to that.

The secretary said upheaval in Central and South America is largely to blame.

He confirmed a record 2.3 million migrant encounters at the border in the last fiscal year.

Ukraine » President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says 10 million Ukrainians are without power as Russia continues to attack Ukraine’s power grid.

ZELENSKYY: [Ukrainian]

Russian missiles rained down on Ukraine’s energy facilities again on Thursday as the first snow of the season fell in Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials have warned of a rough winter ahead as the government works to fend off ongoing air assaults and repair damage to the power grid.

Meantime, the United Nations on Thursday announced the extension of a deal with Russia to allow the safe export of grain from Ukraine.

Fed rate hikes / Mortgage rate drops » Average long-term U.S. mortgage rate dropped this week, but the Federal Reserve has signaled more rate hikes ahead. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Long-term mortgages tumbled by nearly a half-point, from a little over 7% to about 6.6%.

But that’s still more than double the rate of one year ago.

The rate for a 15-year mortgage also dipped slightly to about 6%.

Mortgage rates could rise again, with the Federal Reserve all but promising more rate hikes in the months ahead to battle inflation.

Two weeks ago, the Fed raised its short-term lending rate by another 0.75 percentage points for a fourth time this year.

For WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

FTX » The man who had to clean up the mess at Enron says the collapse at cryptocurrency firm FTX is even worse.

In a filing by the new CEO of the bankrupt firm, John Ray III says the breakdown of FTX was a “complete failure” of corporate control.

The top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry, agrees.

MCHENRY: It is a malfeasance of regulators to not address the faults and failures and potential consumer harm.

FTX officials allegedly used company funds to pay for lavish lifestyles.

So far, debtors have found and secured “only a fraction” of the group’s digital assets that they hope to recover.

The company valued its assets between $10 billion to $50 billion, with a similar estimate for its liabilities.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: Culture Friday, with special guest Seth Dillon.

Plus, WORLD’s Book of the Year.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s the 18th day of November, 2022.

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. It’s Culture Friday!

Today, a special guest: the CEO of the Babylon Bee, Seth Dillon. He needs no introduction.

I’m glad you could be with us. Morning, Seth.

SETH DILLON, GUEST: Great to be with you.

REICHARD: Great to have you. Listen, we’re a newsy program, so I want to start with the big news of the week‚ where I think there’s a real intersection of news and satire, the most colorful political candidate of my lifetime—Donald Trump has tossed his hat in the ring. You’ve got to love that.

DILLON: I mean, we love it either way. I think Trump is actually a difficult one for us. Just in a sense that he's, you know, he's kind of like a caricature of a person. He's got such a big personality already. And he says so many outlandish things that it can be, honestly, can be challenging to satirize a character like that. Same with Biden, you know. It's hard to write jokes that are funnier than Biden speeches. So it's a challenge for us honestly, when we have these kind of caricatures of individuals in these positions of power.

EICHER: That’s one of the things I appreciate about the Bee, Seth, I mean, you’re consciously conservative and make no apologies for that. But even Christian conservatives aren’t safe from being lampooned in the Bee, all in good fun.

DILLON: Yep. I think it's one of the refreshing things about the Bee is that no target's really off limits. I think it's a healthy thing to engage in introspective, comedic humor where you're, you know, you're self deprecating, you're kind of examining your own actions and motives and seeing where your own hypocrisy and shortcomings lie. I think that's a healthy thing. And I think, it's good if we are willing to take ourselves less seriously. So yeah, I mean, poking at all sides is kind of the goal I, we do tend to as Christian conservatives, writing from that perspective, obviously, we're going to see certain things that are much more deserving of our attention than others, especially the things that are really important from a cultural standpoint that are having, you know, real-world impact and are causing serious harm on a wide scale. You know, those are the kinds of things that are going to attract I think, the majority of our attention.

REICHARD: We know that Babylon Bee humor involves mockery. Some people aren’t comfortable with mocking others because they think it’s mean. But you’ve said that you think mockery is a moral imperative. How so?

