The World and Everything in It - October 8, 2021

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

The Facebook whistleblower goes into detail about the harms her former employer has caused and continues to cause.

NICK EICHER, HOST: We’ll talk about that today, ahead on Culture Friday.

Also resources for sharing church history with the whole family.

And a special edition of Ask the Editor.

BROWN: It’s Friday, October 8th. 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 has the news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Senate moves forward with deal to extend debt ceiling » Senate leaders made it official on Thursday, moving forward with an agreement to extend the government’s debt ceiling into December. That temporarily averts the threat of a default on federal debt.

GOP Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that in his view, the good thing about this agreement is that it specifies the dollar amount of that borrowing cap.

JOHNSON: What we’ve all objected to and what we will object to is just a simple suspension of the debt ceiling, which would give Democrats a blank check for grotesque levels of deficit spending. So at least this has a dollar amount attached to it.

The agreement will reportedly allow for raising the debt ceiling by about $480 billion. That is the level that the Treasury Department has said is needed to service the nation’s debts until Dec. 3rd.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made the GOP offer on Wednesday.

The agreement sets the stage for a sequel of sorts in December, when Congress will again face pressing deadlines to fund the government and raise the debt limit.

U.S. jobless claims fall to 326,000, first drop in four weeks » The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits fell last week for the first time in four weeks. WORLD’s Leigh Jones reports.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The Labor Department says new unemployment filings fell by 38,000 to 326,000.

After hitting a pandemic low of 312,000 in early September, claims had risen three straight weeks. Experts say factors like the delta variant COVID surge and supply chain issues may have contributed to rise.

But analysts at Contingent Macro Advisors said the recent uptick was also partly caused by backlog in processing orders in California and other states. The company said Shutdowns at auto plants resulting from a shortage of computer chips could make the numbers volatile over the next few weeks.

Overall, the job market has been rebounding with surprising strength since the spring of 2020. So far this year, employers have been adding 586,000 jobs a month.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

WHO ships COVID-19 supplies to North Korea » The World Health Organization has started shipping COVID-19 medical supplies into North Korea. That’s a possible sign that the North is easing up on its strict border closures to receive outside help.

Edwin Salvador, WHO’s representative to North Korea, said the items its shipping to the North include emergency health kits and medicine.

North Korea had severely restricted cross-border traffic and trade for the past two years despite the strain on its already crippled economy.

WHO director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said the assistance to North Korea is part of a global strategy.

GHEBREYESUS: The strategy outlines the road we must all take together to achieve our target of vaccinating 40 percent of the population of every country by the end of this year, and 70 percent by the middle of next year.

While Pyongyang has yet to report a single case of COVID-19, outside experts have little doubt that the virus is spreading in North Korea.

Pfizer seeks vaccine approval for younger children » And Pfizer said Thursday that it's ready to take another step in the battle against COVID-19 in the United States.

The company officially asked regulators to authorize its vaccine for youngsters ages 5 to 11.

If approved, the vaccine could be available for young children in a matter of week at lower dose than the adult shots.

That would make the vaccine available to roughly 28 million more American children.

The Food and Drug Administration says it will take as much time as it needs to analyze the results of Pfizer trials involving kids under 12.

TX to appeal judge’s order blocking heartbeat law » The state of Texas says it will appeal a federal judge’s order blocking a new pro-life heartbeat law. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: State officials have filed notice that they will ask the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeal to reverse the order.

That after Justice Department won the first round of its fight against a pro-life law. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, an Obama appointee, ordered judges in the state to ignore the law while the department’s lawsuit against it is under review.

In a furious opinion, Pitman wrote that he would “not sanction one more day of—quoting here—“this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”

The Texas law protects unborn babies after they have a detectable heartbeat, usually around six weeks of gestation. Unlike similar bills, this one does not prosecute abortionists. Instead it allows private citizens to sue them or anyone involved in facilitating abortions after a heartbeat is detectable.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: blowing the whistle on Facebook.

Plus, WORLD reporters share their process for digging up story ideas.

This is The World and Everything in It.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, October 8th, 2021.

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. I want to welcome John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. 

Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: Remarkable testimony this week in Congress about the harms of social media from the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen. And I think this is all just getting started, but as it does, what’s your sense: Do you expect good to come of it?

