The World and Everything in It: September 10, 2025

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

The Department of War is back, the D.C. mayor calls for more law enforcement, and Senate Republicans take aim at stalled nominations.

THUNE: This historic obstruction ends now.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Washington Wednesday, political analyst Hunter Baker is standing by.

Also, World Tour.

And the Savannah Bananas, a unique brand of baseball with a unique brand of player.

CRUZ: If I did things my way, I’d be in the major leagues right now… It was all part of God’s plan and I’m just happy to be a part of it.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, September 10. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

MAST: Time for the news now with Mark Mellinger.

MARK MELLINGER, NEWS ANCHOR: Israel strikes Hamas in Qatar » Israel struck the headquarters of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, Qatar Tuesday. The attack came as Hamas leaders convened to discuss a new ceasefire for the war in Gaza floated by the Trump Administration.

Qatar, a U.S. ally, condemned the attack calling it “a flagrant violation of all international laws and norms,” and saying it was clearly designed to undermine peace talks. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres echoed those views.

GUTERRES: I condemn this flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar. All parties must work toward achieving a permanent ceasefire, not destroying it.

Hamas said its top leaders survived the strike, but five lower-level members of the terror group were killed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he and his team decided on the strike after a shooting by Palestinians left six dead in Jerusalem and an attack on Israeli forces in Gaza killed four soldiers Monday.

The White House says Israel did let it know the strike was coming, but the Trump Administration is keeping its distance from the attack. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

LEAVITT: President Trump believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace. The president also spoke to the emir and prime minister of Qatar and thanked them for their support and friendship to our country. He assured them that such a thing will not happen again on their soil.

She went on to say bombing inside Qatar does not advance Israel or America’s goals.

Iran, IAEA sign agreement to resume nuclear cooperation » Under economic pressure, Iran is signaling new openness to cooperating with international inspectors on its nuclear program.

SOUND: [Applause]

That applause, coming from onlookers in Cairo, Egypt as Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, signed an agreement paving the way for resuming cooperation on the country’s nuclear program.

Officials released few details on the agreement. They say it is technical in nature but acknowledge it could lead to relaunched inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Back in July, Iran suspended cooperation with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog after Israel and the U.S. struck key Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran is facing new potential sanctions from several European countries for not complying with an agreement meant to keep it from developing nuclear weapons.

SCOTUS to weigh Trump tariff power in November » The Supreme Court is fast-tracking its hearing on President Trump’s tariffs.

The justices will hear the case in early November, a faster-than-normal timetable, agreeing to take up an appeal from the Trump Administration after lower courts ruled most of the president’s sweeping tariffs illegal.

States and businesses suing Trump say he exceeded his emergency powers authority when he imposed the tariffs. Attorney Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center represents the plaintiffs:

SCHWAB: What do we do about unfair trade practices? I don’t know, but not 10 percent across the board tariffs. And not by a unilateral president without any kind of input from Congress, who has the Constitutional authority to impose tariffs.

Schwab making his clients’ case in an interview with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy earlier this year.

The tariffs will remain in place until the justices issue a final ruling.

Also Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts allowed the president’s freeze on $5 billion dollars in foreign aid to stay in place as a challenge to that policy makes its way through the courts.

Missouri House passes redistricting » Lawmakers in the GOP-led Missouri House have okayed a redistricting plan that could potentially flip one of the state’s Democrat-held seats to the Republicans.

Democrats spent part of Tuesday blasting the move.

CLARK: The Republican Party, led by Donald Trump’s congressional Republicans and the GOP leaders in state legislatures across this country, are systematically working to rig the upcoming election.

That’s Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clark of New York, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, criticizing the Missouri redistricting push, along with similar GOP efforts in states like Texas and Florida.

President Trump has defended redrawing the maps as a matter of fairness, noting last month there are no Republican congressional seats in many Democrat-controlled states.