DILLON: Yes, yeah, I think that the way that I put it is that the absurd has only become sacred because it hasn't been sufficiently mocked. And the reason I say that is because, you know, we're living in this current age where up is down, left is right, black is white, everything has been kind of inverted, especially from a moral standpoint, where, you know, the most lewd and indecent behavior is praised and valued. And, you know, traditional values are vilified. In an environment like that, I think, especially for the sake of younger people, there is a moral imperative to, to ridicule bad ideas before they take root, before they become popular. And before they become off limits, we've already reached a point where a lot of these things, we're not even allowed to joke about them without being considered, you know, crossing a line without it being considered hate speech or something like that. Because we've now built these values, these progressive far left values into the terms of service of our social networks and all of these things into our cultural language and mores. And so you can't even touch these things, they're off limits, if you touch them, you're bad. And so that's a bad place to be in and I think that we wouldn't have necessarily gotten here, at least not as quickly as we did. If people had been more quick to laugh at these things instead of laud them.

EICHER: Seth, I read your essay for the December 3rd issue of WORLD and I’ll link to it in today’s transcript—brand-new piece—it’s on the website this morning at WNG.org. But it was really good, big, substantial piece, 2,500 words, really appreciated it.

DILLON: Thank you.

EICHER: Oh, absolutely. You told a story I didn’t know about your purchase of the Bee, your relationship with the founder, Adam Ford.

Seth, you’re too young to remember the businessman Victor Kiam, who bought Remington, the electric-shaver company in the late ’70s, early ’80s. He became the pitchman for the product with a famous tagline, “I loved the Remington shaver so much, I bought the company.”

So that image flashed through my mind as I read your WORLD piece and I thought, here’s Seth Dillon, the Babylon Bee made me laugh so much, I bought the company. That’s what happened, isn’t it?

DILLON: It is, I mean, like I say in the essay, you know, it wasn't my design. It wasn't my initial motivation for reaching out to Adam who founded The Bee. You know, I was really just looking for any way to get involved and, and with him looking to sell it, I really didn't feel like I could pass up the opportunity to try to do something with it, you know, it was, it was kind of a fledgling thing that was it was taking off, it was getting a lot of attention, but hadn't really been turned into a business yet, and I thought maybe I'd be able to do something with that. And it would be a lot of fun and potentially very impactful along the way. And I had no idea, you know, the heights we'd get to so quickly, and the kind of controversy we'd find ourselves in the middle of, and the kind of impact we'd be having on the, on the public discourse. So, you know, it was, I think it was a great investment from a business standpoint, but perhaps an even greater one from, from the perspective of, you know, advancing a biblical worldview and speaking truth to culture through humor.

REICHARD: I’ll change the subject a tad here. I’m always interested in the parenting styles of people who bring up a kid like you, who grows up to be the CEO of the Babylon Bee. What can you tell us about your mom and dad?

DILLON: You know, my parents are, they're both still with us, thankfully. And they are the most, you know, they're very loving, sweet people. They were in ministry, throughout their career, my dad was a pastor. And so, you know, he's retired now. But I grew up in the church, and I grew up in a Christian home, you know, we had, we had good values, they had a good marriage, and we had a very healthy upbringing. And I think that, you know, we weren't in a family that was extremely strict and rigid, or legalistic, or anything like that, there was a lot of freedom to make mistakes, but also a lot of grace. And a lot of really good instruction, in example, set for us. So I think they really shaped who I am. And they also really cultivated in me a desire to read and learn and grow personally. And so I did a lot of reading, both as a student when I was a kid, and then and then as I went off into college, and from there on, you know, reading a lot of theology and philosophy and the Bible, and all of those things, you know, really giving yourself a firm philosophical and theological foundation to deal with and ward off bad ideas, I think is extremely valuable, a valuable thing to equip your kids with. And they gave me that so they gave me a love for the truth and for learning, and I can't thank them enough for that.

EICHER: I’ve got to ask you about going on Joe Rogan—that must’ve been an experience. We talked about it here back in August when it happened. I remember John Stonestreet offering his plaudits and then just making the point that everyone who’s pro-life really needs to be able to give an answer and not just leave it to the pros—especially in a post-Roe environment, when pro-lifers are getting their hats handed to them, at least at the ballot box.

