The World and Everything in It: October 17, 2025

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Two years after Hamas shocked the world, what have we learned about the human heart? And Gen Z’s retreat from gender ideology.

NICK EICHER, HOST: John Stonestreet is standing by for Culture Friday. We’ll talk about that and more.

Also today … a film that asks what would make you risk it all?

AUDIO: I love my country. But there are things more important than that.

Reviewer Joseph Holmes takes a good look at the film Truth and Treason.

And later … Word Play with George Grant for October … celebrating the wonder of all God’s creatures, great and small.

BROWN: It’s Friday, October 17th. 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: It’s time for the news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Trump meeting with Zelenskyy, to meet with Putin again » Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is set to meet with President Trump at the White House today.

They’ll talk about more air defenses for Ukraine and the possibility of the United States selling long-range tomahawk missiles to Kyiv.

The meeting comes one day after Trump again talked with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by phone and discussed another face-to-face meeting.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

LEAVITT:  I think the president is always willing to take a chance at, uh, diplomacy. Uh, and this war he has always said is going to have to end at the negotiating table. 

The two leaders last met in Alaska in August. Trump has since expressed growing frustration with Putin’s lack of interest in ending the war.

The meeting is set to take place in Budapest, Hungary, though it’s not clear exactly when. Trump told reporters that the secretary of state was working out the details.

TRUMP:  Marco Rubio is going to be meeting with his counterpart, as you know, Lavrov, and they'll be meeting pretty soon. They're gonna set up a, a time and a place very shortly. Maybe it's already set up.

Trump shared on social media Thursday that he believes the phone call with Putin made significant progress.

President Zelenskyy while in Washington is also meeting with lawmakers and leaders of U.S. energy companies. That comes amid Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine’s power grid.

Thune offers Senate vote on Obamacare tax credits » The Senate has voted for a tenth time on a clean stopgap funding bill to reopen the government, and …

AUDIO: The motion is not agreed to.

GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he’s extended an olive branch promising a floor vote on Obamacare tax credits if Democrats will approve temporary funding.

But Democrats do not appear to be impressed by that offer. Odds are the vote would not be successful.

And Democratic leaders say they’ll continue to block funding until Republicans agree to extend those tax credits.

And Republicans still say they’re willing to negotiate, but only after Democrats agree to reopen the government.

Israel deceased hostage update » Israel has identified the remains of more deceased Israeli hostages. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Israel’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine Thursday identified the remains of two additional hostages returned from Gaza.

That comes as Israeli leaders warned Hamas to hand over the bodies of those still held amid a fragile truce that halted the two-year war.

Since Monday’s exchange, Hamas has returned 10 bodies, nine of which Israel’s military has identified as hostages. Israel said there were 28 total deceased hostages in Gaza before the swap.

In exchange for the release of the hostages, Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Bolton charged following classified documents probe » Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton has been charged with keeping top-secret records at home and sharing classified notes with relatives.

The 18-count indictment also says Iranian-linked hackers breached his email in 2021, exposing sensitive material he had shared.

President Trump reacted to the news, telling reporters …

TRUMP:  I didn't know that you tell me for the first time, but I think he's, you know, a bad person. Uh, I think he's a, uh, bad guy. Yeah, he's a bad guy. It's too bad, but the way it goes.

Bolton served for more than a year in the first Trump administration … before being fired in 2019 and emerging as an outspoken critic of the president.

DHS on cartel bounties » The Department of Homeland Security issuing a new warning about Mexican drug cartels offering bounties against federal agents.

DHS says cartels are offering as much as $50,000 for hits against ICE and Border Patrol agents.

Border Czar Tom Homan says he's never seen anything like this.

HOMAN:  I have not lived with my wife since late March because of death threats against me, and, and, and now there's, there are reporters out there trying to find the location of my family. There are reporters trying to identify who my sons are. I mean, it, this has gone beyond the pale.

This comes after a federal grand jury indicted an alleged Chicago gang leader for soliciting the murder of a high-ranking U.S. Border Patrol commander.

Homan is also facing questions amid reports that he was recorded accepting a 50-thousand dollar bribe from undercover federal agents. During a town hall this week, Homan for the first time gave an outright denial of that accusation.

