The World and Everything in It — October 15, 2019

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Americans waste tons of food each year, but more and more people are redirecting that food to good use.

THOMAS: Together it’s amassing this huge amount of food instead of just throwing it away or throwing it over the fence.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also a new report reveals more families homeschooling than ever. We’ll tell you the reason why that’s happening, and it’s probably not what you think.

Plus, a notable speech from Billy Graham—70 years ago this month in Los Angeles.

GRAHAM: I believe that in this city, there is a moving of the Spirit of God, unprecedented in the history of this city in many years.

And Kim Henderson on collecting art and finding truth.

REICHARD: It’s Tuesday, October 15th. 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: Now the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: White House orders Turkey sanctions » The Trump administration has announced new sanctions against Turkey following its assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin…

MNUCHIN: Effective immediately, we have sanctioned three of the ministers, the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Interior, and the Minister of Energy. 

He said the United States has also sanctioned Turkey’s departments of defense and energy. 

That follows news that Kurdish forces are now allied with the Syrian government. Syrian forces are moving into northern Syria—raising fears the bloodshed is about to get much worse. 

Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reached out to President Trump … and that the two have spoken directly.

PENCE: President Trump communicated to him very clearly that the United States of America wants Turkey to stop the invasion, to implement an immediate ceasefire, and to begin to negotiate with the Kurdish forces in Syria to bring an end to the violence. 

President Trump also announced on Monday that he’s halting trade negotiations with Turkey and raising steel tariffs. 

So far Turkey has shown no signs of relenting.

Family of Texas woman killed by police calls for accountability » Prosecutors on Monday charged a white Fort Worth police officer with murder. They say he shot and killed an African-American woman inside her home without justification.  

Interim Police Chief Ed Kraus said the officer, 34-year-old Aaron Dean, resigned after the shooting. And he said there’s no doubt that he “acted inappropriately.” 

KRAUS: Had the officer not resigned, I would have fired him for violations of several policies, including our use of force policy, our deescalation policy, and unprofessional conduct. 

The incident happened on Saturday when police arrived at 28-year-old Atatiania Jefferson’s house for a wellness check. A neighbor had called police to report that her front door had been left open for several hours. Family members said Jefferson thought she heard a prowler and went to the window to check. Moments later, Dean allegedly shot her through her bedroom window. 

A police statement said that Dean said he perceived a threat, but it’s not clear why. Police spokesman Lt. Brandon O’Neil said the officer called for her to raise her hands before firing the shot. However…

O’NEIL:  The officer did not announce that he was a police officer prior to shooting. What the officer observed and why he did not announce police will be addressed as the investigation continues. 

Family members say Jefferson was playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew when officers arrived. And the boy was in the room when the police bullet struck her through the window. 

Calif law to require abortion pills at public universities » Pro-life activists say a new California law will turn campus health centers at public universities into abortion facilities. WORLD Radio intern Michelle Schlavin explains.

MICHELLE SCHLAVIN, REPORTER: California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law on Friday. It’s the first of its kind in the nation. It requires public universities to offer abortion-inducing pills at their health centers starting in 2023.

Taxpayers and students will likely be footing part of the bill. The California Department of Finance says private grants will pay for most but not all of the costs associated with the program. 

Doctors often prescribe the abortion pill to women who are less than 10 weeks pregnant.

Kristin Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America. She calls the law “Planned Parenthood’s new money-making machine.” Hawkins says the pill could cause other medical issues for women that most university health centers are not equipped to handle.

Reporting for WORLD Radio, I’m Michelle Schlavin.

Catalan leaders jailed for sedition » AUDIO: [Sound of demonstrators in Barcelona]

Demonstrators poured into the streets of Barcelona on Monday—many waving flags and blocking traffic…

AUDIO: [Sound of demonstrators in Barcelona]

Protesters gathered after the Spanish Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to prison for nine to 13 years.  

Spanish courts convicted them for organizing a 2017 referendum in Catalonia on whether the semi-autonomous region should declare independence from Spain. Madrid deemed that vote to be illegal. 

Protesters converged on El Prat airport on Monday. They clashed with police, who fired non-lethal bullets and used batons against the protesters. A dozen people were treated for minor injuries at the scene.

Spain’s caretaker prime minister, Pedro Sánchez said the court’s verdict proved the 2017 secession attempt had become “a shipwreck.” He urged people to—quote—”set aside extremist positions.” and “embark on a new phase” for Catalonia.