STONESTREET: Well, I don't know if I expect anything good to come out of it, I guess we could expect something less bad to come out of it, less harmful. There's a lot of comparisons here being drawn to big tobacco and what happened there with cigarette companies. And, you know, when the truth finally came out the steps that they had to take to protect the consumer. And I, I think all of that is quite possible. I'm not sure, though, that we can expect the seller to fix what is effectively the problem of the consumer, the buyer, and that is a lack of discernment and inability to tell what is true from what is not true. An inability to seek information outside of my own echo chamber. I mean, these are all things that are endemic to our age in human history. And until we figure out how to navigate it with discernment, then, you know, this is going to be like putting band aids on gaping wounds. But you know, gaping wounds with band aids are better than gaping wounds without band aids.

EICHER: The Wall Street Journal worried in an editorial that the end result of all this would be more big tech control over freedom of speech, concentrating on unpopular political views instead of protecting children. The paper suggested the best outcome would be if “users [had] more control over their news feeds and parents more control over what their kids are exposed to online.”

I wonder, don’t parents already have that control? What’s the government going to require, in other words, or give parents that they don’t already have?

STONESTREET: Don't parents already have that control? What in theory? Yeah, of course they do. I mean, I think they should, it's stunning to me, how many parents think it's, for example, scandalous to know their kids passwords, or to check up on their kids history or whatever, they think it's a violation of privacy. And you think, well, when did this kind of pseudo definition of privacy, you know, get elevated or promoted to the highest good, especially when it comes to raising the next generation, who are, you know, somewhere between ignorant and innocent, or maybe both, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense that we wouldn't turn kids over, outside of our control, you know, to learn downhill alpine skiing, or, you know, to go hunting for moose. I mean, we wouldn't do it on any other issue. But here, when it comes, you know, to something that is not covered in almost any school media literacy that's hoisted upon kids that are at a really young age, these glowing rectangles everywhere. And we magically expect them to know how to behave on this. And I mean, the pushback you get from parents, and I can never do that. Well, either do it or somebody else is parenting your kids for you.

BROWN: This is a story that’s not widely known. My colleague at WORLD Steve West included this news in his Liberties newsletter this week: Has to do with a professor at UCLA whom the school suspended but had to reinstate. The controversy all began when the professor received an email requesting preferential treatment for black students in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy. Specifically, the request was to inflate grades on tests.

Now, the professor refused to do that, he wrote a pointed response to the email, and what followed was a student online petition, and the school’s placing him on leave.

This week, he sued UCLA for harm to his professional reputation.

So the question, John, is this: The controversy is supposed to be all about notions of “equity.” But how is it equitable essentially to refuse to challenge students because of their skin color and shortchange them of an education?

STONESTREET: Well, Myrna, I think it's a really, really interesting story. And you know, there's just so much of this that is completely against those who led us into the civil rights movement at the very beginning. There's so much about this response, this idea of what of what I think Thomas Sowell called the tyranny of low expectations, that would have just been nowhere, nowhere in the ideas, or practice or philosophy of those who were trying to pursue equality for African Americans and for ethnic minorities at the very beginning, it just wouldn't have been in their vocabulary in their philosophy at all. It is a short change, now, now just to be clear, you know, those who are promoting these sorts of ideas or these sorts of, I think really bad solutions are doing it because they're saying that there is something systemically racist or biased and the education itself, but I think that is an excuse. It's something that is allowed to be claimed, without ever being demonstrated, and to do it in the wake of a particular tragedy. Is there a break that, you know, that we can offer? Is there a way to prioritize someone's, you know, grieving and mourning? That's a legitimate? I think the answer is absolutely, but to what degree to what extent and and how much is enough? None of that's answered in these controversies. That just basically you find somebody that is sacrificable, and you go after him with pitchforks and sacrifice them. And that seems to be the case here as well.

BROWN: Religious liberty cases just keep flowing from your home state of Colorado, John. A Colorado web designer lost a case that is about as similar to the cake-baking case of Jack Phillips as I think we’ve seen. 

The web designer’s name is Lorie Smith, and of course she’s concerned about the kinds of wedding websites she might have to create: almost goes without saying that because she’s a Christian, she cannot in conscience do gay wedding websites. A lower court says she doesn’t have that freedom. 

