The World and Everything in It — October 5, 2020

MARY REICAHRD, HOST: Good morning!

The election is just 29 days away. Yet the rules for the election keep changing. In Florida, it’s about felons and the vote.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today, the Monday Moneybeat: The president, COVID-19, and economic uncertainty.

Plus the WORLD History Book, today, the 50th anniversary of the Public Broadcasting Service—PBS.

And Kim Henderson on one thing that’s not changed this year.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, October 5th. 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: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Doctors say Trump is doing well despite complications over the weekend » President Trump posted a video message on Sunday thanking the staff at the military hospital in Maryland where he’s being treated for COVID-19. 

TRUMP: The work they do is just absolutely amazing and I want to thank them all. I also think we’re going to pay a little surprise to some of the great patriots that we have out on the street. 

The president then briefly left the military hospital to greet supporters gathered outside.

He drove past in an armored SUV, waiving to supporters, but he remained in the vehicle. 

Hours earlier, the president’s medical team said he was doing well. And one of the president’s doctors, Dr. Brain Garibaldi told reporters…

GARIBALD: If he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is that we can plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow. 

The White House said the president checked into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Friday “out of an abundance of caution” after testing positive the day before. 

But over the weekend, the White House sent mixed messages about his health.

While doctors expressed optimism publicly, chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters Saturday—quote—“We’re still not on a clear path yet to a full recovery.”

The president’s chief physician, Dr. Sean Conley said the president had experienced a “high fever” and that his blood oxygen level dropped below normal levels on Friday and again on Saturday. 

CONLEY: Yesterday, there was another episode where he dropped down about 93 percent. He hasn’t ever felt short of breath. We watched it, and it returned back up. 

Blood oxygen saturation is a key health marker for COVID-19 patients. A normal reading is between 95 and 100.

But the president did receive a dose of the steroid dexamethasone in response. He also began a five-day course of the drug remdesivir on Friday.

Other GOP leaders, staffers, lawmakers test positive for COVID-19 » Numerous GOP politicians and staff members tested positive for COVID019 at about the same time as the president and the first lady this week. 

They include former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, White House adviser Hope Hicks, and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. Senators Thom Tillis, Ron Johnson, and Mike Lee also tested positive. 

Doctors have not pinpointed the exact time or place any of the GOP leaders were exposed to COVID-19. 

Given the recent outbreak, the Senate will postpone its floor proceedings until Oct. 19th. But will still hold a confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett starting Oct. 12th.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer complained Sunday that the hearing should be delayed. 

SCHUMER: The idea of having virtual hearings where no one is with the witness for the highest court in the land, for a life appointment that would have such effect on people’s lives makes no sense. 

Schumer said “a virtual hearing is virtually no hearing at all.” 

But Republican Senator Tim Scott of Florida said lawmakers can ask all the same questions whether it’s in person or online. 

SCOTT: You can go in person and social distance or you can do it virtually. So now, it shouldn’t slow it down. The Democrats, they just don’t want Amy Coney Barrett to be confirmed. I feel very comfortable that she has the votes. She’ll be confirmed the last week of October. 

Another Titans player, staff member test positive for COVID-19 » Meantime, the NFL’s Tennessee Titans are dealing with an outbreak of their own.

Another player and another staff member have tested positive for the coronavirus. That brings The Titans’ outbreak to 20 cases.

But the Associated Press reports that the rest of the NFL returned no new positives on Sunday. 

Calif. wildfires have now scorched 4 million acres » Deadly wildfires in California have now burned more than 4 million acres. CalFire Deputy Chief Jonathan Cox said that total is entirely unprecedented. 

COX: It’s never happened before in recorded history. The largest record we have before this for annual acreage burned was 1.5 million.

And the state hit the astonishing milestone Sunday with about two months left in the fire season. 

More than 8,200 wildfires have burned since the start of the year, scorching a combined area larger than Connecticut. About 17,000 firefighters are still battling nearly two dozen major blazes throughout the state.

But despite the grim milestone, firefighters welcomed a bit of good news over the weekend. 