Nearly 60 confirmed dead in Japan after powerful typhoon » Rescue crews in Japan dug through mudslides and searched near swollen rivers Monday as they looked for victims of a deadly typhoon. WORLD Intern John Vence reports. 

JOHN VENCE, REPORTER: Nearly 60 people are confirmed dead, with hundreds more injured. At least 17 remain missing. And those numbers are expected to climb. 

Typhoon Hagibis devastated the nation with torrents of rain and strong winds Saturday. Thousands of homes and surrounding roads are covered in mud and littered with the splintered remains of buildings.

The storm submerged a fleet of high-speed bullet trains and capsized a cargo ship miles from shore.

Tens of thousands are still without power, and remain in danger of deadly landslides. 

This storm comes on the heels of a typhoon in September that killed three and caused $7 billion worth of damage. Typhoon Hagibis is now considered the most powerful typhoon since 1958. 

Reporting for WORLD Radio, I’m John Vence.

COVINGTON: I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: efforts to keep uneaten food out of landfills. Plus, remnants from a bygone age of Christian publishing. This is The World and Everything in It.

MARY REICHARD: It’s Tuesday the 15th of October, 2019. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: waste not, want not.

The Food and Drug Administration’s latest figures estimate that Americans throw out more than a third of our food. In 2010, that added up to about 200 pounds per person. So, it may not come as a surprise that landfills actually contain more food waste than plastics.

REICHARD: That wasted food has big implications for the environment and for hungry households. So to save this surplus, a growing number of nonprofits and individuals are doing something about it.

Here’s WORLD Radio’s Sarah Schweinsberg.

AUDIO: [Sound of cafeteria]

SARAH SCHWEINSBERG, REPORTER: Adriann Liceralde studies chemical engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In between his busy class schedule, he comes to this campus cafeteria three times a week. 

LICERALDE:  So it’s a buffet style restaurant where they have three meal periods every day. And after each meal period, that’s when they normally throw the food away because there’s nothing they can do about it.

That’s where Liceralde and his small group of student volunteers come in. They are a part of the Food Recovery Network. It’s a national organization of student volunteers. They are working to save the food university cafeterias would otherwise throw out. 

LICERALDE: This only takes like 30 minutes really for just one session. 

At the end of mealtimes, cafeteria workers set aside pans of leftover food. Then student volunteers package the food for delivery to a local Christian homeless shelter. 

LICERALDE: It’s a little like paradoxical because we want to reduce food waste… But that also means there’s not a lot of food to donate. So it’s like on some days when we have a lot of food that’s a good thing but also a bad thing. That meant there was a lot of food waste.

Today, they have seven pans of leftover food to package up. 

LICERALDE: We’re seeing potatoes, some sort of pasta dish. We got vegetables, broccoli primarily and then some fried rice…

Adriann Liceralde puts each 20 by 12 inch pan of food on a scale. He deducts the weight of the pan and records the final number in a spreadsheet. Even this relatively small amount of food adds up quickly. 

LICERALDE: Wow, 43 pounds!  

SCHWEINSBERG: 43 pounds! And that was only seven pans. 

LICERALDE: Yeah. 

In four years, the group has rescued 43 thousand pounds of food. Liceralde says as they save food, they share their data with cafeteria workers. As a result, the cafeteria has—on average—drastically cut waste. 

LICERALDE: Like for one recovery session here, there’d be about 100 to 200 pounds of food, but now we’re only looking at 30 pounds of food. 

Other groups are working to save food before it even reaches a cafeteria or restaurant. 

THOMAS: So we also have in here tons of peppers…

Pat Thomas founded Backyard GardenShare in Salt Lake City four years ago. Thomas is a life-long runner and each summer she’d see big gardens growing in people’s yards. 

THOMAS: I was just like mesmerized by this idea that there were some streets I actually couldn’t run down because of the fruit that was scattered across them. But also I thought, what is going on? Don’t we have hungry people here and we have all of this food wasting.

So Thomas decided to start collecting excess produce from her neighbors. She began donating it to local school cafeterias, homeless shelters, senior centers, and Boys and Girls Clubs. 

The entryway of her home is filled with produce that she’ll donate later today. 

