The World and Everything in It: October 3, 2025

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

Today on Culture Friday:

TILLY: Genes are normally passed down from parents to offspring … not mine. I’m built on everything that came before me.

Hollywood’s new “it girl” isn’t even human. She’s AI, and what will this new art form do to our humanity?

NICK EICHER, HOST: Katie McCoy is standing by.

Also today, two new Reagan soundtracks are out, and the contributors may surprise you.

JOSEPH: He's got thousands of fans who are asking, “Why in the world are you on a Reagan soundtrack?” And I can’t give you a definitive answer either.

Later, holdin’ hands and skimmin’ stones.

BROWN: It’s Friday, October 3rd. 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, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Manchester attack » In northern England, police are still investigating a deadly terrorist attack near Manchester that killed at least two people.

A man drove a car into people outside a synagogue near Manchester, then exited the car and continued his attack with a knife.

British Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood:

MAHMOOD: I am horrified by the antisemitic attack, terrorist attack at a synagogue on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. My prayers are with the victims and the families of all of those who were murdered here today.

Officers shot and killed the suspect at the scene.

The assailant was a British citizen of Syrian descent.

Police also arrested three suspects, two men and one woman on “suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.” No word yet on how they may have been connected to the attack.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack, and he lamented that right now in the UK:

STARMER: Jewish buildings, synagogues, even schools, require round the clock protection. Where dedicated specialist security is necessary because of the daily threat of anti-Semitic hatred.

He said anti-semitic hatred is rising once again and Britain must stand up to it.

Cartels conflict » President Trump says the United States is in an armed conflict with drug cartels.

The president sent a memo to Congress declaring that armed conflict. He says military actions against drug cartels fall under his duty to protect Americans.

And he told reporters:

 TRUMP: We had a lot of drugs coming in through water. We call it water drugs. So we hit a number of boats. You probably saw that. And since we did that, we have absolutely no drugs coming into our country via water.

And he said his administration is looking at how to hit cartels harder on land as well.

The administration now classifies major cartels as terrorist groups and states the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with them. The memo references a September 15 strike on a Caribbean vessel tied to drug trafficking — warning these groups could “kill Americans.”

Critics, including Democratic lawmakers, argue the move exceeds executive powers by using military force against criminal networks.

Government shutdown latest » In Washington, a war of words continues between Democrats and Republicans on day-there of the government shutdown.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans:

JEFFRIES:  They have zero interest, zero in providing high quality, affordable, and accessible care.

He said Republicans must come to the negotiating table and consider Democrats’ demands.

But Speaker Mike Johnson says passing a clean bill that temporarily continues the funding that was already in place is the only path forward right now.

JOHNSON:  Gosh, I would've loved to have loaded this up with Republican conservative, limited government proposals, but we didn't do that because I needed to maintain the high ground.

He says the policy differences can be debated separately once the government has been reopened.

Record day on Wall Street » Wall Street did not appear to be too bothered by the government shutdown, surging to new record highs at closing. WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: Tech shares led the way Thursday after OpenAI announced new partnerships in South Korea for its Stargate AI project.

And Fair Isaac stock had its best day in almost three years after launching a program that could let customers bypass the big credit bureaus for FICO scores.

The S&P 500 inched up a tenth of a percent, the Dow gained two-tenths, and the Nasdaq rose nearly half a percent.

Markets also climbed across much of Europe and Asia, while Treasury yields eased.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

Earthquake latest » In the Philippines, authorities have ended search and rescue operations after Tuesday night’s deadly earthquake. Officials say all missing have been accounted for.

The 6.9-magnitude quake struck Cebu province, killing at least 73 people and injuring hundreds.

Near the city of Bogo, the village of Barangay Binabag was hit especially hard.

One resident spoke as he stood amid the rubble of crumbled houses.

AUDIO: I'm really sad about the tragedy we've experienced here in Barangay Binabag. It's a very big change.

Landslides sent massive boulders crashing through homes while residents were asleep, leaving entire families dead.

Texas Ten Commandments » Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is reminding schools they must post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

In an advisory this week, Paxton told districts a law that took effect in September requires a 16-by-20 inch copy in every room.

He called the commandments a cornerstone of America’s moral and legal foundation.

But a federal judge in San Antonio has blocked enforcement in 11 districts, siding with parents who argued it pressures children into religious observance.

Paxton has appealed.

