The World and Everything in It: October 11, 2024

PREROLL: Hey John Stonestreet here, back again on Culture Friday. We’re going to talk about Jack Phillips, whose 12-year ordeal in the state of Colorado is finally over. Stick around!

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! Yes, I’m looking forward to that conversation with John, too.

NICK EICHER, HOST: As am I, and I’ll ask about the multi-state lawsuit against TikTok. Just how far might it go? Again, John’s standing by for Culture Friday.

Also today, WORLD’s arts and culture editor Collin Garbarino has a review of a handful of movies in the theater this weekend. Including a documentary on one of the most influential producers in the music business.

PHARRELL: Like, everybody loves music. But I’m realizing I had a different kind of relationship with it.

And later we’ll get to know a little more about the humorist president: The man who first said, "my hat’s in the ring." George Grant has Word Play.

BROWN: It’s Friday, October 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, Kristen Flavin with today’s news.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, NEWS ANCHOR: Milton update » The death toll from Hurricane Milton continues to rise.

Authorities said Thursday at least 10 people died as a result of the powerful Category 3 storm that cut a path across the Florida peninsula.

Homeland Security Secretary Alajandro Mayorkas:

MAYORKAS: It is our job to make sure that that number doesn't climb through valiant search and rescue efforts. But we are dealing in the immediate aftermath of a terrible hurricane and many, many tornadoes ancillary to it.

Officials believe most of the fatalities occurred from multiple tornadoes that spun up in advance of Milton's landfall.

Mayorkas said the government will help residents recover from both Milton, and its immediate predecessor, Hurricane Helene. But he also called on Congress to allocate additional funds to FEMA.

And as Floridians continue to pick up the pieces from Milton's path of destruction, Governor Ron DeSantis had a word of warning for any would-be looters:

DESANTIS: There may be opportunities that some people think they can take advantage of. I'm warning you, don't do that. If you loot, you will be held accountable. If you're doing things that violate the law, you're gonna try to take advantage of vulnerable people, we're gonna throw the book at you.

Hurricane Milton brought 18 inches of rain in some places and a storm surge of up to a dozen feet. As of Thursday night, nearly 3 million residents were still without power.

Israel update » Relatives and supporters of the more than 100 hostages still held by the terror group Hamas demonstrated in Tel Aviv yesterday, calling for their release.

One of the demonstrators told the Associated Press:

PROTESTER: Our government has failed us. We call upon the world to join forces and bring our people home and bring them back. This is a humanitarian, a global humanitarian issue.

Roughly a third of those remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

Meanwhile:

SOUND: [Strike scene in Beirut]

Chaos in Beirut last night after authorities say Israeli airstrikes hit the Lebanese capital in two locations. Lebanon's health ministry said there were multiple casualties.

But the Israeli military maintains its offensives are targeted...and necessary to eliminate infrastructure put in place by the terror group Hezbollah.

Yesterday, the IDF released a video showing spokesman Daniel Hagari touring a home in a southern village in Lebanon.

HAGARI: This is a terror base. This is a Lebanese village, a Shia village built by Hezbollah. Every house has gear ready for the raid against Israel, Conquer the Galilee plan. We are now going house to house, raiding each and every house, taking all this gear.

He says they found grenades, sniper rifles, mines and other weaponry.

Taiwan v. China » In Asia:

SOUND: [Taiwan celebrations]

Taiwan celebrated its National Day yesterday...amid ongoing threats by China. The holiday is meant to mark Taiwan's founding as a republic that broke away from the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

LAI: [Speaking in Mandarin]

Speaking at the celebration yesterday, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-Te tells a crowd that his mission is to unite the 23 million citizens of Taiwan. He also pledged to defend Taiwan's sovereignty.

That brought a sharp rebuke from Taiwan's neighbor, China.

NING: [Speaking in Mandarin]

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning calling Lai's comments obstinate and sinister.

China has long claimed Taiwan as its own territory...and refuses to recognize its claims of independence.