So she’s appealed her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Now, the court has turned down the florist case—the Baronnelle Stutzman case—but now it seems here’s another opportunity for the court to clarify the rules of the road for Christian business owners who face conscience choices. Meantime, we remain here in this legal no-man’s land.

STONESTREET: Oh, Good heavens, I know. I mean, Colorado is making a name for itself. It just will not give up. I mean, look, it's bad enough what the Civil Rights Commission has done to Jack Phillips, but this case with Lorie Smith is really interesting, because, look, the Supreme Court is going to have to deal with the mess they made.

I know Justice Kennedy, when he gave us the Obergefell decision had great faith that he could rid the world of—I think the word he used over and over was animus. You know, like the worst thing that could happen in U.S. legal history was animus, and he was going to rid the world of animus.

Look, what we have found is that the animus continues because this is not just a matter of preference. This is a matter of deeply held conviction on both sides of this aisle. And we're going to have to figure out if somehow America got a new First Amendment along the way and didn't tell him we didn't know what no one told anybody that it has to do with freedom of sexual expression as opposed to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. All of that here is at risk.

The interesting thing about the Lorie Smith case is that the Supreme Court as it goes forward is going to have to actually deal with the issue. As you might remember, this Supreme Court basically just smacked the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for the language and the attitude and, and the well, the animus, if we want to go to Kennedy's words, that was clear and obvious and their treatment of Jack Phillips and in the refusal to treat those on the other side of the issue the same way.

But here in Lorie Smith's case what the two judges on this panel wrote was absolutely stunning, basically saying that the state has vested interest in curbing freedom of speech, freedom of expression on religious conscience grounds so as to protect LGBTQ people. I mean, this is a different degree. In other words, they admitted that this was a curbing of First Amendment rights up front, but said that this was a case of compelling government interest, and it's going to be interesting to see how they respond. I think it's going to be pretty clear how they respond. I mean, the one Colorado judge that wrote in opposition, you know, wrote the dissenting opinion in this, I mean, just was scathing, saying, look, this is basically an understanding of the First Amendment that is brand new in the history of America. And this changes everything we know about it. So the court went too far. I think that finally it's gone so far, at this lower court level that the Supreme Court is going to have to pick it up, and they can't keep you know, punting this issue down through the years.

And that's a good thing, because how many more Barronelle Stutzmans and Jack Phillipses do we need to pay the price to face financial ruin because of this. So it's going to be interesting to see where this one goes.

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

STONESTREET: You bet. Thank you both.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 8th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: exploring the past.

BROWN: Earlier this week, Emily Whitten recommended Church History in Plain Language for October’s Classic Book of the Month. Today, she shares three resources for families who want to bring church history to life for children.

EMILY WHITTEN, REPORTER: If I say the words “church history,” what comes to mind? Thick books on a library shelf?

CLIP: Is that a first edition? I’d love to see that.

Or maybe archaic churches with tall spires?

CLIP: Bells ringing. 

For Tim Challies in his film-book combo, EPIC, church history means all of that and much more. To put it in a word, it means adventure.

CLIP: For all my life I’ve devoured books on the history of what God is accomplishing in His world. But I wanted to do more than read. I wanted to go.

In 10 streaming episodes released last summer, Challies searches the globe for objects that tell the story of the Christian faith. Objects like missionary Amy Carmichael’s wall plaques, still hanging in her former home in India.

CLIP: Two of those plaques say “I know...” and “Fear not.” 

Challies reads and explains a poem Carmichael wrote about these bits of Scripture.

CLIP: Fear not. The words have power to give the thing they name. For in an hour of utter weariness, one is comforted. O Lord, most dear, I thank thee and I worship that Thou art here. These simple words as she meditated on them gave her strength to go on so she could carry out the work entrusted to her.

Challies wanted to include more early and Medieval church history, but he ended up mostly focusing on objects from the Reformation and its impact. That said, Reformation lovers and homeschool families with older kids might want to check out EPIC.

For my second recommendation, let’s head to 19th century England.

CLIP: The C. S. Lewis Podcast with Alistair McGrath.

Alistair McGrath has served as an Oxford don, an author, and Christian apologist. All titles he shares with C.S. Lewis. In 2016, he wrote a biography of the beloved theologian: C. S. Lewis: A Life. Here, McGrath brings the same clarity and depth of scholarship in podcast format.