Powerful winds that had been expected to drive flames in recent days didn’t materialize. And warnings of extreme fire danger for hot, dry, and gusty weather expired Saturday morning as a layer of fog rolled in. Clearer skies in some areas allowed large air tankers to drop retardant after being sidelined by smoky conditions.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: felony voting laws in Florida.

Plus, Kim Henderson on sofa hunting and new realities.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER: It’s Monday morning and a brand new work week for The World and Everything in It. Today is the 5th of October, 2020. 

Good morning to you, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Well, Nick, here we are! First Monday in October.

EICHER: It’s like a baseball fan: Opening day

Except you’re a fan of the law: The first day of the new term of the U.S. Supreme Court.

REICHARD: Exactly. Except this time the mood is both full of anticipation, yet a little somber. 

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s voice will be missing. That makes for a poignant start to this term. 

Meanwhile, President Trump’s nominee to fill the seat is preparing for her confirmation hearing. Judge Amy Coney Barrett will miss the early oral arguments, unless she’s listening by phone, as the 8 justices will be doing. This term begins as the last one ended: oral arguments by phone, out of an abundance of caution to minimize the risk to the justices of COVID-19.

EICHER: You know, this moment is somewhat reminiscent of a movie from 1981, First Monday in October. At least, in one aspect: the tenor of what’s to come. One can hope.

In this scene, the fictional Justice Dan Snow, a liberal, gives the eulogy for a colleague who’d died unexpectedly. He offers some words for Justice Stanley Morehead, a conservative.

You’ll hear actor Walter Matthau as Justice Snow:

MATTHAU: Stanley Morehead was a gentleman of honest mind. You can’t say that about many men in this city in this century. Stanley and I were like a pair of flying buttresses. Leaning against opposite sides of a Gothic cathedral, we helped keep the roof from caving in. If we’d both been on the same time all the time we might have pushed the building over. You don’t have to agree with a man in order to respect him.

“You don’t have to agree with a man in order to respect him.”

REICHARD: That’s a great idea. I do think the justices of the Supreme Court model how to disagree. With dignity. At least most of the time.

I listen to each of the oral arguments, choose pertinent audio from the justices and advocates, and then bring you analysis each Monday. I’ll do that starting next week. 

And you’ll hear something about every single oral argument this term.

EICHER: This is a good time to mention that if you want to hear a preview of coming cases, listen to the final episode of the Legal Docket podcast. Mary and Jenny Rough highlight several of the upcoming cases there. Good summary of some cases worth paying attention to in the coming months.

Well, for today: voting rights. 

Legal skirmishes are going on across the country over who can vote, and when and where. Just this past Thursday, South Carolina officials filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking it reinstate the witness requirement for absentee ballots. Lower courts had tossed out this anti-fraud measure during the pandemic.

REICHARD: Let me tell you now about Florida. In that state, there’s an ongoing dispute over voting rights for felons. And this isn’t just a legal battle; it’s political, with the latest development coming just ahead of the November 3rd election. The Supreme Court declined to intervene over a Florida law that effectively denies felons the vote. Their lawyers had filed an emergency request for help.

EICHER: Let me give you a bit of background.

Two years ago, Florida voters passed Amendment 4. That restored voting rights to felons, except for felons convicted of murder or sexual assault. 

The wording of Amendment 4 wasn’t altogether clear. It said that felons could get their voting rights restored, quote, “upon completion of their sentences.”

REICHARD: And that’s where things got complicated. What does “complete the sentence” entail? Time, money, both, either?

A year later, Florida passed a law that interprets “complete the sentence” to mean that a felon must pay off time and money obligations arising from a conviction. Including fees and fines. 

Civil-rights groups sued on behalf of the felons, arguing this amounted to a poll tax. That would violate the 24th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids denying the vote by reason of failure to pay a tax.

They won in District court, then lost at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And the Supreme Court let that stand.

I talked to two lawyers in the know. 

One is James Bopp. He’s litigated election disputes across the country. He explains why requiring felons to pay up before they vote is not against the law.