Zelenskyy in Europe » Two weeks ago Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Washington D.C. pitching his plan for victory on Capitol Hill. He walked away with an additional 8 billion dollar aid package.

This week he’s city-hopping across Europe.

ZELENSKYY: So now we work with France…and some other allies…I hope that we will, we can count in the nearest future soon, we can count on our strong allies…

Zelenskyy was in France Thursday for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron. After the meeting, he insisted that he wasn’t there to discuss a “cease fire” but continued to lobby for more support and permission to use Western munitions to strike into Russia.

ZELENSKYY: So we are searching some funds, some money for this for interior production and some permission from our partners.

After meeting with Macron, Zelenskyy flew to Rome where he met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Francis. Today he is visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.

Ethel Kennedy obit » Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, has died.

Her family said the 96-year-old passed away Thursday morning due to complications from a stroke she suffered last week.

In 2014, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Audio courtesy WCVB-TV in Boston.

OBAMA: To most Americans, Ethel Kennedy is known as a wife, mother, and grandma. And in many ways, it's through these roles that she's made her mark on history. As Bobby Kennedy's partner in life, she shared his commitment to justice.

Ethel Kennedy carried on the legacy of her husband after his 19-68 assassination.

She leaves behind nine children, more than 30 grandchildren and two-dozen great grandchildren.

SOUND: [Hospital cheers]

Conjoined twins » Cheers and smiles earlier this week at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The reason?

Twin brothers who were born conjoined are going home to their own beds.

Amari and Javar Ruffin were born via C-section in September of last year. The conjoined twins shared part of their sternum, diaphragm, abdominal wall and liver.

Together, they weighed a combined six pounds.

But in August, a team at the children's hospital were able to separate the boys after an eight hour surgery. Their abdomens were closed and rebuilt using layers of mesh and plastic surgery techniques.

The parents say they learned of the boys' condition early on in the pregnancy and were advised to abort the children. But they instead chose life. Now they say they're glad to have the boys home in their family of six.

I'm Kristen Flavin.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, what’s new in theaters this weekend.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: t’s Friday the 11th of October, 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, California and New York along with a dozen other states filed suit against TikTok this week. These state attorneys general accuse the social-media app of deceiving the public about the safety of TikTok, particularly for younger users.

They claim TikTok’s design targets teens, that it harms their mental health, and that TikTok knows it and doesn’t care.

Features like endless scrolling and beauty filters are said especially to harm users, young girls in particular, by fostering body-image issues. And the states intend to impose financial penalties for, they say, prioritizing profit over child safety.

TikTok denies the allegations, but let’s listen to a little bit of California A-G Rob Bonta talking about what he calls a uniquely bipartisan complaint about big tech.

BONTA: Our young people have enough to worry about as it is, our parents, our families, have more than enough to worry about without a large, sophisticated Corporation targeting their young people and hurting them knowingly.

So is he right?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I mean, right about the harms of social media and especially Tiktok, absolutely. I mean, this goes back years. 

You know, it reminds me of that line from the classic movie Tommy Boy, when Tommy says he graduated college and his friend goes, “All right, just under a decade!” And, you know, it's kind of what's happening here. This is so late in the game, and it is interesting.

Obviously, the government has stepped in at various times and targeted corporations that had caused harm, especially to minors. I mean, you can think, for example, of smoking and drinking, it always included some sort of age restriction. And why are we not there on this? Why is it that the way to step in here is to demand money that is then going to go to the government? You know, is that really going to be the solution that we need? First, if we're not actually encouraging parents to play this role, then any victories here are going to be short lived anyway. But financial penalties to whom? Like, who gets this money?

And if what's worked in the past are some levels of age restrictions, you know, minimum ages to drink, to buy tobacco and that sort of stuff, why are we going in a different route here and now? Think about, for example, child safety restraints in automobiles. I mean, these are all ways in which the law can be upstream from culture and can introduce new ways of thinking about what is good for you and what is bad for you.

You know, the state jumping in and just demanding money - I'm not actually sure that this is going to solve the problem in any real way.