Alaska rescues » It's being called one of the most significant airlifts in Alaska history, evacuating hundreds of people from coastal villages that were inundated by remnants of Typhoon Halong.

Rick Thoman at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

THOMAN:  The recovery is, is just complicated because these are remote communities because there is no road connections where, and many of the airstrips, you know, are not big enough.

Record storm surge swept away homes, some with people still inside leaving 1500 residents in makeshift shelters.

THOMAN: Even in the best of circumstances, this would be a logistical, um, nightmare. We're now, um, you know, into mid-October. Freeze up is coming.

Roughly 40% of those living in some 10 affected communities are being forced to evacuate.

Three people were reported missing or dead.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with John Stonestreet. Plus, Word Play with George Grant.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, October 17th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday! Joining us is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast … good morning John!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, I want to take you back two years, to those first days after the Hamas attacks. You told us then that the Western world’s shock — the disbelief that anyone could commit that kind of barbarity — revealed a deeper misunderstanding of human nature. Let’s go back and re-listen.

STONESTREET: You know, the inability to really understand this, I think, stems from a couple worldview truths.

First, this idea that somehow the more technologically advanced we get, the more morally progressive we get, has proven to be just a wrong vision of human nature.

Second, most warfare was carried out like this throughout all of human history. And the only thing that changed that was Christianity. Literally the only thing that stopped the inability of distinguishing between civilians and combatants.

By the way, that's a worldview thing, right? Why are civilians and combatants seen the same throughout most of human history and by Hamas, is because people aren't seen as individuals, they're not seen as individually valuable, they're seen as part of a group, and therefore all are guilty. And that's why there's calls for extermination.

Now, after two years of war, with hostages finally home and the fighting shifting into what Churchill might’ve called ‘the end of the beginning,’ what—if anything—have we learned as a culture? Anything at all?

STONESTREET: Well, it’s a good question. First, I want to just bring up that in my contract it states that you can never replay my words back to me, especially ones after a year—statute of limitations. That’s a frightening thing to see.

No, listen, I think that at the time we were trying to communicate the importance and power of worldview—those things that are the software on which a culture, the hardware, runs.

When the hostages were released—praise God—Hamas celebrates this end of the war by killing Palestinians in Gaza. Israel celebrates their loved ones coming home. This is the power of worldview.

Islam really is, on Islam’s own terms, a framework that dehumanizes the other. It has a description of what’s wrong with the world as being the other, a solution as being death to the other. All this is inherent; it’s baked into the worldview.

This is not to suggest that Israel did everything perfectly or right or well. We spent a lot of time over the last couple of years in various programs talking about just-war theory—which is both: Do you have a right to wage war? And secondly, how are you waging that war? I think there are real questions that need to be asked.

But the moral equivalence is just an astonishingly amoral take. Color me cynical or skeptical—it seems like the same sides are still on the same sides on this one.

EICHER: Speaking of worldview and where it leads, there’s another kind of cultural clash underway. Not long ago, Gen Z was described as the most gender-fluid generation in American history. But new data from political scientist Eric Kaufmann suggests that may have peaked.

A large-scale survey shows sharp declines in both transgender and non-heterosexual identification since 2023—especially at elite universities. Kaufmann calls it a ‘cultural correction,’ saying it’s not driven by politics or religion but by the fading of an online social contagion tied to mental health.

When you look at this dramatic spike—and equally dramatic decline—what do you see behind it? What’s really going on here?

STONESTREET: Well, I just feel like there’s more data that needs to come in, but we all feel like the train has been slowed down, maybe stopped, and in some areas of culture even reversed. It shouldn’t surprise us that that’s also happening among the vulnerable, who themselves were the most likely victims of these really terrible ideas.

Look, we had schools that were teaching this stuff. We have fewer schools now teaching it because of realigning Title IX and other things the Trump administration has done. We had a whole group of people absolutely fearful to say anything in opposition to this ideology.

This is what Malcolm Gladwell himself admitted just a couple of weeks ago. Now, thanks to high-profile people willing to speak out—from J.K. Rowling to Riley Gaines, certainly those willing to go to court—I think we should see a reversal in this number.

I also think there’s a similar reversal happening in smartphone usage. If Dr. Jean Twenge and others have taught us anything, it’s that there’s a direct correlation. I don’t think smartphones and social media are sufficient to explain the crazy spike, but they certainly contributed to it in an incredible way. More people are realizing that smartphones and social media are a terrible idea for teenagers, period.

