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The World and Everything in It - September 17, 2021

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WORLD Radio - The World and Everything in It - September 17, 2021

On Culture Friday, the dangers of social media addiction for teens; the new Kendricks brothers documentary, Show Me The Father; and on Word Play, the inconsistencies of English. Plus: the Friday morning news.


MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning!

The Wall Street Journal has uncovered reports that Facebook and Instagram knew that their platforms can harm young people—even while they downplayed that in public.

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: That’s ahead on Culture Friday.

Plus, a new documentary on fatherhood, from a well-known pair of Christian filmmakers.

And Word Play with George Grant. Today, learning one of the most challenging languages with all its oddities and inconsistencies. And here’s a hint. Most of you already speak it.

BROWN: It’s Friday, September 17th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

BUTLER: And I’m Paul Butler. Good morning!

BROWN: News is next! Here’s Kent Covington.


KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: U.S. unveils security alliance with U.K., Australia » Top U.S. officials spoke Thursday about a new security alliance with Britain and Australia, known as AUKUS

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters…

AUSTIN: An important first step for AUKUS will be our efforts to help Australia acquire nuclear powered submarines.

But Australia emphasized it is not starting a nuclear weapons program. The submarines will be nuclear powered but not nuclear armed.

Australia will work with the United States and the UK to build a fleet of nuclear-powered subs to conduct longer patrols.

The alliance will also share intelligence and increase its military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

In announcing the alliance, President Biden explained…

BIDEN: This initiative is about making sure that each of us has a modern capability, the most modern capabilities we need to maneuver and defend against rapidly evolving threats.

He announced the agreement via video link with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Although none of the leaders mentioned China in their announcement, the Chinese government has called the alliance “highly irresponsible.

With a growing focus on the Pacific, Biden is set to host leaders from India, Australia, and Japan next week.

Chauvin pleads not guilty to violating teen's civil rights » Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd has pleaded not guilty to violating the civil rights of a teenager in a separate case. WORLD’s Kristen Flavin reports.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: Chauvin faced a judge by videoconference Thursday from the state’s maximum security prison. Prosecutors say he used a restraint on a then-14-year-old-teenager in 2017, similar to the one he used on George Floyd last year.

He allegedly held the teen by the throat, hit him in the head with a flashlight and held his knee on the boy’s neck while he was handcuffed and not resisting. The boy was bleeding from the ear and needed two stitches.

Chauvin and three other former officers — Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao — were arraigned on civil rights violations in Floyd's death on Tuesday. All four pleaded not guilty to those charges.

The indictment in the 2017 case was filed the same day as the one for Floyd's death.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.

Capitol Police prepare for weekend rally » Roughly 700 demonstrators are expected to flock to Washington tomorrow for the “Justice for J6” event.

Attendees will meet at Union Square near the U.S. Capitol to protest criminal charges against people involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Police reinstalled perimeter fencing around the Capitol and asked the National Guard to stand by. The Capitol Police board also issued an emergency declaration that allows them to deputize other law enforcement officers for the day.

Rally organizers say the gathering is a peaceful protest and they’re asking demonstrators to respect law enforcement. Congress will not be in session due to a planned recess for Yom Kippur.

Surprise uptick in spending by Americans as delta spreads » Americans continued to spend at a brisk pace last month despite surging COVID-19 cases. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown has more on that.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN, REPORTER: Spending held up surprisingly well to the still-rising wave of infections—though much of that spending was done online. Online sales soared 5.3 percent last month.

Some sectors of the economy are still feeling the impact of the delta variant. Sales at restaurants, for example, remained flat.

But retail sales rose a seasonally adjusted 0.7 percent in August from the month before. That uptick caught most economists by surprise.

That’s the good news. The not-so-good news: jobless claims rose last week after falling to a pandemic-low the week before.

About 332,000 people filed for unemployment benefits, a rise of about 6 percent.

That could be a sign that the spread of the delta variant is triggering an uptick in layoffs.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

Four amateurs circle Earth in first-of-its-kind space flight » Four amateur astronauts are still orbiting Earth today after rocketing into space Wednesday night. A crowd of onlookers counted down the seconds to liftoff.