Democrats have also pushed back with plans to redraw election maps before next year’s midterms in states like California. Missouri’s redistricting plan now goes to the Republican-controlled state Senate.

North Carolina transit murder suspect to face federal charges » The man accused in the gruesome murder of a Ukrainian refugee aboard a Charlotte, North Carolina public transit train now faces a federal charge in addition to the first-degree murder charge filed against him by the state.

The Justice Department is charging Decarlos Brown Jr. with causing death on a mass transportation system, a federal crime that could carry a punishment of life in prison or the death penalty.

Police say surveillance video captured Brown, unprovoked, stabbing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska to death last month. The FBI’s special agent in charge for North Carolina, James Barnacle, says the agency is focused on preventing similar crimes.

BARNACLE: Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, has empowered every field office to shift resources to violent crime to help keep our cities’ streets safe.

Attorney General Pam Bondi says the Justice Department will -quote- “seek the maximum penalty for this unforgivable act of violence.”

Apple unveils iPhone 17 lineup » At Apple, thin is in:

AUDIO: At 5.6 millimeters, it’s the thinnest iPhone we’ve ever made. And it’s also exceptionally light. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever held before and it’s packed with our most advanced features.

That’s from an Apple promotional video introducing the company’s new iPhone 17 lineup, including that super-slim iPhone Air you just heard described.

Apple says the new line of iPhones will have better cameras, longer-lasting batteries, and a new chip to power AI features.

Also, Apple is mostly sticking with the same price tag it’s had the past few years for new iPhones, despite new tariffs making the phones more expensive to produce. They go on sale a week from Friday.

I'm Mark Mellinger.

Straight ahead: Washington Wednesday and analysis of this week’s biggest political news with Hunter Baker. Plus, acrobatics, trick plays, and faith.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 10th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Time now for Washington Wednesday.

Joining us now is Hunter Baker, political analyst and WORLD Opinions Contributor.

Hunter, good morning!

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: In addition to spending, the Senate is gridlocked over President Trump’s nominees for the courts and executive branch.

Senate Democrats have slowed confirmations to a crawl—blocking even noncontroversial nominees and leaving more than 300 appointees in limbo. The Wall Street Journal notes that’s left many agencies run by “acting” officials, with Democrats still holding key posts like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

Republican leaders on Monday supported a rule change to allow votes on lower-level nominees en bloc—an idea Democrats once floated when Biden faced similar delays. Here’s Majority Leader John Thune.

THUNE  This historic obstruction ends now. Democrats have destroyed Senate precedent, and we're going to fix it.

Hunter, what’s driving this standoff over confirmations—and how does it affect the administration’s ability to govern?

BAKER: Yeah. Well, I think it's pretty clear that what has happened is, is that there's a feeling that one side has to deny legitimacy in governing to the other side, and that that is a that is a feeling that has grown over the past 20 years. If we were to go back to the Obama administration, I think about 90% of those confirmations would occur by a simple voice vote and be be very routine and simple. By the time you get to the Biden administration that preceded this one, it was down to 57% being confirmed in that way. But this term, which we're now, you know, about eight or nine months into it, that number is 0% so basically, you're having to have full process over every single one of these nominees, every single deputy assistant, so and so, up for office and so. A, it takes a lot of time. It makes it harder to actually do the work of legislation. But B, it holds up the administration in its need to carry out the work of these offices.

EICHER: Hunter, you said that they have to deny legitimacy. Of course, I know you don't mean they have to, but I think you mean that politically because it is the continuation of some other war, right? Is that the idea?

BAKER: Yeah, they feel. What I'm trying to say is that they feel they have to deny legitimacy to the other side that there is a if you think back, Chuck Schumer worked with this administration early on to prevent a government shutdown, and he was rewarded with tremendous pushback when he did that. And I think that the lesson the Democrats have taken is is that the thing that is going to go over with our voters is to say we do not comply, right? We are going to push back at every opportunity.