Courts in Louisiana and Arkansas have also halted similar laws from taking effect.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Culture Friday with Katie McCoy. Plus, the music from the recent Ronald Reagan biopic.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Friday, September 26th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. It’s Culture Friday! Joining us is author and speaker Katie McCoy. Good morning, Katie.

KATIE MCCOY: Good morning Nick and Myrna.

BROWN: Well, Hollywood has its latest “It Girl”—except she is literally an “it.” She’s an AI-generated actress named “Tilly Norwood,” the star of a fully AI-written comedy sketch making the rounds.

TILLY NORWOOD SKETCH: “We all knew TV was dead.”
“AI generated 100 better ideas in minutes.”
“It cast and budgeted itself.”
“It wrote the whole script.”
“Claude three, Gemini GPT—we called it a writer’s room.”
“Who did it cast?”
“Tilly Norwood, 100% AI generated.”
“Three seasons and a podcast.”
“She’ll do anything I say. I’m already in love.”
“But can she cry on Graeme Norton?”
“Of course she can—”
“And it’ll be clipped, subtitled, and monetized on TikTok by lunchtime.”
“We’re all going to hell.”

I wonder.

You know, this is not just satire. The trade publication Variety reports that multiple Hollywood agents (presumably human ones) are already competing to represent Tilly Norwood, the AI creation. This is happening in real time … a competition for which agency will sign her if she happens to become the next Scarlett Johansson.

Katie, when you hear that, what do you make of it?

MCCOY: Well, there are a few stories that really grab our attention and bring such a visceral reaction in multiple spheres of society, and this is definitely one of them. I don’t mean to sound like Henny Penny, the sky is falling, but this is actually pretty terrifying.

Now, from just a business perspective, you hear different Hollywood guilds really sounding the alarm and saying this is going to be very bad for the acting community if you can just construct a fake actor or actress. But more than that, this is something that we are not prepared for. We’ve long been desensitized to the idea of dividing parts of the human identity. A body doesn’t have to have any meaning, so why should the simulation of a body have any meaning?

You couple the invention of Tilly Norwood with things like AI girlfriends, and we are, in the words of one author, Laura Bates, sleepwalking into a nightmare. She describes how it is possible that we could think a hyper-realistic, customizable “woman” who can be controlled without consent is actually a good thing for humanity. We are already blurring the lines between reality and virtual reality, between what is real and what is fantasy. This is just contributing to that.

And I think that one of the big questions we’re going to have is, how do we relate as a society to the creation—the image of someone who is human-like—when we know that they are not actually a human being?

EICHER: Katie, this whole discussion actually grew out of an internal post among our WORLD editorial staff. Several colleagues weighed in, and one of our reporters, Juliana Chan Erikson, made an observation I thought was worth putting to you as pushback. She said: isn’t this just a modern version of what animators have done for a century—namely, creating characters out of thin air? What makes this different?

MCCOY: Well, the difference is quite simply that with animation, we recognize that we’re seeing an animation. With these AI creations, it’s designed so that you don’t realize you’re looking at an animation or an artificial construction of a human being. This is one of the many ways the technological innovation of AI is advancing at a far greater pace than our ethical considerations of how we use AI.

I wish I could say that this could be some type of advancement, but when you consider the proliferation of pornography, this is only going to be used to depict the exploitation of women in an even more realistic way.

The other thing though, Nick—silver lining—it might be an opportunity for us to enter into some very helpful conversations, like, what is a human being? Can an artificially generated, technologically programmed appearance of a human replace a human being? You’re seeing such a strong reaction against this that I think it’s giving us this opportunity to ask, why do we instinctively feel like that?

It’s a great opportunity for us to ask, because at the core of it, humanity—when we’re thinking worldview-ishly here—humanity is in the image of God. Humanity has a capacity for a relationship with God. With that we have human agency, we have responsibility. An AI is not in the image of God. It’s in the image of man, in the image of other human beings. It is incapable of communicating beyond what it is programmed to communicate. That right there could be a great opportunity for us to talk about what is truly a human being.

BROWN: Katie, you mentioned a “silver lining.” I heard commentator Michael Knowles—I think he was half-joking—say maybe this is actually a good thing, because it could mean fewer women get drawn into Hollywood and have their lives ruined. Might that be on point?

MCCOY: It might be, but the trouble is, with the advancement of AI, women are still going to have their lives ruined through the increasing objectification and commoditization of the female body.