AUDIO: [SOUND FROM LAUNCH]

On board are two contest winners, a health care worker and wealthy sponsor of the mission. It was the first time a spacecraft circled Earth with an all-amateur crew and no professional astronauts. It marks a major leap forward for space tourism.

The Dragon capsule’s two men and two women are circling the planet from an unusually high orbit—100 miles higher than the International Space Station.

After three days in space, the crew is scheduled to splash down off the Florida coast tomorrow.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: the dangers of social media addiction.

Plus, the English language’s inconsistencies.

This is The World and Everything in It.


PAUL BUTLER, HOST: It’s Friday, September 17th, 2021. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Paul Butler.

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

In a moment, John Stonestreet joins us with this week’s Culture Friday, but before we welcome John, we want to tell you about an exciting opportunity.

BUTLER: That’s right Myrna. In two weeks, we’re going to record The World and Everything in It and WORLD Watch in front of a live audience at Free Lutheran Bible College & Seminary in Plymouth, Minnesota.

BROWN: There are a limited number of seats available, but if you live in or around the Twin Cities area, we’d love to have you stop by to meet some of the team.

BUTLER: Not only that, the folks at the college have put together a full day of activities for families looking to navigate the media landscape with biblical discernment. We’ve put a link in today’s transcript if you’d like to learn more. Just come to wng.org and find our podcast page and follow the instructions under live events.

BROWN: Now, on to today’s Culture Friday. This week the Wall Street Journal released a series of investigative stories on social media giant Facebook and Instagram. That, after the journal reviewed internal documents revealing the social media platforms were keenly aware of the mental health challenges their products made worse. One internal communication admitted that an Instagram study found that the app made “...body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”

Yet, when pressed on their products’ effects on teen mental health, they down-play that knowledge publicly. Instead, they frame the discussion around initiatives designed to make users happier about their interactions. Here’s Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri from earlier this year on the Teenager Therapy podcast:

MOSSERI: I mean the mental health of our users is something that is incredibly important. It’s definitely true we care about how much people use Instagram...we think overall it’s a good thing that people use it. It creates value. And if people are using it more, that’s a good sign, but we also want to make sure people feel good about the time that they spend on Instagram. And so we’ve tried to invest in a whole bunch of ideas to make sure that people feel better about the time they spend on the platform.

John Stonestreet is here once again to help us think through this story. Good morning John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: So John, let’s start right there. As the mother of two daughters, and a mentor to a handful of young women, I’ve seen first hand the struggles girls have with body image, and if I’m honest, I remember in my youth my own feelings of inadequacy, and susceptibility to the fear of being left out and apparently, Instagram knew that their product preys on those things. Why is this revelation significant?

STONESTREET: Well, it's significant that they knew it. And it's significant that there is a an incredible amount of kind of gymnastics being attempted here to try to make it okay.

We know that technology like this rewires the brain. We know that a generation that is raised even on internet technology, like Google, fail to develop the kind of thinking that connects causes and effects or you know, things and their consequences.

We know, the body image stuff is just the latest thing. There's all kinds of ways that experiencing life in this way distracts us from the people that are around us. You know, stunts, our growth, perpetuates bad stereotypes.

It also delivers a group of influencers. I mean, the very fact by the way, that we have a group of people that are called influencers, and that’s a thing, tells you everything you need to know. But then it delivers them into an intimacy or false intimacy, a one-way intimacy with our sons and daughters, like nothing else could. I mean, I remember, the teeny bop magazines that you'd pass in the supermarket aisle, back in the 80s. Alyssa Milano and Michael J. Fox that was about as close as they got to us.

That's nothing like the daily influence that these, these influencers have, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. It’s significant because the influence here is truly outsized. And also let me just put it this way. Embedded in all this, too, is a false definition of what it means to be successful. A culture that worships celebrity is a culture that chooses style over substance. It's a culture that chooses posturing over loving and caring. All of these things are embedded into the platform itself.

Marshall McLuhan said, the medium is the message. That's the message coming out of all these mediums, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you're always being left out. And to have a life of significance, you have to be noticed, and you have to be liked. And not liked in any sort of real sense. Not liked despite who you are, but you actually have to have a little thumbs up clicked on some image or something that you have otherwise the devastating potential is that you don't matter. What a terrible, terrible message.