EICHER: You know and I wonder, how deeply do they want to get into this about the harms of social media?

Some new government data came out this week the Centers for Disease Control. It was a national survey of American high-schoolers—the New York Times calling it the first-ever nationally representative survey—and it found 3.3 percent of high-school students identifying as transgender and another 2.2 percent questioning. So that’s 5-1/2 percent, and this is all self-ID.

But you can make the argument that these kids are suffering some kind of harm. Just end-of-inquiry there. But the government’s own data finds 7-in-10 of these kids reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness which is significantly higher than for those who do not identify this way.

I bring it up because we all know what the author Abigail Schreier has found about how the spike in transgenderism among kids is very much a social contagion. And what spreads social contagion more than social media. I wonder if in the course of litigation, if it gets to that, what we find out about social-media culpability.

STONESTREET: Yeah, look, the further you dig, the further this elephant in the room becomes obvious. And it's now far enough along that we have enough time to have real data on three things: social media use, the mental-health crisis among young people, and the number of young people who are having an identity crisis that's taking the form of this trans phenomenon.

And it's almost identical. It's just like you can lay these trend lines on top of one another, it's going to be obvious. And so either, you know, my guess is it's going to be ignored because there's, there's too many organizations right now, including government-sponsored or directly government-funded groups, that have a vested interest in keeping this trans phenomenon going.

And I also think that it's important to note that social media, in and of itself, I don't think is enough to explain the totality of the mental-illness problem that we're seeing. I don't think we would have the scope of the challenge that we have without social media.

But I think it is a serious contributing factor making what is already a trend line on the ground worse. And that trend line on the ground, I think, can be traced more to the breakdown of important institutions of civil society, such as the family, and decreasing religiosity among young people and all kinds of other things.

We're just not okay. I mean, that's the thing. We're just not a society right now by any measure that is doing well, certainly not flourishing. And the younger you are, the more acute you are sensing and feeling this crisis of identity that's kind of inflicted the whole Western world. So it's just taken this form and social media feeds into it.

BROWN: We can’t end Culture Friday without talking about Jack Phillips and the big legal victory that means he’s finally able to live, speak and work according to his Christian beliefs. This has been a long, 12- plus- year battle. John, as you think about your friend, Jack Phillips, what have you learned from him?

STONESTREET: Well, I mean, the strength that this guy has, has been only surpassed by the joy and the peace that he has developed over this journey. That's the thing that stands out to me most. That's what I'm taking away from this. That's what I've learned from Jack.

There is a sense that God has put him in this time, in this place, and that he can actually trust the Lord with the results. And I know we all say that, right? Like, you know, you do your best and you leave the results up to God. He's actually done this, and that has been in the face of the loss of comfort, the loss of financial security.

And, you know, I want to say it's over, but God may have more in store for him. And I've told him every time I've seen him the last few times I I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but he is a different person now than when he began it, and it's because of the Lord using what the Lord promises in the New Testament to use to conform us more into the image of His Son. Jack's a lot more like Jesus now than he was 12 years ago. And I think for him, that is a great source of joy and peace and meaning.

And you know, one of the things that you and I talked about here is something that his longtime attorney, Kristen Waggoner, wrote about in WORLD Opinions back during the hearing of this particular case that has now been dismissed, is that Jack has played a role in what is maybe the most incredible conversion story of recent memory, at least, of the kind of the atheist turned Christian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which is just an amazing part of this story, you know. And you just think about they don't know each other, you know, Ayaan couldn't even remember Jack's name.

And isn't that how God works? That little acts of faithfulness become bigger acts of faithfulness, and God brings that sort of increase out of that, which is, it's just really one of the remarkable stories, Christian stories of our generation. It really is.

When you go back 12 years and you watch the Lord fulfill his promise to Jack, and you see the sort of impact that he's had on so many people, it's really stunning. I'm grateful for him, and I am grateful that, at least for now, it's over—and I pray forever it's over.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 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 up on The World and Everything in It: Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino reviews a new documentary told in Lego animation. But first, he takes stock of what’s currently in theaters.