THOMAS: We have different varieties of pears. We have different varieties of plums. We have apples where I can tell we have three different types of apples. We have four or five varieties of cucumbers. 

The idea of saving excess garden produce caught on. Today, Thomas has more than 100 homeowners volunteering as collection points.

THOMAS: Together it’s amassing this huge amount of food that we are redirecting to the people who are hungry in our community instead of just throwing it away or throwing it over the fence. We have collected tens of thousands of pounds of produce. 

Redirecting uneaten food to hungry mouths is one benefit of keeping food out of landfills. Protecting the environment is another.

Kate O’Neill is a professor of environmental science policy and management at UC Berkeley. She says when food sits in a hot, damp landfill, it makes some noxious gases. 

O’NEILL: So it just kind of sits there and slowly decomposes and generates an awful lot of landfill gas, which is methane and, and other kinds of trace gases. And methane itself, unused is quite dangerous. It’s flammable…. 

But O’Neill says not all extra food has to be eaten to be useful. A lot of it can be composted and turned into fertilizer. Scientists are also developing ways of turning leftover food into renewable fuel. 

O’NEILL: There are biomass generation facilities around the world. Often, they’re quite small scale. So biomass can be, if it’s separately dealt with, it’s wet, it gives off particular gases, methane and others, and those can be captured and actually used to generate energy.

O’Neill thinks businesses, governments, and non-profits will continue to come up with innovative ways to curb food waste. That’s partly because unlike so many other big problems, this one seems to have simpler solutions.

O’NEILL: It’s actually easier to deal with in many ways than plastic and paper waste. So bio-waste became kind of the low hanging fruit—no pun intended—to enact zero waste sorts of policies.

For WORLD Radio, I’m Sarah Schweinsberg reporting from Salt Lake City, Utah.

NICK EICHER: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: school choice.

It’s been more than a decade since the federal government compiled information about families who opt out of the public education system. The latest report came out earlier this month. And it confirms some of the trends homeschoolers have been talking about for a while now.

MARY REICHARD: Maggie McKneely works with the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. She’s taken a look at the government’s numbers and joins us now to talk about it.

Good morning, Maggie!

MAGGIE MCKNEELY, GUEST: Good morning, Mary! Thank you for having me on.

REICHARD: So this survey’s findings weren’t a surprise to you and others in the homeschool community. Tell us what the government researchers discovered when they started crunching enrollment numbers.

MCKNEELY: Sure, yeah. So they actually compile these numbers every few years. They did it in 2007, 2012, 2016. So, this really wasn’t a shock to us because we have seen these numbers before. But this was the first time they had done a comprehensive school choice report in almost 10 years. So that’s really what this survey was looking at. It was looking at numbers that we’d already seen them put out, but just in a brand new, specifically school choice survey.

REICHARD: And what would the numbers be, basically?

MCKNEELY: So, in 1999 there were roughly 850,000 homeschooling students and then in 2016 the estimate is 1.7 million. So, almost double what it was.

REICHARD: Homeschooling really gained traction among Christian families 30 or 40 years ago. But this report suggests that faith is not the biggest driver for most homeschoolers today. Tell us about that.

MCKNEELY: No, so, you know, that was really the stereotype when homeschooling first started out, it was just purely Christian families who were doing this. But it’s really not the case anymore. You have so many families looking at what’s going on in the schools, whether it’s the perception of increased violence or the political agenda being pushed in the school systems. So you had a lot of families saying, you know, I just don’t want my kids in that environment; families who—regardless of their political ideology or their religious beliefs—they really just want their kids to thrive and get the best education possible and so many families are looking at the public education system and they don’t see that as the best option for their children. And the number one reason cited was a concern about school environment regarding safety, drugs, and negative peer pressure. And I think one of the top drivers is the uptick in school shootings. And that’s something parents are really concerned about. They don’t want their kids in that environment. And obviously drugs are a huge issue and bullying, and parents, they just don’t want their kids around all that.

REICHARD: Your work for HSLDA involves interacting with lawmakers and government officials on issues related to homeschooling. How will these new numbers change your conversations about policies and legislation?

MCKNEELY: It’s really changing perceptions. Like I said, people used to think that homeschooling was really just for the religious Christian right. But that’s certainly not the case. And as numbers like this come out, it’s really showing people that this is a viable alternative education method for all families. There are so many resources out there—different curriculums, different methods—that homeschooling is really approachable for families regardless of what their situation is. There are so many different ways to homeschool. Yeah, so numbers like this really just show that this is something anybody can do. It doesn’t matter what their beliefs or ideology is.