I don’t usually do a whole lot of preaching here, but listen: if you have your kid harming themselves with a knife, you take the knife away. Doesn’t mean there aren’t other issues to deal with—there are—but you at least take the knife away.

This whole story of social contagion, self-harm, the smartphone and social media has been the knife. I don’t usually say it that definitively, but there you go.

The other thing worth mentioning is that this is just more evidence—as if we needed any—that this was indeed a social contagion. When you see this crazy spike that just came out of nowhere and then it falls off a cliff, that tells you there’s nothing natural about it.

Next time there’s an ideologically driven movement and we’re all gaslighted—“We were born this way,” “The science is settled,” and all this other nonsense we knew wasn’t true but felt social pressure from the highest realms of government to medical establishments to educators and everybody in between—don’t believe it, right?

The crisis of trust in American culture is in a really bad place, and it was made incredibly worse by transgender ideology and transgender ideologues. Abigail Shrier got it right early on. That’s who we should have believed. Don’t believe the gaslighting the next time it happens.

BROWN: John, I want to turn to something Politico uncovered—private group chats among young Republican leaders from around the country: New York, Kansas, Arizona, Vermont. Messages spanning months, and not intended for public view.

It’s a revealing glimpse of what some of them say when they think no one is listening. It reminded me of Luke 8: “Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest.”

What light does this shine on the next generation of political leadership? What stands out to you in these conversations—about integrity, character, or the cultural forces shaping young some conservatives today?

STONESTREET: They were horrific and vile and racist comments—laughing about things that shouldn’t be laughed at. In there you see a mark of something we’ve struggled with in the West for a long time: this cult of adolescence.

This was written about years ago in The Death of the Grown-Up by Diane West, in which she noted that for the first time in history we had teenagers—and she wasn’t talking about teenaged people. In most nations in history there was a rite of passage and then they were expected to act like adults. Now we have this stage of life called adolescence in which we expect them to act like idiots for five, six, or seven years.

She pointed out—and it’s only become more pronounced since—that the age of adolescence not only became normal but expanded, and it’s not been good for us. Most people who study this identify adolescence as a stage between 11 and 30.

Years ago, at a Christian college where I taught, I had a run-in with freshmen who dressed up like the KKK to interrupt a forum I was hosting on race. When I stopped and confronted them, they all said, “We just thought it was going to be funny.”

And you just kind of go, What makes you think this is funny? Listening to the chat was a flashback to that: What makes you think this is funny?

One of the things that makes you think things are funny that aren’t is a category Carl Trueman has introduced, which I think is really important. He talks about the language of disenchantment of the modern world—looking to technological and political solutions for things that are actually spiritual realities. But there’s another stage called desecration.

It’s further—not just treating God as if He doesn’t exist, but actively attacking religious symbols and the sacred. The ultimate act of desecration is the profound dehumanization that takes place. We know that through trans ideology. We know that through acts of actual violence, as in the assassination of Charlie Kirk. We know there’s a dehumanization that comes out of radical Islamic ideology—that’s clear from Hamas—but there’s also been an attack on the human person that’s come out of secularism and critical theory.

In other words, we laugh at things that aren’t funny, and that often requires profound dehumanization. That’s embedded in the text.

So, look, I think this will be dismissed by some on the right—“boys will be boys.” We’re not talking about them; we’re talking about young adults. In other time periods, they would have commanded troops and managed entire farms.

So by the young Republicans, that should not be an excuse—“boys will be boys”—because we should have higher expectations of them, and they should have higher expectations of themselves. The fact that neither of those things are true is an indication that our society is not well—that we’ve been captivated by this cult of adolescence, too.

BROWN: Well finally, Britain has named its first woman Archbishop of Canterbury—the first woman ever to lead the Church of England.

What does that signal about where the Anglican Communion is heading? And what, if anything, can the broader church—especially here in the U.S.—what can we learn from the courage we’ve seen in Nigeria … where we’ve seen costly stands taken for Biblical truth?

STONESTREET: Well, we can learn a lot from our Nigerian brothers and sisters—and honestly, the bishops that are part of the Global Anglican Futures Conference. They’ve been protesting and standing against the positions of the Archbishop, pointing out heresy in the Church of England, the Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church, and other places for a really long time.