In Germany, they have something called a cyber brothel. It is actually blurring the lines between what is real and what is virtual, and it is taking these technological advances of AI and using it for sinful purposes. That shouldn’t surprise us, because we live in a fallen world where the same types of minds that can come up with cures for otherwise incurable disease can take that same innovation and use it to harm.

Every time we see something as remarkable as AI, we see two opportunities. We can use that either for the benefit of humanity—for the alleviating of suffering even—or we can see it as a means to bring harm to the image of God. Both of those things are happening in the world right now.

EICHER: Katie, I want to ask you to talk about whether we're in a revival, or on the cusp of a revival, or not.

We put the question to John Stonestreet last week and I loved what he said.

He started by analyzing Jonathan Edwards’s signs of revival, Jesus is exalted, sin is abhorred and repented of. It’s happening in churches with highly doctrinal preaching, strong preaching, and it’s happening among young people.

And let’s listen to the way he wound it up:

STONESTREET: Ultimately we need to remember that if God brings that sort of awakening, it’s out of his kindness. And we want to join it.

And I think right now there’s a lot of Christian voices that are really quick to condemn it in various ways and for various reasons. I don’t want to be that guy.

I want to be that guy that jumps on the bandwagon of a revival and an awakening in whatever form that it is, trusting that the Lord’s bringing what the Lord’s bringing.

That led me to a really great, really popular podcast by Josh Howerton, and he was talking about what he was seeing. He’s a megachurch pastor down in Dallas.

I’d like to play a clip from that podcast.

HOWERTON: This is a little controversial, but the more I think about this and read, the more convinced of this I become: When political conservatism spreads, more people become Christians, and when political progressivism spreads, less people become Christians.

If you start swimming in the streams of truth and liberty, you're eventually going to find its source. So like conservatism in general, calibrates the conscience in such a way that it pushes people toward the God from whom the principles came.

Progressivism is built generally upon a secular, Marxist view of human nature, economics, governance. So what progressivism does, particularly secular progressivism, is it calibrates the consciences of people away from what is true, right and good, and it teaches people to call evil things good and good things evil.

So back to the question: do you think we’re experiencing a revival in the land?

MCCOY: I do, and not only in the sense of just I hope that it is true. I’m going to choose to believe that it is not only possible, but that it is happening, because we are seeing the ingredients happen. We’re seeing people come to Christ. We’re seeing the people of God be awakened, stirred, renewed—a desire to serve and obey and be bold with the gospel.

I, like many people, after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, just felt even more emboldened, and I think we’re seeing that all across the country. I loved that clip from Josh Howerton. Something I know he would agree with—in fact, I think he said—is that the gospel can spread in any environment, any type of culture, any type of government.

But with that, he makes this excellent point that laws are didactic. Behind every law is a moral claim. I just finished writing a Bible study on Deuteronomy, and you see that all throughout God’s law. God’s law is teaching God’s people not only God’s righteous character, but how they are to live righteously. Here is what a good and just society looks like and how it behaves.

With some principles of conservatism—and I’m not talking about the difference between conservative and liberal as they used to be, like, let’s say, 20 or 30 years ago. I’m talking about the difference between conservative and progressive. Josh Howerton makes this distinction as well.

True progressivism is trying to deconstruct or dismantle foundations like family, relationships, marriage, gender, economy. With conservatism, there’s this emphasis on faith, family, personal responsibility, work ethic, respect for authority, valuing moral order, equal opportunities—not equal outcomes—not looking to the government or any kind of centralized authority to fix our problems.

With that, a far more localized understanding of life—meaning family, church, community, these kinds of mediating institutions, as Edmund Burke described them. These mediating institutions are between the individual and the state. With that, they provide far more social cohesion and far more loyalty to one’s community and consequently to one’s country.

Finally, I always think of that quote from President John Adams: our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

BROWN: We talked about this off air, about a preacher who came to the campus that you attended when you were in college. He was a young preacher, teacher, and he came to Union University and had a role there as an adjunct professor, a young man by the name of Voddie Baucham.

We lost him this past week, and sadly he passed away at age 56. Would you reflect on the life of Voddie Baucham, what he meant to you?

MCCOY: Yeah, anytime you can still remember what a preacher said 20 years later, you know there was something really special about it.

BROWN: It’s a good test!