BUTLER: For years, social scientists have warned that social media feeds can be addictive. Companies like Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok seem to shrug that off. They’ve introduce bandaids that look like they desire to address some of these issues—like Facebook’s program to eliminate likes—yet they seem to be ignoring the larger underlying problems.

It reminds me of the tobacco hearings in the 1990s when it came to light that cigarette companies knew for years that their products were bad for smokers, yet they not only downplayed those dangers publicly, they even advertised to youth to try and get them to smoke. What do you think of that comparison?

STONESTREET: It's not a bad comparison. But I don't think it's nearly enough. Because, you know, when you're talking about a cigarette, you're talking about a behavior. Clearly what the addiction to social media feeds is doing is not selling a behavior, it’s selling an identity.

Abigail Schrier this week commented on this. And of course, she's the one that has written compellingly about what has become known as rapid onset gender dysphoria. In other words, why is there such an incredible amount of growth in the number of students that are identifying as gender confused, or gender dysphoric?

And as she points out, social media is a big cause of that because it takes something that's not normal and makes it normal. It takes somebody that is to be pitied, it makes them the hero. It takes the definition of success and dumbs it way down to some sort of empathy and then this FOMO—this constant fear of missing out, which is an epidemic disease of young people addicted to social media—then kind of you know, creates that I have to participate, I have to be involved.

We get sold a multitude of identities. And if we're left out, we're irrelevant in a social media defined world. And if we are shared, then we're relevant. And that just kind of feeds into who we are as human beings. In other words, it's far more than a behavior like smoking, even a dangerous behavior like smoking, it's far more than that. It’s actually a way of selling identity itself.

BROWN: Republican and Democratic senators have now reportedly decided to begin an investigation into what exactly Facebook and Instagram knew and what they did to try to make things better for teens on their platforms, but do we really need another congressional hearing? Will that actually help?

STONESTREET: Of course, my temptation is to immediately say no, because when is it ever helped anything? But I actually am a little sympathetic to some attempts that happened in the British Parliament several years ago to not ban pornography—although that's the way it was sold—but to at least, let's set the default, in a position that if somebody wants porn, they have to actually ask for it. In other words, the default is set to closed instead of set to open. And one wonders if something like that couldn't be done here.

But at the end of the day, this is, this is a parent's job. It's not anybody else's job. It's a parent's job. And parents need to actually learn as much as possible. And I know it's hard. I'm learning that with my own kids. There's a time you just say no, and there is almost nothing helpful about social media. And especially these kinds of social media.

And so the question is, and I say this, as someone who has decided that Twitter is not good for two way communication, so I'm going to basically use it to put something out there. But I'm never going to get into a dialogue because the medium can't handle it. And I think that there are certain forms of social media that allow us to stay in touch, allow us to know each other, you know, in deeper ways, that's all fine. But you have to use social media for what it can do.

I'm not sure that Instagram or some of these other things, Tik Tock actually bring any of this good to the table, especially for kids.

So you know, listen, a great question about worldview is what's wrong with the world and whose job is it to fix it? A very bad answer to that question is, it's always government's job to fix it. This is an example where those closest to the problem this is a Catholic principle called subsidiarity, those closest to the problem are best equipped to deal with it. And those closest to these teenagers are the ones best equipped to help them deal with it. And that's family, not the state.

BUTLER: Earlier this year, Instagram announced it wanted to expand its products to young kids, not long after, more than 40 States Attorneys General urged Facebook to reconsider. Given what we’re learning from the Facebook Files report, getting kids on Instagram earlier seems like a really bad idea.

STONESTREET: I mean, listen, what has the internet done to Mommy Bloggers, you know, these are grown women. What has the internet done? In terms of, you know, the, the Johnny Knoxville, Gen X’er mentality. In other words, grown adults can’t handle the normal internet.

It's absolutely insane. It's absolutely insane. To give teenagers, especially young teenagers, teenagers unaccountable access to the internet, per se, and that's just because of the things that are predatory, really looking for them.