BOPP: The answer to that, according to the en banc 11th circuit, was that this is not a tax. These court costs, fines and restitution are not taxes. They’re conditions that seek to ensure that the felon pays back their debt to society. And that debt includes the costs that have been incurred by the state to prosecute the felon and also restitution to the victim. So they’re not taxes.

That view says being restored to full citizenship requires that a felon first should pay back his full debt to society.  

But lawyer Jonathan Diaz says it’s not so simple. He’s with the Campaign Legal Center and represents some of the felons challenging the law. He described three clients he represents out of the 17 individual plaintiffs:

DIAZ: One is a Democrat. One is a Republican and one is a registered independent. And all three of them are, you know, fully contributing members of their communities. They have kids and grandkids, in some cases. They’re active in their churches and in their workplaces. They are parts of their communities in every way, but this one. And they just want, you know, they just want to have a say in the election of, of their leaders and in the running of their government.

Of course, Diaz’ clients are a small sampling of the group, of course. According to 60 Minutes, the felons who had registered to vote a few months after Amendment 4 passed  were mostly Democrats. 

And that aspect is what James Bopp saw as onerous:

BOPP: Well, there’s an overarching thing that’s going on within the Democrats and their lawyers:  they have a strategy, which is to create as much chaos as possible surrounding this election. So they have brought almost 200 lawsuits, you know, against many States to try to strike down, change, alter voting procedures, election procedures, to push as much of the voting that they can passed the election.

Diaz counters, that’s beside the point. For his clients, obstacles to voting are unfair, especially when the state has no system to keep track of payments made by felons.

DIAZ: You know, in many cases, these records are incomplete or conflicting. In the case of restitution, which has paid directly to the victim, not even the state or the counties have records of those amounts and those payments. So it really is just a labyrinth of paperwork and bureaucracy, and it can be really challenging for anyone to determine how much was ordered in the first place, how much they still owe and how much they’ve paid over time.

It could take up to six years to set up an accurate accounting system, Florida has said, one that separates out costs like interest or service charges that accrue over time and even differ county by county.

For the other side, Bopp doesn’t dispute that the state government system is a mess. He agrees the state is obligated to figure out a mechanism for parsing the sentence, its obligations and whether they’ve been discharged.

BOPP: But that’s not a reason to disregard certainly in cases where it’s known, disregard the obligation to fulfill you know, to pay back their debt to society. But the other point of course is, what’s the right here?  I mean, there is no right for a felon to be able to vote. The Supreme Court has held that. It’s been quite normal in the history of our country that convicted felons are not restored their voting rights and the Supreme court has upheld that as constitutional. And so it’s a matter of really legislative grace that when voting rights are restored.

Bopp said the courts are sorting out when changes can be made to voting procedure and how close to an election they can be made. The general rule is not to do it, because of the inherent chaos that transitions create. That general rule sometimes gives way, depending on balancing factors, like how important the right is that’s being violated.

BOPP: So this is really fact intensive. So, there’s been not just a couple of cases, there’s been quite a few cases where this question has been presented to the court. They reacted differently in different contexts because I think it’s really fact intensive.

Some disagreement remains on whether Florida voters actually understood the nuts and bolts of Amendment 4.

The Supreme Court has declined numerous times this year to intervene in voting rights disputes in other states. On Friday, the court did agree to hear two voting cases for the new term, including a challenge to a ban against ballot harvesting. But that’s later, and not before this next election.

Despite being turned down in the Florida felons case, Diaz says his group isn’t giving up. Felons and lawyers are mulling their next steps and that may include taking the full case to the US Supreme Court.

One thing is fairly certain, as much as anything can be these days: Today, October 5th, is the registration deadline to vote in Florida. 

One final thing I want to note: several wealthy individuals have stepped in to pay the debts for the felons: John Legend, LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and Michael Bloomberg, to name a few. The Washington Post reports that Bloomberg paid off the obligations of 32,000 felons already. 

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

MARY REICHARD: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER: Talking now with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen, on the road today. Speaking in Nashville, Tennessee, and yet still finding some time for us. David, good morning to you.