But I just thought you really showed the way there, in front of a big audience, with an intimidating interlocutor like Rogan. So, great job.

Here’s what I want to know. How prepared were you for the question? Did you anticipate it and come up with something beforehand or did this just happen?

DILLON: Yeah. It's just happened. I mean, there was preparation, but preparation in the sense that I had been discussing and studying and debating these kinds of issues for years leading up to that conversation. So, you know, I've talked about abortion and the pro life stance and the reasons to be pro life online all the time, on Twitter, and engage on those issues out in the public square. So I was equipped in that sense where I had, you know, I knew what I believed, and I was able to articulate it, I was not prepared to have that conversation at that time. Because, you know, there's no, there's no telling where your conversation is gonna go with Rogen leading up to the all that we talked about beforehand was, here's the place and the time and, and that's it. And so there was no, there's no shownotes where you're running through, you're not handing them any talking points, you're not you're not discussing what subjects you're going to be touching on it's just whatever's on Joe's mind that's where you go, so I did not expect to hit that topic at all but I was prepared for it at least in the sense that I had things to say about that topic and so fortunately, I was able to not get too nervous and articulate them I hope and I think pretty well and I think it generated a was thought provoking for him you know he stopped for a moment and had to think and and consider where I was coming from and that that's really all you can ask for in a situation like that.

EICHER: I mentioned your WORLD Magazine piece. I want to quote some of your words and ask you a question here as we wrap up.

“Somehow,” you write, “we’ve found ourselves on the front lines of a battle for the preservation of freedom and the restoration of sanity. I’m not sure how that happened. But I do know that satire is never more necessary than when reality and rationality are under attack.”

Seth, has there ever a time when it wasn’t? And what makes it unique now?

DILLON: Has there ever been a time where rationality and reality weren't under attack? Is that what you're asking? Probably not. I mean, nothing's new under the sun. That's a biblical idea. But it's repeated so much to the point where is it even meaningful? I don't know. But I do think that there are times where things become a little bit more exaggerated and pronounced, the pendulum kind of swings back and forth to these extremes. And we happen, we just so happen to be living in a time. You know, I quote Chesterton all the time, he said, the world has become too absurd to be satirized. And he said that back in 1911. And then he and then in 1926, he said something like, you know, we'll soon be living in a world where where you are, you can't say that the grass is green, or the sky is blue, or that two and two make four, you'll be, you know, shouted down as a lunatic for doing so. You know, we're in that world. Now. I think we've arrived in that mad world. And we happen to be living in one of these times where things are particularly pronounced. I mean, if you go back just 10, 15, 20 years ago, a lot of the really crazy ideas like you can, in fact, be a boy trapped in a girl's body. And you can know that when you're three years old. And the correct answer to that is drugs and mutilation. I mean, like these types of things would have been absolutely insane to people, even on the left 10, 15, 20 years ago, and now they're very commonplace. And so, you know, the extremes can become more pronounced and I hope the pendulum swings back the other way, and I hope comedy plays a role in making that happen.

REICHARD: All right, what a treat. Seth Dillon our special guest on Culture Friday. Seth is CEO of The Babylon Bee. He has a terrific article in the newest WORLD Magazine that released just this morning. I hope you’ll check that out at WNG.org. Seth, again, thanks for being with us today!

DILLON: You're welcome. Thank you for having me on. It was a great discussion. Appreciate it.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, some of the close midterm races are taking a long time to settle.

But one race in northern Michigan has finally come to a conclusion in a civilized manner.

Brittany VanderWall and Timeen Adair both ran to fill a city council seat in Rogers City. The election ended in a tie at 616 votes each and they came up with a simple solution.

Two pieces of paper were folded and placed in a bowl. Typed on one sheet was the word “Elected.” On the other, “Not Elected.”

Adair drew the winning sheet and will be the newest member of the city council.

But VanderWall was a good sport about it. She said, “I told people, either way, Rogers City wins.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, November 18th. We thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: WORLD’s book of the year.