MAST: President Trump’s emergency order on crime in DC expires today. But DC Mayor Muriel Bowser wants to extend aspects of it … ordering city officials to continue coordinating with federal law enforcement indefinitely.

Federal officials say they’ve made over 1,000 arrests, and the mayor herself acknowledged the drop in crime—although she balanced that with some mild criticism.

Why would Mayor Bowser—despite her criticism—decide to extend coordination with Trump’s law enforcement push, even after his formal takeover ends?

BAKER: Well, because ultimately, what people want from local government is not ideological satisfaction, but they want crime to be controlled. They want fires to be put out. They want the garbage to be picked up. And I think that she recognizes that chaos is not going to go over well with that political community, and it's better to cooperate with the President and to continue to see crime controlled. And this is not, this is not a new thing. I think that the control of crime kind of goes out of fashion and then comes roaring back in I think about President Clinton in the 1990s though, a Democrat, he said, I'm going to hire a, you know, I'm going to make sure that we can hire 100,000 additional policeman you know is going to fight the crack epidemic and things like that. And so this is the core work of government. People forget that the core work of government is not welfare payments or medical insurance. The core work of government is the control of crime and danger and chaos.

MAST: Yeah. Well, on a related note, this week, we heard about the stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska [eye-REE-nuh Zah-ROOT-skuh] on a Charlotte light rail train. A local politician said this, this was horrifying, but also a prime example of soft on crime policies, and President Trump has picked up that theme. It appears Charlotte's mayor has said nothing publicly, other than issuing a written statement. So far, Democrat leaders in cities like Chicago and elsewhere haven't budged in their refusal of aid from federal law enforcement. Do you think stories like zarutskas provide will provoke Do you think stories like Zarutska’s will provoke some cooperation?

BAKER: I don't know if it will provoke cooperation, but it will provoke voters. Anybody who has seen that that photograph, or little bit of that video where her attacker is looming over her with that knife about to strike, it's incredibly visceral. I think that any politician who responds to that by saying that, look, I understand that this is the work that government has to do. And there are, there are theories of crime and punishment, you know, deterrence or retribution. One of those theories is incapacitation. In other words, we remove the criminal from society to make it impossible for them to commit another harm. This is an individual who was arrested 14 times and allowed to re offend and re offend. People are going to think that it has to stop you.

EICHER: President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to revert to its original name: the Department of War.

The U.S. first used that name in 1789, but it was changed after World War II to the Department of Defense. Supporters say the old name is more honest about the Pentagon’s role; critics say it signals militarism.

Hunter, what do you see is the significance of changing the Pentagon’s name back to the Department of War—and what’s behind the sharp reaction from everybody?

BAKER: Yeah, well, it's pure Trump, isn't it? I mean, we, we go, we've renamed the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. In this case, we're renaming the Department of Defense, the Department of War. But I think that the reason that was renamed in the first place was because of the cold war. We entered into a very dangerous nuclear age, and people didn't want to think about war as aggression. They wanted to think about defense, right? You know that we are preparing for something that we hope will never happen, so that has kind of carried the day for a long time. And sometimes you would even have a Democrat. I remember Dennis Kucinich when he ran for president. He said, We should rename it the Department of peace. This is a turn right. You know Donald Trump, he has earned his reputation by being blunt and forceful, and so he wants to send a message with a new name.

EICHER: I mean, just to be fair to President Trump, isn't this just sort of his way of saying what Ronald Reagan always said, which is peace through strength, and Trump just says it a little differently.

BAKER: Oh, no question. I mean, I've always thought that that Putin waited until Trump was out of office to invade Ukraine because he didn't know what Donald Trump would do right now, it's a fait accompli, but that's one of the things about Trump, is that is that foreign leaders can never exactly know where he's going to do or where he's going to go, or what he's going to do, and I think that this is just part and parcel of that same philosophy.