For 20 years now, when the Archbishop has called a meeting at Canterbury—which, by the way, is the primary job of the Archbishop of Canterbury, to get all the primates together—they don’t go. But when GAFCON calls a meeting, the Archbishop shows up at their meeting. That tells you a lot about where the situation lies.

This is a disaster of an Archbishop appointment, and I say that as an Anglican in America whose church isn’t really connected at all with the Church of England in any formal way anymore. The last several Archbishops have been pulled left; Sarah Mullally is already starting left.

The problem with this appointment is not just the question over women’s ordination—an enormously controversial issue across the Anglican Communion. There are five, six, or seven other theological, doctrinal, cultural positions she’s on record about that are heretical. They’re heterodox at best, heretical at worst, and it’s a tragedy.

It’s obviously been going this direction for a long time. I think the Archbishop of the ACNA certainly needs to be very, very clear about where the authority of the Church lies—how the position of Canterbury is different from what keeps us grounded in an evangelical, orthodox, historic Anglican space.

If we need a place to look, let’s look to the leaders of GAFCON, who have been really clear on this.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you, both.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a film on conscience and conviction.

Angel Studios’ latest inspirational World War II drama is the true story of a teenager who defied the Third Reich … and paid the price.

Here’s reviewer Joseph Holmes on the movie Truth & Treason.

JOSEPH HOLMES: Holocaust and WWII movies seem to be having a comeback lately. Last year we had White Bird and Bonhoeffer. This year, Nuremberg and Triumph of the Heart. And that’s not surprising. We’re seeing rising antisemitism and both left and right fear their political enemies are becoming dictators. So the question of “what would you do if a new Hitler came to power” feels eerily relevant.

Angel Studios’ new film Truth & Treason is tackling that question head-on.

SALOMON: I think it’s just a matter of time now.

HELMUTH: I could hide you.

SALOMON: If you go in the house that would be interesting.

HELMUTH: If not there, somewhere else.

SALOMON: I don’t– …I’m German. As much as you are. I’m not going anywhere.

Truth & Treason is in many ways a typical entry of the genre … but in some other ways, it’s far better. The movie follows the real-life story of Helmuth Hübener, a 16-year-old boy living in Nazi Germany. He forms a resistance group with friends Karl and Rudi secretly distributing anti-Nazi pamphlets. And he eventually becomes the youngest resistance fighter to be executed for standing against Hitler.

The film does pretty much everything you expect from a movie like this. But what sets it apart is the implementation. Truth & Treason puts you right in Helmuth’s shoes and takes you step by step, showing, not telling, what it’s like to experience a society turning evil, and how you might be inspired to stand up to it. We see Helmuth being an ordinary boy with his friends, excited to move up at work. We then see—and feel—the moment that Helmuth and his friends’ opposition to the Nazis changes from youthful rebellion to a decision to wage war against evil.

KARL: Will those pamphlets you found in your typewriter change all that.

HELMUTH: A man finds one of these in his mailbox. He reads it. He passes it to his friend. Then another. Then another. Then another.

RUDI: Until enough people read it and stand up. 

The film also gives more time than other films of the genre to the genuine faith of its characters—both those who support Hitler and those who defy him. Helmuth’s bishop argues Christians have to obey their rulers.

BISHOP ZANDER: We believe in being subject to king, presidents, rulers, magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. Would not this include our Fuhrer, and the current laws of the Reich? Each of us must ask ourselves, “Can we pick and choose which of God’s laws we’ll follow? Only the commandments we find most convenient? Or the ones we happen to agree with?

*** However, it’s worth noting that Helmuth isn’t an orthodox Christian. He’s a Mormon… something the movie significantly downplays. In fact, on first watching the film, I didn’t even notice. Angel Studios was founded by Mormons. And I think this is one of those instances in which they're intentionally blurring the lines between Mormons and Christians.

HELMUTH: Jesus was a revolutionary. We like to think of him as always being kind and loving and filled with grace. And he was. But the Scriptures say he was full of grace and truth. He said what needed to be said. He stood up, but He did it peacefully.