COLLIN GARBARINO: At the beginning of the summer, things were looking pretty desperate for the movie industry with big budget action movies flopping in the month of May. Things got a little better as the summer wore on, with both Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine each grossing more than a billion dollars worldwide.

But now that we’re slipping into fall, the movie industry seems to have fallen back into its slump. A couple of weeks ago, Francis Ford Coppola’s 150-million-dollar epic Megalopolis barely made a blip at the box office. And last weekend, the sequel to Warner Bros’ billion-dollar grossing Joker film from 2019 crashed and burned. Joker: Folie á Deux violated the most important rule of comic book movies: Don’t be boring. The film also included some musical numbers… another no-no for today’s popular cinema. It didn’t help that star Joaquin Phoenix can’t sing.

The film cost 200 million dollars to make. A month ago, analysts predicted it would make more than 100 million in its opening weekend, but it only pulled in 37 million, ensuring that Warner Bros. will certainly lose money.

Since everyone thought the Joker sequel would be dominating theaters, there aren’t many new releases arriving this weekend. But there are a couple of movies based on real people debuting.

First, there’s The Apprentice. It’s the controversial biopic starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump that alleges the former president learned how to be ruthless from shady New York super lawyer Roy Cohn. I’ll just say this: Whether you’re a Trump supporter or not, don’t go see it. It might capture the gritty feel of 1970s New York City, but the movie is both simplistic and utterly debased.

On the other hand, hip-hop fans might be interested in the documentary Piece by Piece that tells the story of megaproducer Pharrell Williams.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Hey, Pharrell.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Hey, how you doing, man? You know what would be cool was if we told my story with Lego pieces.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Seriously?

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Yes.

Piece by Piece is an odd little film. It has the sound and style of a typical documentary, but the entire film is made with Lego animation. The talking head interviews, the scenes from everyday life, the reenactments of pivotal moments—all Lego.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I loved music. Like, everybody loves music, but I’m realizing I had a different kind of relationship with it.

Williams takes the audience back to his humble childhood in Virginia Beach where he first fell in love with music. We see the sights and sounds of his early life that would shape his musical career.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I didn’t even know that I was mesmerized. I just thought that’s what all black kids did. I thought we all just stared into the speaker like “whoa.”

The choice of using colorful Lego bricks to animate Williams’ life starts to make sense as we see the music popping across the screen.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I was seeing colors. It’s called synesthesia. It’s not something you see with your physical eyes. It’s something that you see in your mind’s eye.

Not only does the Lego animation give the documentary the pop of color that Pharrell Williams is known for in his wardrobe choices, it also helps blur the line between the interviews and reenactments. But fundamentally, the Lego style becomes something of a metaphor for building a life. Just like kids build structures with colorful bricks, Williams and his producing partner Chad Hugo build musical beats. They turn those beats into songs which they then produce for the hottest hip-hop and pop stars. The documentary features voicework from Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Justin Timberlake, and Snoop Dog. The 6-foot-four Snoop is depicted with a hilariously tall minifigure.

SNOOP DOG: This is beautiful work that you’ve been doing.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Thank you, man.

SNOOP DOG: This is what I want though, P.

Piece by Piece is rated PG, but I wouldn’t recommend taking young children to see it. I was actually quite surprised the movie wasn’t rated PG-13 for language. There’s more than one instance of vulgarity used in the film. A couple of times the coarse language is bleeped out. A couple of times it’s not. There are also quite a few Lego minifigures in bikinis during the reenactment of certain rap videos. It’s pretty funny, but no doubt some viewers will find it in poor taste.

Williams obviously hopes to inspire the next generation of dreamers with his story, and I think the movie would be worthwhile for teenagers who are interested in the music business. But Williams seems to think that success has allowed him to wax philosophical on how to make it in life. He offers the typical cliches that promise success to anyone who believes in themselves, drawing inspiration from a strange variety of sources that include both his childhood pastor and Carl Sagan. And since Williams is the film’s producer Piece by Piece cleans up some of the messier parts of his life and ensures he comes across looking good.