MAST: So do you think this is just part of his imaging then Hunter? Because it's a name change that likely won't stick once he's out of office.

BAKER: I wonder if it will stick, because if you change it, you will pay a little bit of a price, right? You know, you'll look like you're backing off. You'll look like you're becoming more passive. I guess it depends on how the country reacts to this overall. I guess it's going to depend on what the Trump legacy is, if he goes out as a popular president, and if his successor gets into office, then this is something that may be with us for a while.

MAST: Well, one more story today. A new report from Wired exposed a secretive effort on the left to shape political messaging online. It's called the chorus creator incubator program. It paid progressive influencers to amplify democratic talking points while signing contracts that restricted what they. Say, even forbidding them from disclosing their participation, the program is backed by the liberal dark money group, 1630 fund, often compared to the Koch network on the right, that's k, O, C, H, what does this tell us about how Democrats are trying to build their own online influencer infrastructure, and why has it stirred such controversy on the left?

BAKER: Well, this really goes back a long way in American politics. I can recall the former Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, writing a famous article about what he called pseudo events in American politics, in order things that were not genuine, but were manufactured as a kind of political theater. And so this is the same sort of thing adapted to the Internet age and to the social media age. I can recall, you know, about 2007, 2008 there was a controversy over the JournoList when it was discovered that some 400 left wing academics and journalists were all together on an email list and kind of talking about how to drive the narrative and how to propagate certain stories. This is the same thing translated to social media. The part that's new is that there's some serious money involved. I think that the story related that there were people making eight and $9,000 a month by participating in this and sort of leveraging their social media audience, what I see is is that we are becoming ever better at Manufacturing Consent. And what this calls for is for voters, especially Christian voters, to really become more discerning about what they see and what they read.

EICHER: Hunter Baker is Provost of North Greenville University and a regular contributor to World Opinions. Hunter, thanks so much!

BAKER: Thank you.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: World Tour.

Right now, Egypt is trying to renovate the area around one of the oldest monasteries in the world. But critics say the government is doing much more than that.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

AP, FATHER JUSTIN: The first monks came here at the end of the third, the beginning of the fourth century.

MARY MUNCY: A Greek Orthodox monk calling himself Justin Sinaites is standing outside of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt. According to some Christian traditions, the monastery is built on the Biblical site of Mount Sinai where Moses received the Ten Commandments.

JUSTIN: The monastery has never been destroyed and never been abandoned in all of its history.

Right now, the monastery is inhabited by Greek Orthodox monks.

JUSTIN: The monastery library has 3,300 manuscripts in the old collection, approximately 1,000 manuscripts in the new finds and perhaps another thousand manuscripts in the archives which also contain both Arabic and Ottoman scrolls.

The monastery’s collection of records is one of the oldest and most complete in the world.

MARIAM WAHBA: And it rivals even that of the Vatican's.

Mariam Wahba is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

WAHBA: While the Vatican's may be larger in time span, it the Vatican's is actually interrupted at certain points, whereas the St Catherine's Monastery transcript collection is uninterrupted for the totality of time that it has existed and functioned.

But Wahba says recently the Egyptian government has shut down work to study and digitize those manuscripts and has not allowed any scholars access to the monastery’s library in several years.

WAHBA: No reason was given other than you cannot continue the digitization project.

Wahba thinks the government is trying to slowly squeeze control of the monastery away from Christians.

In 2021, Egypt began a country-wide project to revitalize its tourist industry after the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of that work has been to add hotels and services for tourists on the Sinai Peninsula, where the monastery sits. Over the past four years, there has been a lot of back and forth between locals trying to protect the region's natural beauty and the government trying to bring in tourist dollars.

The fight escalated in May, when an Egyptian court ruled that St. Catherine’s Monastery lies on state land, and thus the state can control the monastery itself and the gardens and guest houses around the property.