MCCOY: Yes, I was a college sophomore, and I heard Pastor Voddie Baucham. I still remember when he gave, he told us things that I know I had never heard before, like how reliable Scripture was. He gave all these different historical events and said, did you know there is actually less historical corroboration for things like Caesar crossing the Rubicon than there are for the resurrection? It just bolstered my faith.

I remember that was just one example of the things that he instilled in these college students—how to think about the world. He had the characteristic mic drop moment. I still remember the last line of this message when he talked about Christianity. He said, it’s not true because it works. It works because it’s true.

This was something that as a 20-year-old, I didn’t fully realize or appreciate everything that I was hearing, but it stuck with me. I’m like millions of people, touched by his ministry, influenced by his preaching. He was bold on the dangers of critical theory infiltrating evangelicalism—things that he was kind of a voice in the wilderness on before people really woke up to the dangers of it. He spoke so clearly.

We’ve lost some giants this year, and I know the Lord is going to raise up others. I pray that it would be in my generation, in Gen Z, that we would see for everyone we lost, we’d see others with the same type of boldness and moral clarity, just being completely unashamed of the gospel, just like Voddie Baucham was.

EICHER: Author and speaker Katie McCoy! Great visit, thanks for this.

MCCOY: Thanks for having me.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 3rd.

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: Music for the Gipper.

The Ronald Reagan bio-pic from last year featured Dennis Quaid portraying America’s 40th president.

EICHER: But the film also inspired two brand-new albums. And the voices behind them… let’s just say there are a few you might not expect to find on a Reagan soundtrack.

Here’s WORLD music critic Arsenio Orteza.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Curb Records has just released two new various-artists albums associated with Sean McNamara’s 2024 biopic Reagan. One is the official motion picture soundtrack, the other an album of songs inspired by the film. They would’ve come out sooner, but the film’s music supervisor, Tim Cook, unexpectedly died, leaving Team Reagan to figure out how to complete the projects on its own. The good news is that the albums were worth the wait.

MUSIC: [“Swinging on a Star” by Scott Stapp]

This is “Swinging on a Star” as sung in the film by Creed’s lead singer Scott Stapp. It only plays for a few moments onscreen, but it appears in a complete—and a completely entertaining—version on the Official Motion Picture Soundtrack. And, as anyone who has seen the film knows, it’s not the only selection from the Great American Songbook era that gets a fresh makeover. The singer MŌRIAH, for instance, contributes a sparkling version of the 1937 Andrews Sisters hit “Beir mir bist du schön.” And Robert Davi, who in the film plays Leonid Brezhnev, contributes the Frank Sinatra hits “This Town” and, appropriately enough, “Nancy (with the Laughing Face).”

MUSIC: [“Nancy (with the Laughing Face)” by Robert Davi]

I told Mark Joseph, the film’s producer, how pleasantly surprising it was to discover that great actors could also be great singers and vice versa. He agreed with the “pleasant” part. But he wasn’t all that “surprised.”

JOSEPH: A lot of our actors could easily have been rock stars. Dennis Quaid came to Hollywood to be a recording artist, you know. He wanted to be kind of in the Bruce Springsteen vibe, and just as fate would have it, he went down the acting road, and I think Robert is another one that could easily have had that kind of Michael Bublé, Josh Groban-type career. The acting kind of overtook the music, but Robert is very, very talented in interpreting the great American songbook.

I asked Joseph how he’d gone about assembling the talent on Curb’s new Reagan albums. He told me that he’d made a list of about 60 acts from whom he’d welcome contributions. Then he made each one a pitch and waited for a response.. Some ended up singing songs that were used in the film while the others contributed songs more appropriate to a collection called Songs Inspired by the Film.

Unlike the official-soundtrack songs, all of the Inspired by… songs are originals, and, as one can tell by their titles, many of them are rather “on the nose.” Travis Tritt’s contribution, for instance, is called “A Shining City on the Hill,” and Lee Greenwood’s “Start the World Over,” is a completed version of a song started by Mike Curb and Ronald Reagan himself. But others weren’t as interested in political themes and instead focused on the love story between Reagan and his second wife Nancy.

MUSIC: [“Always” by the Commodores]

This song, “Always,” is by the Commodores. The Kathie Lee Gifford-Claude Kelly duet “I Knew It Would Be You” mines the Ron-and-Nancy vein as well.