DAVID BAHNSEN, GUEST: Good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: What a shocker: the president tests positive for COVID and a lot of people around him test positive for COVID. The market fell when the news broke, and, boy, uncertainty on top of uncertainty.

BAHNSEN: Yeah, I would be careful on the market side because the market futures were down about 500 points on Friday morning and the market went up in the middle of the day, the Dow did. Ended up closing down a little over 100. So, to put a 100 point down day when it had actually been 500 points around this news, I think, is tricky. 

I think what it does reinforce is the uncertainty of the moment and the uncertainty is heightened by this and there’s already a ton of uncertainty. So, if the investor side of people are wondering what to take of all of it is there is a lot of uncertainty and the present situation with the president adds to that in a number of ways.

EICHER: Let’s talk about jobs. The report out Friday: 661,000 net jobs in September, but one storyline is that the jobs recovery seems to be kind of losing momentum because we’ve had five weeks in a row where new jobless claims have been between 800-to-900,000—just sticking there and not really dropping. Do you think the jobs recovery is running out of steam here?

BAHNSEN: No, I think we have steam. I think it’s slowed in its pace, though, if that’s what running out of steam means. But the 661,000 headline number is a little bit misleading because, first of all, there were 145,000 added in revisions to the past two months and also the private sector payrolls were well over 800 of new jobs, and so all of those losses coming in governmental positions, those are job losses for people. But on the productive side of the economy, things were a little bit less negative. 

The main number, I think you and I have talked about it at least three or four times, that I think helps give us a trend for how things are going is the continuing claims. You get your initial jobless claim numbers which have definitely—we want to get that back to 200,000, which was pre-COVID trendline. It had been well, well, well above a million. It had come all the way down to the 800-range, but as you pointed out, it’s staying there. It’s not moving off this kind of 850-ish level. The continuing claims, though, were down almost another million. And so when you have continuing claims now down over half—they were at about 25 million at peak and they’ve now come into the 11 or 12 million range, I mean, that is optimistic. 

We get to a point where we know we can’t get it much better when there’s a certain portion of hospitality jobs that are missing—food/beverage, travel/leisure, hospitality, even some retail would fit in there—those jobs simply can’t come back until the governors of those states allow more economic reopening and revitalization and so we’re getting to that point where there’s a sort of known limit to how much better the job picture can get until we have more economic reopening.

EICHER: What do you make of the report that personal income dropped—down close to 3 percent August versus July? Is that just purely a function of unemployment benefits running out?

BAHNSEN: Oh, no, no, no. That is because of more jobs coming in and this is very contrarian but it’s really important to understand. Personal income went up throughout the crisis and it went up because the jobs that were lost were lower income jobs and so it was taking out of the mix lower paying jobs, which was making average wages look higher, right? The easiest way of looking at it is if you have one person who makes $50,000 and another person who makes $25,000 and the person who makes $25,000 loses his job, the average wages have gone higher, right? But that’s not exactly what we’re looking for. And so personal income goes lower as more people are coming back into the job force, but they are coming in at a lower average wage. And so in a sense what happened before that looked good was really bad and what’s happening now that looks bad is actually somewhat good.

EICHER: Let’s come back to the president—his coming down with COVID is a vivid reminder that we’re still talking about COVID economics, not normal-conditions economics. What about the psychological impact when the president of the United States really pushing to reopen the economy, he’s now hospitalized with this virus. Does it feel like, oh, it’s not over. It’s not close to over. Now the president’s got it. How do you analyze that?

BAHNSEN: Well, I can’t analyze it because I don’t know. I do know this, though, that answer to that is going to have a lot to do with what ends up happening. Like, if he ends up having a three or four day type case and is back, it could have a total opposite effect psychologically where it really helps to reiterate the high recovery rate, the experience that most people who contract coronavirus end up with is after being sick for a few days, having a degree of normalcy return rather quickly. It also, though, because of his age and weight and other vulnerabilities, this could be more drawn out and I think that would have a psychological effect. 