After the ruling, World Heritage Watch asked UNESCO to add the monastery and surrounding land to its list of endangered sites, and the head of the Church of Greece said the measure threatens religious freedom in a majority-Muslim country. Wahba agrees.

WAHBA: If the Egyptian state feels so empowered as to start infringing upon a monastery with so much history, so much international standing and backing, really no in no religious institution is safe.

But not everyone sees the move as discrimination. Michael Jones works with Church leadership development in Egypt.

JONES: It's not because Egypt is a Muslim country and the monastery is a Christian monastery. Of course, it's because of this promising plan the government is working on.

He thinks the renovations will be good for the village around the monastery.

JONES: Life is very primitive. Services are very primitive. So the Egyptian government decided to invest into making this spot a, what they called a “land for all religions.”

He says the monks are still in control of the monastery’s manuscripts, but because of its own internal struggles, they’re not allowing researchers in. Over the past few weeks, the archbishop of the monastery excommunicated some monks after they challenged his leadership.

From Jones' perspective, the government could be doing better. Egypt’s president generally speaks positively about Christianity. But local authorities often don’t help harassed or attacked Christians.

But Jones says the government isn’t the biggest problem for Christians.

JONES: The main issue is Christians live in a country with a majority of Muslims, many of whom consider Christians as infidels.

Egypt is home to the largest Christian minority in the Middle East. That’s about 15 million people in a country of over 100 million, and those 15 million represent about half of all of the Christians in the Middle East.

JONES: Discrimination is a part of our daily life. It's something that we live with. We expect to happen.

Things like people with obviously Christian names not getting proper treatment at the hospital, or getting poor grades from a radical Muslim professor. and much worse. Jones says it’s not every Muslim, but there are enough.

JONES: It's like the Egyptian soil is infected by fanaticism against Christians because of the existence of a large number of fanatic Muslims in Egypt.

Back at St. Catherines, both Christians and Muslims want to preserve the sites around the monastery, the struggle is over who controls it going forward.

In the short term, analyst Mariam Wahba says the United States provides military funding to the Egyptian state and could use that as leverage to incentivise the government to preserve the monastery’s traditional independence. But changing individual minds is much harder.

WAHBA: I think it's little pieces of the puzzle that can be tackled one by one, as opposed to an overhaul of a system that has existed and is entrenched in the way that Egyptian society and the Egyptian government functions.

In the meantime, Michael Jones asks for believers around the world to pray.

JONES: Pray for perseverance, for Christians to stand strong for the faith, to not compromise the Biblical teachings in a society that might not be friendly.

That’s this week’s World Tour, I’m Mary Muncy.

NICK EICHER, HOST: From the science files: toothbrush, meet hairbrush!

Turns out a protein in hair and wool could be good for your teeth.

Scientists at King’s College London say the protein keratin may protect enamel and stop cavities.

Dr. Sherif Elsharkawy

ELSHARKAWAY: Currently enamel once it’s gone cannot regenderate itself. It’s gone forever.

His team turned to keratin from sheep’s wool, feathers, even hooves. You mix it with saliva, and it forms a protective layer mimicking natural enamel.

So Keratin toothpaste, coming to a bathroom near you in a couple years. Minty fresh, sustainable, no split ends.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 10th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Baseball and belief.

The Savannah Bananas sold out major league stadiums this past summer with their fast-paced version of baseball.

EICHER: Exhibition baseball is what the Bananas play; not minor-league ball, as I said yesterday. (Slipped on a banana peel there.) The minors feed the majors and even though they’re Bananas, they’re not a feeder league. They are their own thing.

MAST: They are and as the popularity of their brand of baseball has grown, several players have used the unique platform to talk about their belief in Christ.

I got to visit the Savannah Bananas and spoke with one of the players responsible for getting other players together to deepen their faith. It was back in 2021 that RobertAnthony Cruz got his first taste of fame.

AUDIO: Are you kidding me? No, really? That’s awesome.