MUSIC: [“I Knew It Would Be You” by Kathie Lee Gifford and Claude Kelly]

As you can hear, one benefit of Mark Joseph’s cast-a-wide net approach is that it guarantees stylistic variety. Another is that it raises the odds that something unexpected will happen. When Joseph sent out invitations for the album The Passion of Christ: Songs in 2004, he never thought that he’d get a nearly six-minute track from the R&B superstar Lauryn Hill, who, according to Joseph, broke down crying in the theater and composed her song on the spot.

But that surprise was nothing compared to the ones awaiting Joseph where the respondents to the Reagan film were concerned.

MUSIC: [“Don’t Fence Me In” by Bob Dylan]

Yes, that’s none other than Bob Dylan performing a song first made famous by Roy Rogers. And if you’ve seen the Reagan film, you know that the song plays over the closing credits. Getting Dylan to contribute an original recording was a masterstroke if only because any album with a previously unreleased Dylan track is guaranteed to sell. But Joseph thinks that the song is significant for other reasons.

JOSEPH: I just thought “Don't Fence Me” kind of summarizes both Bob and Ronald Reagan in one swoop. You know, you can't predict what Bob Dylan's going to do next. And—you know, he's got thousands of fans who are asking, “Why in the world are you on a Reagan soundtrack?” And I can't give you a definitive answer either. That's just the way Bob is. And the same with Ronald Reagan.

The biggest surprise of all, though, was getting Gene Simmons of Kiss to sing the standard “Stormy Weather.” And all that it took was a private screening of the film.

JOSEPH: He really threw me a curveball. He called me and he said, “Let's do a song that really unites all the different age groups and all the different eras.” And he just really wanted to come in from a totally unexpected place, and so we settled on “Stormy Weather.”

Actually, Simmons didn’t come in from a totally unexpected place. He had, after all, concluded his 1978 solo album with a straight-faced performance of “When You Wish upon a Star.”

MUSIC: [“When You Wish upon a Star” by Gene Simmons]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 3rd. 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. Finally this week: getting serious about skipping stones.

Turn off the screens, step outside, and rediscover a simple joy.

BROWN: That’s what’s happening in Western Pennsylvania, a childhood pastime has become a semi-serious competition, complete with trophies and world-record holders.

WORLD correspondent Amy Lewis paid a visit to the Rock in River Festival to meet some of the competitors.

SULLY: I would have got first if Ben wouldn't get 31.

AMY LEWIS, REPORTER: Sullivan is seven years old.

SULLY: Most of my friends call me Sully. That's my nickname.

Sully recently won second place in the rock skipping competition for kids when his rock skipped 29 times on its way across the Alleghany River in Franklin, Pennsylvania. His 8-year-old friend Ben won with 31.

BEN: Yeah, he would have gotten first. He was still gonna share the fudge with me, though. (Yeah.)

These two friends take skipping rocks seriously…but not too seriously.

BEN: Oh yeah, yeah. It's something we do.

SULLY: It's just something we do for our life.

Rock skipping isn’t new…it’s been around for millenia…there’s just something about a smooth rock and a body of water that calls out for the challenge…But twenty years ago, enthusiasts took it up a notch or two.

STEINER: 2000, 2002, I would say, I kind of reinvented things a little…

That’s Kurt Steiner.

STEINER:...kind of, kind of brought a sports science, ergonomics, kind of approach to, and physics to, well, it's really just kind of a naive and natural reflex.

He’s throwing in Franklin’s professional category. That means he’s already achieved at least 30 skips. Steiner is the rock skipping world champion and world record holder.

STEINER: (LEWIS: What’s your record?) 88. Yeah. So 88 clear skips. I had three judges, all engineers of one kind or another from around the world, aeronautics and physics, and they gave an 88, an 89, and a 90. So I submitted the 88…For the record, my personal count was a 91 (laughs).

In the early years of this festival, he and another local, Russ Byars, swapped first places and world records. Steiner says the friendly competition motivated him to turn rock skipping into a science.

STEINER: The key difference is that I attack the water very close in…[10:37] landing within four or five feet of my body, and I also used a middle finger grip.

Steiner is in his 60s. Winning against the younger skippers is getting harder.

STEINER: I'll try to dig down a little bit for today. I would like to win this once more. But, boy. I could do it. Maybe, maybe I'll do it.