But regardless of the president’s posture in his present very, very unfortunate situation, the American people do know to be careful, to be cautious, and they also know what I think you and I know, which is there’s a limit to what that caution can do, but I think that the total impact to the psychology of the country will really depend on the magnitude of the president’s recovery. A speedy recovery could actually end up really helping.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, financial analyst and adviser. David, good of you to make time for us again despite the travel schedule. I’m grateful. Thank you, David.

BAHNSEN: Thanks for having me.

NICK EICHER: Today is Monday, October 5th. This is WORLD Radio. Thanks for coming along with us today. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD: And I’m Mary Reichard. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: the WORLD History Book.

Today, anniversaries of two media giants: one often revered, the other occasionally reviled.

EICHER: But first, the life of an American patriot. Taking the History Book reins for the week, here’s Katie Gaultney.

KATIE GAULTNEY, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: We open with a sweet story, if you’ll forgive the pun. 100 years ago this week, the birth of American air force pilot Colonel Gail “Hal” Halvorsen, also known as the “Berlin Candy Bomber.” 

HALVORSEN: No wonder these Berlin children greet these U.S. planes so joyously. That’s candy from the men who fly the planes, floating down on handkerchief parachutes…

After World War II, the Allies split Berlin into occupation zones. The Soviet Union controlled the East portion of the city, and the other Allied forces controlled the West. Differences quickly emerged. In June, 1948, diplomatic discussions broke down between the two sides, and the Soviet Union erected road and rail blockades—shutting off access to needed relief for the people of Berlin. 

Colonel Halvorsen describes the situation: 

HALVORSEN: We didn’t have any written agreement to access Berlin on the ground, so Stalin says, “I don’t have to let your supplies go to 2 million people.”  

West Berliners faced shortages of food, water, and medicine. Within 48 hours of the Soviet blockade, the United States initiated the Berlin Airlift, an operation to deliver supplies. Halvorsen piloted C-47s and C-54s.

HALVORSEN: This is operation “Little Vittles”—an unofficial off-shoot of the airlift of Berlin. 

Halverson started pooling his fellow airmen’s ration cards, collecting and delivering chocolate, candy, and gum from overhead…

HALVORSEN: The kids rush to the airport for second helpings… 

Halvorsen would wiggle the wings of his plane as he flew overhead to signal it was time for sweets. Over eight months, he delivered an estimated 23 tons of Hershey chocolate bars and other candy to West Berliners—earning him a slew of delightful nicknames: “Uncle Wiggly Wings,” “The Chocolate Flier,” and of course, “The Candy Bomber.” 

HALVORSEN: An act of kindness pays unforeseen dividends in the battle for Berlin…

As news of his escapades spread, confectioners and children around the world began sending loads of candy and handkerchiefs overseas to assist in the operation. 

In the years since, those German children frequently write to Halvorsen. One boy contacted him 50 years later to tell him how much those missions meant to him.  

HALVORSEN: But he said, “It wasn’t the candy bar that was important. What was important was that somebody—an American—knew that I was in trouble. And somebody cared.”

Halvorsen now lives in an assisted living facility in Provo, Utah, and will celebrate his centennial birthday on Saturday. 

Switching gears now, or should I say, changing channels? 

ANNOUNCER: This is PBS. 

Fifty years ago today the Public Broadcasting Service—or PBS—began operations. The government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting charged PBS with bringing quality children’s programming and performing arts to viewers across the country. Member stations produced content for broadcast, including old favorites like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. 

MUSIC: [MR. ROGER’S NEIGHBORHOOD THEME]

PBS might have stalled out before it even launched if not for Fred Rogers. In 1969, a year before PBS’ debut, President Nixon aimed to cut the proposed funding from the initial $20 million to $10 million. Rogers testified before the Senate subcommittee on communications in defense of public broadcasting, describing his show as a haven from the bombardment of cartoons and television violence. His comments won over prickly Senator John Pastore, who chaired that subcommittee. 