REICHARD: Maggie McKneeley is the federal relations liaison for the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. Thanks for joining us today!

MCKNEELY: Absolutely, thank you for having me.

NICK EICHER: Some people in San Antonio, Texas are calling it a “plague.” People are busy sweeping crickets the way northerners shovel winter snow. 

An invasion of crickets is swarming lawns and sidewalks all over the city and slipping into homes and businesses. 

So, what do you do about it?!

KENS tv asked an entomologist—Why not just use pesticides?

AUDIO: Because they’ll start to die and pile on top of each other, and then they start to smell. And when you see them in these numbers of thousands and thousands, that smell’s pretty significant.

Actually, agriculture experts say the cricket swarm is not really an invasion because the insects are not new arrivals. It’s just that the weather conditions have been ideal: rain and cool after a dry summer.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER: Today is Tuesday, October 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: another in our occasional series: “Notable Speeches: Past and Present.” 

70 years ago this fall, the Billy Graham Crusade took place in Los Angeles.

Organizers put up a canvas tent in a downtown parking lot that could seat about 6-thousand people. As attendance grew, they added a few thousand more chairs. By the end of the crusade, it was standing room only.

EICHER: This wasn’t Graham’s first crusade. But it was the beginning of his national acclaim. The crusade lasted eight weeks. Graham spoke to more than 350,000 people. Organizers reported 3,000 professions of faith.

There are only fifty nine recordings available from the 1949 LA Crusade. Recording technology wasn’t then what it is now, and many of the recordings are difficult to understand.

But you can still hear Graham’s early, engaging style.

REICHARD: Today we present an excerpt from Graham’s October 14th message titled: “Weighed in God’s Balances and Found Wanting.” In the sermon, he compares Los Angeles with Babylon. And how just as God judged King Belshazzar, we too, will one day face the same—but there’s hope…

BILLY GRAHAM: Each night during this campaign except on about three or four nights, I have been discussing a different doctrine from the Scriptures and applying to 1949 as it relates to the lives of everyone of us. 

Tonight, I want to slightly depart from that procedure. And I want you to turn with me, and I believe led by the Spirit of God, to Galatians the sixth chapter and the seventh verse. And we read these words: “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” 

Tonight I’m going to bring a very brief Gospel address because the time is very late. I’m not going to keep you too long tonight. I believe that in this city, there is a moving of the Spirit of God, unprecedented in the history of this city in many years. I don’t mean in this campaign, I mean in the churches, among the ministries. Here and there across the city, there’s a moving of the Spirit of God. And God only knows if there was ever a city that needs a revival, Los Angeles needs it tonight. This city, I believe with all my soul, after being here for one month, this city is the wickedest city upon the face of the globe. I don’t believe that Algiers, I don’t believe that Shanghai has the sin, and the Sodom and Gomorrah that the city of Los Angeles has. This is a desperate and crucial hour. This is not an hour for ordinary methods. This is not an hour for the ordinary. This is an hour for revolution. This is an hour for desperate measures. This is an hour for emergency. An hour when we need to fall on our faces before Almighty God. 

And tonight I want to talk upon the subject: “Be not deceived, God is not mocked.” Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And the Bible says tonight and warns us time after time, that the soul that sinneth shall die. The wages of sin is death. And nobody in the history of the world has ever, has ever, gotten by with sinning and getting away with it. Nobody ever has, nobody ever will, because the scripture says: “the wages of sin is death…and God is not mocked.”

Oh you might get by with it for awhile. You might go on with your drinking, and your carousing. And in your unfaithfulness, and in your sinning. You might go on, and on, and on. And might go for 40 years, but be sure of this: that one of these days you’re going to reap what you sow. One of these days you’re going to reap sin. One of these days you’re going to reap the judgment of Almighty God for the wicked, wild life that you live. No man has ever sinned and gotten away with it. God says: “The wages of sin is death.” 

In the sight of God tonight, we are all the same. I told them the other night that I talked to a doctor. And that this army doctor told me that when the majors, and the captains, and the booked privates came in the war, and stripped off their clothes, he said they all looked alike to him. And when you stand stripped before Almighty God, at the great White Throne Judgment, God is no respecter of persons. 