The climax of the film comes when Williams writes and records his megahit “Happy.” The catchy song is packed with so much joy, it’s quite possible it might leave audiences feeling so good that they overlook the film’s shortcomings.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 11th. 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, Word Play for the month of October.

The 26th president of the United States is remembered for a lot of things—his foreign policy, the Panama Canal, and many of our national parks. But did you know he was also an accomplished wordsmith and he coined many memorable phrases that live on to this day?

Here’s George Grant.

GEORGE GRANT, COMMENTATOR: Before his fiftieth birthday Theodore Roosevelt had served as a New York state legislator, cattle rancher in the Dakota Territories, New York City police commissioner, Under-Secretary of the Navy, civil service commissioner, colonel in the U.S. Army, governor of the State of New York, vice-president under William McKinley, and two terms as the president of the United States. He enjoyed hunting, boxing, hiking, and rowing. He conducted scientific expeditions on four continents and was an amateur taxidermist, botanist, ornithologist, and astronomer. He was a devoted family man who relished a storied romance with his wife with whom he lovingly raised six children.

Though most famous for his political career, like his younger contemporary, Winston Churchill, he made his living as a writer. He served as a reporter and editor for several journals, newspapers, and magazines. He read at least five books every week of his life and wrote nearly fifty on an astonishing array of subjects—from history and biography to natural science and social criticism.

It probably should not surprise us then that he was quite a wordsmith. Contrary to his well-known slogan “speak softly and carry a big stick,” he very rarely spoke softly. According to historian Paul Dickson, “Roosevelt created a huge body of strikingly humorous slang.” He coined a host of colorful words and phrases, including “packrat, frazzle, malefactors of great wealth, and loose cannon.”

He described a next to impossible diplomatic negotiation as, “trying to nail cranberry jelly to the wall.” He dubbed the ambiguous rhetoric of his conniving political opponents as, “weasel words of mollycoddles.” He called out the sensationalism of the press as “unscrupulous muckraking.” He called the left-wing advocates of socialism and anarchism, “the lunatic fringe.” And he called complacent armchair conservatives, “do-nothing pussyfooters.” He disdained the coarse irreverence of profanity, so when he was frustrated or exasperated, he would often exclaim, “flapdoodle” or “bullfeathers.”

He announced his presidential bid in 1912, exclaiming, “My hat is in the ring,” promising a “square deal,” and declaring that he was “as strong as a Bull Moose.” He transformed his campaign into a “bully pulpit” from which he could preach virtue, fairness, justice, and righteousness with his “artillery of words.”

His wry humor was such an important part of his stump personae that several newspapers began running weekly columns containing nothing more than witticisms from his speeches. The comedian, Homer Davenport, asserted, “Roosevelt is a humorist. No one can sit through one of his speeches with a straight face. He can make a joke as fascinating as he can the story of a sunset on the plains of Egypt.”

Amidst the fractiousness of contemporary partisan politics, we could do with a little more of that and a little less of what Roosevelt called a “flubdub of slights and slurs.”

I’m George Grant

MYRNA BROWN, HOST:As we end today’s program, just a quick reminder. Tomorrow, Lindsay Mast has her complete interview with author, podcaster, and WORLD Opinions contributor Allie Beth Stuckey. It’s an insightful half-hour conversation on politics and faith. You’ll hear what you didn’t hear yesterday. It’s good stuff!

NICK EICHER, HOST: You won’t want to miss it, and if your podcast feed is set to auto-download, you shouldn’t. But it’s never a bad idea to double-check.

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

Jenny Rough, Steve West, Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Jill Nelson, Caleb Welde, Carl Trueman, Carolina Lumetta, Onize Oduah, Amy Lewis, Joe Rigney, Juliana Erickson, Lindsay Mast, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet, Collin Garbarino, and George Grant.

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.

BROWN: 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 Bible records the Apostle Paul addressing the men of Athens: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” —Acts 17:24-25

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.