ROGERS: …and I do all the puppets and I write all the music and I write all the scripts.
PASTORE: Well I’m supposed to be a pretty tough guy, and this is the first time I’ve had goosebumps for the last two days. Looks like you just earned the $20 million. [Laughter, applause]

Rogers not only succeeded in preventing funding cuts; Pastore’s committee increased the next year’s funding to $22 million. Today, more than 100 million viewers tune in each month through 300 plus member stations. 

MUSIC: [Sesame Street]

From old media to new media, from Sesame Street to selfies. 

AUDIO: [iPhone camera sound]

Ten years ago, a 26-year old computer programmer takes a picture of a dog and creates a social media giant…Instagram. Here’s founder Kevin Systrom:

SYSTROM: We worked really hard on making it really easy for people to share their lives in a beautiful way. 

Within two months, the photo-sharing platform racks up a million users. Its explosive growth catches Facebook’s attention; the social media giant acquires the company for a billion dollars in 2012. Today, Instagram boasts over a billion active monthly users. 

But numbers don’t tell the whole story. Mental health advocates routinely criticize Instagram for the toll its curated images take on young people.

Plus, it faces allegations of being a little bit like “big brother.” Here’s tech entrepreneur Jeff Seibert addressing just that on the Netflix documentary: “The Social Dilemma.”

SEIBERT: What I want people to know is everything they’re doing online is being watched, is being tracked, is being measured. Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Katie Gaultney.

MARY REICHARD: Today is Monday, October 5th. So glad you’ve joined us today for The World and Everything in It. Good morning! I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. WORLD Commentator Kim Henderson now on the one thing that has not changed despite the reality of COVID.

KIM HENDERSON: Be careful what you post on Craigslist. The couch you’re sitting on, debating whether or not it’s time for it to go? Well, it can be loaded up by someone named Bev and headed down the highway before you have time to realize what you’ve done.

I know this from first-hand experience, and I must say it’s amazing how much more space a room has when that happens–and how much less seating, which can be a real problem. So I joke with my husband as I set out to shop for a new sofa: Get me a license. I’m on a hunt.

After all, how hard can it be? I’m just making a decision that we’ll have to live with what, 10 years at the most? It only has to match the rug, the paint, the drapes, the shades, my skin tone, and every other stick of furniture in the room, right? Not to mention the fabric has to hide popcorn stains, and the frame has to suit the napping preferences of all parties involved. Oh, and there’s those measurements it has to fit, too.

So, the task had to be done, but after a few disappointing attempts, my quest turned into the kind of thing you bemoan to your friends. One listened to my sad story, then told one of her own. It seems her mother-in-law has been searching for a sofa, too. For three years.

Three years? Now I admit, that scared me. I decided to find something. Anything. It’s just furniture, right?

So the question is, why are we still sofaless weeks after our couch went to live with Bev? I’ll tell you why. The novel coronavirus has messed up everything, even furniture shopping. More precisely, it’s messed up furniture production. You can sit all day on slip-covered sofas and chintz chairs in the showrooms, but don’t expect to take one home before Christmas. At least that’s my experience. 

I realize couch conundrums are pretty low on the COVID totem pole of concerns, but it woke me up to yet another new reality. I’ve faced a few of those lately, like when my dad tested positive and suited-up pharmacy workers tossed his meds into my trunk from six yards away. And my daughter began another college semester with instructors who don’t seem to take distance learning seriously. And then there’s church. Will we ever enjoy another fellowship meal together?

At the top of the totem pole, though, would be my friend facing death at M.D. Anderson last month. The 48-year-old mother of four was alone because of COVID restrictions. As news of her situation spread, my daughter-in-law shared these hymn lyrics, the kind that can settle us in all our new realities:

Whate’er my God ordains is right,
His holy will abideth;
I will be still whate’er He doth,
And follow where He guideth.

He is my God,
Though dark my road,
He holds me that I shall not fall,
Wherefore to Him I leave it all.   

I’m Kim Henderson.

NICK EICHER: Tomorrow: Several vaccines are now in the final phase of human testing. We’ll find out what it’s like to participate in one of those trials.

And, we’ll talk to pastors about how the move to online services has changed the way people connect with the church.

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.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Go now in grace and peace.

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