This year, our editors and reviewers at WORLD Magazine chose Thomas Kidd’s recent biography of Thomas Jefferson. Kidd is historian at Midwestern Theological Seminary, and the book is titled Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh. Here’s arts and media editor Collin Garbarino.

COLLIN GARBARINO: When I was a child, Americans still believed the Founding Fathers were great men who did great things. When we learned about U.S. presidents in school, we only learned about the good they did. Or we were simply taught whatever they did was in fact good. Things have changed a lot in the last 30 years. Now Americans are just as likely to despise the Founders as we are to revere them. WORLD chose Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Truth by Thomas Kidd as its book of the year because this excellent and timely book offers a more judicious view of our third president. Here’s Kidd reading from his introduction.

KIDD: This is the biography of a brilliant, but troubled person. Thomas Jefferson would seem to need no introduction, yet among the Founding Fathers he is the greatest enigma and the greatest source of controversy. Jefferson left a massive collection of carefully curated papers, but he seems virtually unknowable as a man.

Kidd walks us through Jefferson’s life chronologically—his upbringing and education, his contributions to the independence movement, his time as president, and his later years as the founder of the University of Virginia. We meet a man acquainted with loss—few of his children with his wife Martha lived to adulthood. Problems plagued him, but many he brought on himself. Jefferson was an intellectual, but the book explains his beliefs were often at odds with his practice.

KIDD: Most of the controversy about him comes back to questions of character. How could the author of the Declaration of Independence keep hundreds of human beings in bondage?

Jefferson himself recognized the contradiction between championing freedom and enslaving people. As a young politician, Jefferson suggested Virginians free their slaves. Throughout his life, abolitionists asked him to help in their cause, but the older Jefferson got—and the more precarious his financial situation became—the less interested in emancipation he was. And there were other things Jefferson did that didn’t match up with what he believed.

KIDD: How could he carry on a longstanding sexual relationship with one of his bondspeople who was also his dead wife’s half sister. His relationship with Sally Hemings produced one and perhaps as many as six children. The children who survived to adulthood, he acknowledged only by letting them go free, unlike most of the other people he owned. “Hypocrisy!” Jefferson’s critics cry. When you look closer at Jefferson, however, hypocrisy doesn’t quite penetrate the mystery—doesn’t explain Jefferson’s troubled genius and vacillating life. For all his blazing intellect and inspired rhetoric, Jefferson held a host of beliefs and inclinations that were unreconciled and maybe irreconcilable.

From his youth, Jefferson had a complicated relationship with Christianity. Historians often claim he had a secular worldview or was perhaps a deist. Kidd shows that Jefferson cobbled together his own brand of faith that was more robust than deism, but fell short of orthodoxy. He considered himself a Christian, even though he thought the Trinity an absurd doctrine. Jefferson refused to believe in Jesus’ divinity, but he found comfort in Jesus’ moral teachings, believing humanity could perfect itself. He promoted a strict moralism he was never able to live up to.

Jefferson preached a gospel of financial stewardship, but throughout his life his debts increased due to his profligate spending.

KIDD: To be fair, most of us struggle with forms of incoherence and hypocrisy, and it is undoubtedly easier to see these problems with the benefit of historical hindsight. We never know if we would have done better if we had lived the same life as a person in the past. We will never know if we had outdone Jefferson, if placed in his situation.

Kidd believes that how Americans view the Founders has high political stakes…more so now than ever before. If we’re going to be honest about ourselves and our country, we need to come to an honest assessment of men like Jefferson as well.

KIDD: But if we are to judge historical figures, we should judge them by the standards of their time. I would argue that Jefferson and the major Founders remain valuable and even essential subjects of study in spite of their manifest flaws.

Instead of renaming schools and toppling statues, Kidd proposes that we ponder hard truths about the American founding.

KIDD: Time-bound self-interested men framed the world’s most enduring republic on the bedrock of the slave-owner Jefferson’s glorious principle that all men are created equal. These paradoxes warrant sober reflection and further study. We should steer clear of the excesses of either patriotic apologetics or iconoclastic destruction. The Founders, including Jefferson, were hardly pristine saints. But maybe we’re not either.