In the first season of The C. S. Lewis Podcast, host Ruth Jackson and McGrath discuss Lewis’ life and his writing on topics like heaven and friendship.

CLIP: And The friendship between Tolkien and Lewis is one of the most significant. 

A second season focused on the book Mere Christianity. And then in the past month, Jackson and McGrath kicked off season three by digging into Lewis’s fiction.

CLIP: “When did he write Narnia and what was going on in his life at the time?” “Well, really Lewis began to write Narnia in the late 1940s—in 1948. He was finished by March 1954. So actually quite an extended process...”

As you can hear, the sound quality and production value are high. Jackson asks good questions, and McGrath gives informed, insightful answers.

Two points of concern—occasionally McGrath doesn’t clarify the difference between his own opinions and Lewis’s. That can be confusing, particularly in the special presentations. Second, so far in the current season, McGrath has touched on a few hot topics not everyone will agree on. Things like evolution and race and gender. So, just be aware of that.

My last recommendation today is for younger family members: a new picture book in a biography series for ages 4-8 by Laura Caputo-Wickham. It’s titled Corrie Ten Boom: The Courageous Woman and the Secret Room. Here’s Caputo-Wickham.

CLIP: I loved how they were men and women who did incredible things for God. I wanted to share some of these stories with our children…

The author hails from Rome, but she now lives in Kent, England. I really enjoyed some of the British phrases in the text. Here are the first few lines from the Youtube video series, 'Storytime with Sarah'.

CLIP: Corrie Ten Boom lived in a higgledy-piggledy house. Surrounded by family, friends, and lots of clocks...

Illustrator Isobel Muñoz from Spain does a good job balancing playfulness with the seriousness of the content. Kids won’t be scared when they see Corrie hiding Jews in her home or teaching a Bible study in a prison camp. Instead, I hope they’ll be inspired.

The reality is, church history can feel intimidating to some...or just plain boring to others, especially folks like me who didn’t hear about church heroes growing up. But if you can read, watch, and think, it’s not too late—or too early—to get to know your church family from decades and centuries past. To learn from their mistakes. And to find encouragement in their hard-earned wisdom.

I’m Emily Whitten.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Friday, October 8th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Time now for Ask the Editor. Or perhaps we should say, ask the reporter.

EICHER: Right! We recently got an email from listener Kelly Opdahl asking how our reporters come up with such interesting and diverse story ideas. And rather than relay the message, so to speak, we thought we’d let them explain in their own words.

BROWN: We’ll start with Jenny Rough and the story behind the story that caught our listener’s attention in the first place: a profile of a man who voluntarily sweeps the streets of his Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

JENNY ROUGH, REPORTER: Some story ideas come from … you! A few years ago a podcast listener met a man named Brian Bakke. The street sweeper. Bakke moved to a former kill zone, a violent DC neighborhood. And began to clean it up. The listener sent that information to our managing editor, who forwarded it to our features editor, Paul Butler, who forwarded it to me. Two days ago, I asked Bakke for an update. He said: “I am still sweeping 9-10 blocks each morning. This morning I pulled two huge dead rats off the street. So many more rats here in the neighborhood since Covid. Neighbors started working from home and this led to an insane jump in the amount of food tossed in the street. I also picked up three drivers licenses and 4 credit cards this morning.” He went on to say this year, he’s cleaned up over 3 tons of garbage, and found 11 knives, hatchets, and steel pikes that are used as weapons. So that’s the update on Bakke. Please, keep sending in these stories!

KIM HENDERSON, REPORTER: This is Kim Henderson. In all truthfulness, I rarely have to hunt for a story. It just seems they come to me. They’re all around, and my problem is getting to all of them. I’ll give you an example of how I see God’s providential hand in all of this.

Recently we had a two-part story air about heart transplant recipient Dave Sullivan. Now, Dave’s family and our family – we were all in a homeschool co-op together years ago – but I had not seen Dave since then. I just happened to bump into him at the grocery store and we just happened to have time to catch up there by the frozen biscuits. And he told me how wonderfully he was doing, and I was just so glad to hear that.

But at some point in the conversation I have to decide is it OK for me to pivot this talk and ask him a question like “Would you be interested in telling this as a podcast story?” Usually when I approach something like that I will tell the person, “You know, you have a great story, and I believe that our listening audience can be helped by it, by teaching us or by inspiring us.