He shared a video on TikTok. He was telling his dad he’d been signed to play minor league baseball with the Washington Nationals.

AUDIO: Congratulations son.

The post went viral. Cruz gained tens of thousands of followers.

Then just a year later, he shared some bad news:

CRUZ: So, I may have played my last game without knowing it.”

He was cut from the team and headed home to California. He settled in to make baseball coaching videos under the name Coach RAC.

That’s when he heard about tryouts for a team called The Savannah Bananas.

ANNOUNCER: This is the greatest show in sports. This is Banana Ball!

The Bananas started as a college summer league team. Owner Jesse Cole loved baseball, but also found it, well, boring.

So a decade ago he set out to solve that problem. Now he has his own league and his own game, Bananaball.

AUDIO: [Make some noise for tonight’s banana baby! (Cheers) ‘Ahhhhh Zavinyaaaaaaa’]

His formula? Put the fans first. Make it fun.

BANANA NANAS: Go Bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S

They have a cheer squad of retirement-age line dancers: the Banana Nanas, a marching band:

ANNOUNCER: Fly ball left center, D.R. Meadows with the ball, back pedaling, a back flip catch!!!

And outfielders regularly land backflips while catching the ball.

ANNOUNCER: There are no extra innings. Instead, it is time for the Showdown.

The action never stops. And the fans love it.

FAN: It's almost like, wow, somebody finally is in touch with the fan experience.

Cole says their ticket interest list has 3.2 million people on it. Fans who have scored a ticket line up at the gates two and a half hours before game time.

AUDIO: [Right this way, beep, thank you, beep]

But back in California a couple of years ago, RobertAnthony Cruz still wasn’t convinced the Bananas were for him. He and his wife prayed and talked. He went to the tryout. Turns out he and the Bananas were the perfect fit. Audio here from the Relatable podcast:

CRUZ: I did gymnastics growing up and I was able to incorporate a lot of the acrobatic stuff and then the Bananas are big on having a social media presence and I already had that.

He and his wife packed their bags for Savannah.

Bananaball player Noah Bridges says Cruz immediately made an impression:

BRIDGES: The first thing you know, we're like, Hey, man, you got something different about you. What's up? You love the Lord? It's like, yeah, love the Lord. And then we talk about it.

He and a couple of other players had tried to start team Bible studies but didn’t know how to lead or keep them consistent. They needed leadership.

Cruz stepped up. He had done Christian homeschool speech and debate growing up and studied ministry in college. And he knew from his time with the Nationals that believing players needed each other.

CRUZ: In this profession, specifically, it's a lot of travel, normally, not home on Sundays. So it started just with a need for community.

Five players committed to a weekly Bible study. Soon it grew to 10, then 20, then more.

CRUZ: This year we specifically started setting out to pray specific prayers, like, want to pray specifically for teammates by name? And so I felt like, God really put several teammates on a lot of our hearts to pray for specifically by name. And, you know, pray specific prayers. Like God, let me have a conversation with so and so this week. And he answered a lot of those prayers.

The studies got too big for Cruz’s house. They moved to the stadium and opened it up to the rest of the organization.

The Bananaball league is not Christian and doesn’t sponsor the studies. But the “fans first” mentality has an air of humility to it and the team encourages players to express who they are. You’ll see symbols of their faith in their eye black or tattoos. And players like Noah Bridges don’t seem shy about using their position to talk about Christ online or in person.

BRIDGES: I want to do this for the fans, because I want to serve them. You serve them, and the way I serve them is playing the game and then signing autographs, putting my favorite Bible verse on every ball.

And RobertAnthony Cruz says he sees a bigger plan in becoming a Banana—bigger than making it to the big leagues.

CRUZ: If I did things my way, I'd be in the major leagues right now, and I never would have done speech and debate. I never would have gone to college, even. So yeah, definitely was, was all part of God's plan, and I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Cruz and the other believing Bananas think there’s still room to grow. They say they’re praying now for even more opportunities to use their influence to the glory of God—in the stadium and beyond.