The thing I like most about Thomas Jefferson: A Biography of Spirit and Flesh is that it allowed me to see Jefferson as a human being. He was no god. And he was no monster. The book provokes pity for this man who believed his own learning and intellect could save him while at the same time losing the war against the frailty and sinfulness that’s common to all of us.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

EICHER: For more about WORLD’s book of the year, as well as some other noteworthy books in a number of categories, check out the new issue of WORLD Magazine.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Friday, November 18th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

I’m sure you heard Whitney Williams’ recent testimony of God’s gracious answer to one of her prayers. But we know God’s been at work in your life, too.

REICHARD: So, as we prepare for our end of year programming, we’d like you to tell us: “How God has answered one of your prayers this year.” If He’s moved a mountain or brought you through a difficult trial, we want to hear about it. If He’s quietly provided day by day–or helped you grow in faith or humility, you can tell us that, too.

EICHER: Usually the best way to record your stories is to use the recorder that’s on your cell phone. Be sure you hold it like you’re making a call, not out in front of your mouth. And we do ask, try to keep your story to under two minutes. Once you’re done, you can email the recording to editor@wng.org.

So, take a minute and record your story! We look forward to hearing how God has answered one of your prayers this year! We plan to air them during our program beginning the week after Christmas.

REICHARD: Well, it’s time for Word Play with George Grant. He recently spent some time in Great Britain and now he’s got some quirky new lingo.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: The Anglo-Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, once quipped, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays—except, of course, language.” Similarly, George Bernard Shaw purportedly declared, “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”

Having just returned from a month in Britain, I concur. More often than not American English and English English are like ships passing in the night.

In England, chips are crisps and fries are chips. Trucks are lorries and lawyers are barristers. Cookies are biscuits and pretty much all other desserts are puddings. Elevators are lifts; apartments are flats; restrooms are loos; gas is petrol; closets are cupboards; diapers are nappies; and for some reason long haul eighteen wheelers are juggernauts.

And then, there is Scottish English. English speakers south of the Tweed River derive their unique vocabulary from the old Anglo-Saxon and Norman languages. North of the Tweed however Norse and Celtic roots predominate. And if you’ve ever tried to properly pronounce the poetry of Robert Burns—“Auld Lang Syne” or “Scots Wha Hae” for instance—you know how alien those words and phrases can sound to our American ears.

Now, some Scots vocabulary can be easily transliterated. Aye is yes and coo is cow; wee is small and muckle is big; mac is son and clann is family; a ben is a mountain, a brae is a hillside, a burn is a stream, and a bairn is a child. Some of the more peculiar Scots lexicon might need a bit more context: to scrieve means to write and to belter means to sing with gusto. Tatties and neeps, a side dish at the Sunday pub roast, is mashed potatoes and turnips. To ken is to know and to sain is to bless. But then, there are the words that you really must have a dictionary in hand to understand. For example, to be exhausted can be puggled or dumfungled. A scooby is a clue, a geggie is a mouth, and a stoosie is a bit of bother.

Every morning at the little seaside coffeeshop I patronized, I heard a phrase taken directly from the Gaelic of the Highlands; it has become one of my favorites: tapadh leat. It is an expression of gratitude. It simply means thanks or thanksgiving.

This year, as all the wee bairns of my clann gather around our table laden high with the Lord’s saining, I will be grateful to ken a new way to belter my thankfulness: tapadh leat!

I’m George Grant.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, it’s time to say thanks to the team members who put the program together this week: George Grant, Collin Garbarino, Bonnie Pritchett, Myrna Brown, Cal Thomas, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Whitney Williams, Kent Covington, David Bahnsen, Amy Lewis, Leah Savas, Josh Schumacher, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Ohikere, Anna Johansen Brown, Lynde Langdon, Steve Kloosterman, and Mary Muncy.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And thanks also to the guys who stay up late to get the program to you early: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz. Our producer is Kristen Flavin. Production assistance this week from 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.

Proverbs tell us that a joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 17:22 ESV)

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.