And about 90 percent of the time, Dave and others like him will say yes. And I’m very thankful for that.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt. When I look for stories that I could cover for WORLD, I kind of have three categories that help me think about them:

Stories that it’s important to know: like the German elections (stay tuned!).

Then, there are stories that Christians need to know: like a story I did recently about how Christians in Belarus are doing with the ongoing political conflict there. Or the story from this week about the March for Life in Berlin.

And then there are stories that are fun to know! And in that there are two subcategories: The Expected: Like a story about cows in Switzerland! And the Unexpected: a profile of a sand collector or a story about a spirulina farm.

The sand collector story idea came from a friend. When she told me her uncle collected sand from all over the world, I wanted to meet him!

And the spirulina farm: A local farmstand was selling spirulina, and I got some to boost my iron intake. Reading the label at home, I saw to my surprise that the farm was very nearby.

Cows, on the other hand, are unsurprisingly easy to find here in Switzerland. They’re literally everywhere! For last year’s story about the Desalpe, I was visiting the area, thinking that the cow parade had been cancelled. When I learned it hadn’t, I got out my recorder--because I pretty much always take it with me--and started asking questions.

BONNIE PRITCHETT: Hi, this is Bonnie Pritchett. Thanks for the question, Kelly. Gosh, producing a quality feature story can be an arduous task. There's weeks of story development, and then there's research and boots on the ground investigation before I even have a story idea that I can pitch to our features editor, Paul Butler. Actually, except for pitching the story part, none of that is true, at least not for me. It's usually in the course of a conversation or something I've read or more times than I would like to admit, I've gone down a rabbit hole on the internet while doing research for another story. And I come across this nugget of information. And I think, well, that's interesting. And so I'll call Paul. And I'll say, hey, Paul, can I do a story on dog sledding in Alaska, in search of the Northern Lights? And once he finishes laughing, he'll say, no, that's not in the budget. Or he'll say, yeah, run with it. Actually, he never says run with it, at least not to me. But usually what ends up happening is he'll ask me a series of questions that helps me flesh out that story idea to determine whether or not it's a good fit for the podcast. And if it is, after that q&a session, I have a better way of telling the story. And I think telling a story about dogsledding in Alaska in search of the Northern Lights would be a really, really, really interesting story. Maybe even a two parter. Thanks again for the question.

EICHER: Before we go today, we have some news to share. The kind we don’t like to share. One of the voices you’re gotten used to hearing every week for the last five years will become a little less frequent. Sarah Schweinsberg is leaving us as a full-time reporter. She and her husband are expecting a baby shortly and she’s found a job outside journalism that doesn’t take her out on the road as much. But she knows the journalism bug will bite, so we can say this is not goodbye, thankfully. Sarah will continue to be in the WORLD orbit, but on a part-time basis. So you will continue to hear her reporting, just not as often. Not often enough, I’m tempted to say. But we get it: family first!

Sarah, I know I speak for the entire team when I say how much we will miss you. My mind goes all the way back to your student days when you were with us at WJI and I do remember thinking, she’s a broadcaster! Once a broadcaster, always a broadcaster, Sarah!

As a little send-off, Paul Butler put together a few of our favorite clips from some of Sarah’s reporting from all across the country.

AUDIO: [MONTAGE]

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to thank the talented team that made this week’s programs possible:

Mary Reichard, Kent Covington, Katie Gaultney, Kristen Flavin, Sarah Schweinsberg, Emily Whitten, Whitney Williams, Onize Ohikere, Amy Lewis, Janie B. Cheaney, Anna Johansen Brown, Jenny Lind Schmitt, Cal Thomas, Jenny Rough, Kim Henderson, and Bonnie Pritchett.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Johnny Franklin and Carl Peetz are our audio engineers who stay up late to get the program to you early! Leigh Jones is managing editor. Paul Butler is executive producer, and Marvin Olasky is editor in chief.

And thank you because your giving makes possible independent Christian journalism.

The Bible says, This is God’s commandment, “that you love one another as I have loved you.”

May your heart be open and ready to hear from God’s word this weekend as you gather together with His people.

Lord willing, we’ll meet you back here on Monday.

Go now in grace and peace.

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