He doesn’t look at what people think. God is weighing in his own scales and I want to ask you tonight: “How much do you weigh?” What’s your weight tonight in the sight of the Almighty God? I want to see how you stack up before God tonight. I want you to see, and before you leave this tent in the next few minutes, every boy and every girl, every man and every woman can know how much you weigh in the sight of Almighty God. 

Fourteen years ago, I wandered into an old fashioned, citywide revival campaign like this. And I sat way in the rear, when the man of God got up and opened the Bible… and he said: “But God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for all.” And I said: “Oh Lord, that’s it. That’s the life. That’s what I need. That’s what will save me. That’s what will bring peace to my heart. That’s what will solve my problem. That’s what lift my burden. That’s what will change me from sin. Oh Lord, I’m going to try it!” 

And so that night. I made my way forward. And I kneeled at an old fashioned altar. And by faith I put my hand into the hands of Jesus Christ. I put his righteousness in the scales. I put his atoning work that the Lord God had accepted on the cross of Calvary, by the proof of the resurrection, I put it in the scales and lo and behold, the scales balanced for the first time! 

And ladies and gentlemen, tonight, that’s the only way the scales will ever balance. I ask you tonight: “How much do you weigh? Are you sure the scales are balanced?” I want to tell you that God says: “If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, we shall be saved.”

You don’t have to move, right where you sit right now, believe it or not, you can know that the scales are balanced, you can know that you’re going to heaven. You can be absolutely sure if an atomic bomb or heart attack, whatever it is, you’re ready to meet God. 

MARY REICHARD: Today is Tuesday, October 15th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. The love of art led WORLD commentator Kim Henderson to a basic truth.

KIM HENDERSON, COMMENTATOR: For a good chunk of years, I stayed up after the kids went to bed and wrote Sunday School lessons. It was a nice gig. It kept me in my Bible and involved visits to LifeWay’s headquarters in downtown Nashville. On one of my trips I realized just how much the publishing business was changing. In fact, I brought home 10-by-13-inch proof of it and hung it by our front door.  

You see, I just happened to be there when LifeWay was conducting a silent auction of more than 900 pieces of art.

Back in the 1940s, Southern Baptists began commissioning original paintings and drawings for their printed materials. Of course, times changed. By 2012, canvas and art board were out. Computer graphics were in.

Still, for seven decades LifeWay had stashed art in a climate-controlled vault in its basement. It was rumored to be the largest religious art collection outside the Vatican. But an impending move meant the art had to go. So staff digitized the pieces, then archived some and sold others through dealers. About a fifth went up for silent auction to current and retired employees.

Organizers stressed these pieces had mostly sentimental value. So, I guess it was sentiment that drew me down the hall to the huge auction area every time my schedule allowed it. It was, after all, a picker’s paradise. Teaching pictures I remembered from my childhood – like Zacchaeus in the sycamore and the parting of the Red Sea – those originals lay in piles around the walls. I recognized a full-color drawing of Noah and the ark from a children’s Bible I used to read to my kids. Stacks of hand-drawn maps and book illustrations covered tables. An oil painting of the Wise Men leaned against a post. And the prices were right.

On day three, my editor was kind enough to let me attend the final minutes of silent bidding, just in case I needed to pencil in an up to my ante.

As a result, I boarded a plane for home with all the sentiment my suitcase could hold.

A vice-president at LifeWay wrote that winning a bid was “much like owning a brick from an old downtown building that no longer stands.” I think I understand what she meant. I got to hold history in my hands and hang it on my walls.

I mentioned that we gave one piece a place of prominence in our foyer. It was my prize find – a watercolor of the two stone tablets. If you look closely, you can see the artist’s notes and cropping marks framing its edges. I like that. The marks remind me not just that the publishing business has changed, but that all of our roles in Kingdom work are subject to change. They have beginnings and endings. The only task that doesn’t change is what those tablets at the center of the painting represent: proclaiming Biblical truth. 

For WORLD Radio, I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow, Washington Wednesday. I’ll talk with our old friend Henry Olsen about the latest developments in the impeachment inquiry.

And, we’ll take you to Albania, where Christianity is spreading after years of oppression under communist rule.

That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: 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.

The Apostle Paul wrote: “Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” 

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.