ANNOUNCER: This game is baseball by birth, fruit by name, worldwide phenomenon by the grace of God….

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Lindsay Mast at Historic Grayson Stadium in Savannah, Georgia.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, WORLD Opinions contributor Anne Kennedy invites Christian writers to—excuse the George Grant malaphor—jump on the Substack bandwagon: the water is fine.

ANNE KENNEDY: I’m not sure if this crossed your newsfeeds this summer, but Gavin Newsom made this announcement on X back in June:

GAVIN NEWSOM: There’s so much mis- and disinformation out there. There’s so much noise. I don’t need to tell you that. So, the question is, how do we break through all of that noise and engage in real conversations? And that’s why I’m launching on Substack.

It’s a bit ironic that one of the most powerful governors in the Western world doesn’t think his position affords him sufficient influence over culture and politics. He’s got a podcast, what does he need Substack for?

NEWSOM: I hope you’ll follow me so we can continue to engage in a two-way conversation at this critical moment in our history.

In internet terms, Substack is now old. Perhaps Newsom’s joining makes that obvious.

Founded in 2017 it was supposed to be the answer to the stranglehold of social media and legacy media on public discourse. A few years later, cofounder Hamish McKenzie wrote that he believed the changing media landscape was “the most significant media disruption since the printing press.” He bragged that Substack had played an enormous part in that disruption.

Substack is an arms wide open sort of platform. Everyone wants in on the fun—New York Magazine, BBC History, Nike, McDonalds, Pepsi, Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. State Department, Margaret Atwood, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Don Lemon, Chuck Todd. There are an enormous number of Christians as well—Peter Leithart, N.T. Wright, Karen Swallow Prior, Rod Dreher…the list is long. In fact, my own Notes Feed is replete with thoughtful Christians posting long-form content on culture, faith, and life.

To go from being viewed with suspicion to the only place to be in under a decade, makes small-time Substackers like me nervous. Substack has been a haven for thinkers. From holding the line on free speech through times of immense pressure, to the continual rejections of the algorithmic model, the platform has certainly changed my life. With almost two decades of writing at my back, I am suddenly earning a living wage doing something I enjoy. Many nights I wake up anxious, wondering if Substack will really be able to carry forward its mission.

Four years ago, Forbes pointed out that trust in the media was at an all time low after a long and steady decline. The article asserted that Substack offers a practical and immediate way for writers to communicate with readers, unhindered by the vagaries of algorithms that can be manipulated and altered by moguls…who don’t feel the financial consequence of a loss of income. This connection, in real terms, means financial freedom to writers of every kind. And, Forbes rightly points out, this freedom “fosters trust.” Trust, in turn, “leads to loyalty.” 

Well, at least as long as dubious actors aren’t permitted to squander this trust. Music critic and historian Ted Gioia maintains that: “If they want to play in this new sandbox, they will need to fight for readers like the rest of us.” Some early adopters are concerned about the companies like McDonald’s and Pepsi and Nike on Substack…but Gioia is confident that they won’t last long on the platform. In his words: “They know how to pay for advertising and buy endorsements, but in the free-flowing world of Substack, they will struggle for influence. And that’s how it should be.”

For Christians, the call is to make hay while the sun shines. As long as there is room to speak and write about what really matters, we should keep our laptops updated and the iPhone camera free of fingerprints. It won’t last because no platform under the sun ever does. Much reading, after all, is a weariness to the flesh.

And when it comes to Gov. Newsom, let’s just hope he reads a lot more than he writes.

I’m Anne Kennedy. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: That Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar. We’ll tell you about the political aftershocks from this attack on a U.S. ally in the region. And, we head back to Savannah, for the back half of a doubleheader with the Bananas. That and more tomorrow. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

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 Psalmist writes: “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.” —Psalm 67:1, 2

Go now in grace and peace.

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