While the film implements the typical formula of a WWII hero inspirational drama well, it doesn’t transcend it. It ticks the boxes better than most, but it doesn’t shake up the formula at all. And as the film goes on, the more formulaic it becomes. The climax is particularly guilty of the contrived sentimentality of the genre. For example, in court, Helmuth gives a long inspirational speech that his enemies could have—and probably would have—stopped.

Tales about those who stand up against injustice at great cost are always timely. Truth & Treason doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it will effectively remind you why truth is worth dying for.

I’m Joseph Holmes.

*** Editor's note. This review has been updated for historical accuracy

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD commentator George Grant wraps up our week with this month’s Word Play. Today, wonder, words, and the creatures that fill up God’s world.

GEORGE GRANT: We live in an enchanted world of dizzying diversity and sacred swarming. God made the seas teem with living creatures, shoals of fish, and great monsters. He made the open expanse of the heavens teeming with flocks, murmurations, and throngs of winged birds in flight. He made the dry land teem with the beasts of the earth, the lowing cattle, and everything that creeps on the ground. He made each creature in this sacred teeming to be fruitful and to multiply after its kind, an endless array of mortal images with which He speaks to us of eternal things.

It is little wonder then that Christians in the Medieval Age were captivated by the idea of cataloging this creative splendor in detailed, sometimes wildly imaginative, compendiums called bestiaries. These were encyclopedic books that combined descriptions, illustrations, and moral lessons concerning all manner of fabulous creatures, some observed in the natural world and some mythically fanciful, some exotic, some mundane. Like the Aristotelian lists they imitated, medieval bestiaries became the lexicons or field reference guides for the analogical and metaphorical language of the epoch’s florid profusion of art, architecture, and literature.

In Umberto Eco’s classic medieval murder mystery, The Name of the Rose, the novice, Adso, approaches the soaring edifice of an abbey chapel. Above him is a carved tympanum. It is a bestiary in stone described in a stunning 250-word-long sentence, saturated with a riot of unfamiliar vocabulary. It was, Adso declares, an “enigmatic polyphony,” that was “assembled in a consistory,” with “sirens, gorgons, harpies, incubi, dragopods, minotaurs, lynxes, pards, chimeras, gryphons, leucrota, manticores, paranders, saurians, and dipsases.” It is enough to take your breath away.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium likewise features an immense cosmological bestiary populated with hobbits, elves, dwarves, and men. But there are also balrogs, nazgûl, kraken, orcs, trolls, ents, barrow-wights, and a host of other creatures.

C.S. Lewis gave us a Narnian bestiary that included centaurs, dryads, niads, fauns, nymphs, ogres, satyrs, sprites, unicorns, and wraiths—to say nothing of eloquent beavers, articulate horses, fluent pucks, and redemptive lions.

But perhaps the grandest bestiary of all is found in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. There is the sacred teeming in the celestial realm: angels, archangels, principalities, powers, and the hosts of heaven. There is the sacred teeming in the terrestrial realm: nephilim, rephaim, emim, and zamzumim. There are the apocalyptic creatures: dragons, winged beasts with the appearance of lions and leopards and rams and goats, the seven-headed horned Beast in John’s Revelation, and the bedazzling four living creatures of Ezekiel’s prophetic vision. There are the terrifying creatures of leviathan, behemoth, and rehab.

Is it any wonder then that when God charged Adam to name every creature in the vast sacred teeming, he would have to exercise such linguistic dexterity and creativity? God’s bestiary is indeed enough to take your breath away.

I’m George Grant.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time to name the crew who put the week’s programs together:

Maria Baer, David Bahnsen, Hunter Baker, Anna Johansen Brown, Janie B. Cheaney, Rachel Coyle, Emma Eicher, George Grant, Joseph Holmes, Travis Kircher, Carolina Lumetta, Bekah McCallum, Lindsay Mast, Onize Oduah, Carlos Paez, Mary Reichard, Jenny Rough, John Stonestreet, and Cal Thomas.

Thanks also to our breaking news crew: Kent Covington, Daniel Devine, Christina Grube, and Steve Kloosterman.

And thanks to the Moonlight Maestros, working in the dark of night so the program’s ready bright and early: Benj Eicher and Carl Peetz …

Harrison Watters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Paul Butler is executive producer, and Les Sillars is editor-in-chief. I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

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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 says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.” — Psalm 100:1, 2, 5

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