In the UK, throwing rocks across the water is called skimming and competitors go for distance. Japanese mizu kiri rock skipping competitions focus on aesthetics with two people competing simultaneously.

ANNOUNCER: Alright amateur competitors, I have a quick change to the rules today. Quick change…

Ben and Sully have their lemonade and fudge, and they gather at the Alleghany River shore to watch the amateur class.

ANNOUNCER: There's 55 of you, which is absolutely stellar. We're going to do sets of stones in three.

Competitors come from around Pennsylvania and other states and even other countries. Last year’s winner came from Japan.

The watching crowd means there’s pressure to perform. Young Ben felt it earlier.

BEN: I don’t, I don’t get it. I'm always throwing pretty good when I'm not in the competition, and then I get into the competition and I'm not throwing good.

A competitor’s stone might plonk—or sink. So each person gets several tries.

SOUND: [ROCK PLUNKING]

Amateur skipper Guy “No Kerplunkle” Dunkle tried a new method this year.

DUNKLE: Don't throw the rock. Spin the rock. You don't have to throw hard, you don't have to go for distance. You need to make the rock rotate.

Contestant Kachina Earhart often skips rocks of shale. But today she’s using rounder sandstone.

EARHART: My granddad taught me, and I teach kids…I'm a camp counselor, and I specifically do the outdoor program. So I teach them how to skip rocks.

Many people arrive at the festival with buckets of carefully selected rocks from secret locations. Earhart says practice rocks don’t have to be perfect.

EARHART: Find the biggest, bulkiest, weirdest shaped rock that you can and say, ‘I'm going to get two skips out of this.’ Start throwing things that shouldn't skip, and then you find a flat rock and like, ooh, that sails!

The ones that sail make counting difficult for the judges because of all the little skips at the end.

JUDGES: 19. I had 22. I had 19. 20? Okay, 13 , 7, and a 20 with a high score of 23 on the day.

JUDGE: So the High Commissioner has the final word. (Are you the High Commissioner?) I am indeed. Yes. We confer, and then it's up to him. Yeah, sometimes it's a judgment, but a lot of times it's all science.

ANNOUNCER: For those enterprising amateurs out there, like this young man next to me, if you throw 30 or more skips you will be eligible to enter the professional ranks…

The 27 professional skippers are the big draw of the day. Amateurs gather around and take note of their form and style to emulate in their own practice over the next year. Others just sit and marvel at the pure beauty of rocks skimming across the river and sending up tiny sprays of water on each skip.

In the end, Steiner got 41 skips and walked away with a large trophy. Amateur Guy “No Kerplunkle” Dunkle missed joining the pros by one skip.

ANNOUNCER: But he did stay true to that name and no “kerplunkle.” High score of 29 today. Great job, man. Great job.

Professional rock skipper Collin “Noodles” Hales says afterwards the tradition is to wade into the river to recover the skipped rocks. Especially the winning ones.

COLLIN: So ya bring some swim trunks and water shoes and your bucket out there and, like, so, yeah, so the further you go, the further the rock got. So people try to get the winning rock.

It’s the part Ben likes best.

BEN: It’s my favorite part, it's my favorite. I could find my 30 one. My 30 one like, went straight. So I’ll try to find it.

He’s got a pretty good idea of where to look.

BEN: If you can see the middle of that guy's stream, that was probably where it was. (Announcer: Oil City, Pennsylvania) It wasn't very far, but it was a lot of skips.

Alternate ending:

Next time you find yourself next to a lake or river, Ben has a few tips.

BEN: Plant your feet and throw the rock at an angle like, like this, kinda…not flat to the water, like angled up a little bit, and also flat rocks, obviously.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Lewis in Franklin, Pennsylvania.

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

Mary Reichard, David Bahnsen, Caleb Welde, Juliana Chan Erickson, Lindsay Mast, Daniel Darling, Hunter Baker, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Janie B. Cheaney, Emma Freire, Emma Eicher, Cal Thomas, Mary Muncy, Katie McCoy, Arsenio Orteza, and Amy Lewis.

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

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

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

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

If you enjoy this podcast, help a friend find it, too. Send a link to a favorite story or the whole podcast right from your app. It’s a simple click that helps the program grow.

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 Holy Spirit falling on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, ‘Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days.” —Acts 10:44-48

A reminder to worship at a Bible-believing church this weekend. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. And Lord willing, we’ll be right back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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