But when you actually then add these mediums, these specific tools of social media, that use the internet in particular sorts of ways that actually reshape our hearts, souls and minds, and then we give that to young girls in particular are young men for that matter. It literally makes no sense.

Future generations will look back at us with all of this that we know and basically call us child abusers. I don't know any way around that and maybe that is a reason that there needs to be a congressional hearing because there was deep harm being done to teenagers in this world. There's literally nothing good coming of this for young teenagers that I can think of I literally cannot think for the life of me a positive for young teenagers, maybe not for teenagers and maybe not for the rest of us either.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both. 


PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Virginia Oliver started trapping lobsters when she was 8 years old. And she has been doing it—most likely longer than anyone.

OLIVER: Well, I’ve always done it so I might as well just keep right on doing it.

She still faithfully tends to her traps off Rockland, Maine, with her 78-year-old son Max.

These days she catches the crustaceans aboard a boat that once belonged to her late husband and bears her own name, the “Virginia.”

OLIVER: I band the lobsters and I measure them, then I put them in the tank.

When she started trapping as a young girl, the average lobster sold for about 40 cents—and World War II was still 10 years in the future.

Virginia is now believed to be the oldest lobster fisher in the world at 101 years old, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon!

It’s The World and Everything in It.


PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Friday, September 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Paul Butler.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: father figures.

A new Christian film made a quiet debut at movie theaters across the country last weekend. It’s from a pair of filmmakers you’ve probably heard of. But as reviewer Collin Garbarino found out, it’s not their normal narrative.

JIM DALY: Has your father let you down? Has your stepfather let you down?

COLLIN GARBARIO, REVIEWER: Show Me the Father is the latest offering from the Kendrick brothers. They’re the guys who brought us a string of Christian dramas, including Facing the Giants, Fireproof, and Courageous. But Show Me the Father is their first documentary, and it might be my favorite of their movies.

The film highlights the importance of fathers by telling the stories of several men whose father figures affected them for good—and evil.

Like pro-football player Sherman Smith. Smith played eight seasons in the NFL before starting a coaching career. Since then, he’s worked with football players at every level. His father poured out love and encouragement and taught him to work hard and to set high goals. It’s the same approach he takes with his players.

SHERMAN SMITH: I love coaching because of the relationships that you get to develop with the players. You get close with guys.

JONATHAN EVANS: Coach Sherman was always that second father figure for me when I was playing sports and he treated all of his guys like that.

SHERMAN SMITH: I want to make a difference in the lives of young people the way my father made a difference in my life.

When he was in the NFL, Smith began to understand God was a father who wanted him to think beyond earthly accomplishments. That’s the main message he tries to pass on, especially to players who didn’t have fathers of their own.

SHERMAN SMITH: You can’t compartmentalize. Well, I’m a dependable, accountable, responsible football player, but I am irresponsible father, husband, you know, man. Doesn’t go together. Doesn’t work.

The film also tells the story of Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family. His difficulties growing up with an alcoholic father and abusive stepfather haunted him for years.

JIM DALY: I move in with my brother. I go through junior high, starting high school. I like sports. I play football, basketball, baseball. I find structure in those things. Sophomore year we got a new football coach at our high school—Coach Paul Morrow. And he just commanded respect right from the get-go.

Morrow became Daly’s father figure, and it changed the trajectory of his life.

JIM DALY: He started inviting me over to his house for dinner. “Why don’t you come over to my house for tacos—We’ve got Taco Tuesday.” And his wife Joyce would make like a thousand tacos for a couple of us guys that would show up and we’d just scarf these things down. Eventually through that year, he asked if I’d like to go to a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp, and I said, “I don’t have the money for that.” He said, “No, no. Joyce and I will pay for that.”

At that camp Daly came to know Christ and started a long journey of healing. He now sees God as a good father he can depend on.

The Kendrick brothers also share the story of their own father and how his courage in the face of adversity shaped their lives. His love for his family inspired Stephen Kendrick to pursue adoption.

STEPHEN KENDRICK: God has a heart for the orphans. He cares about them. And this whole parallel of adoption began to deepen my understanding of God as our father. God didn’t just create fatherhood. God is a father, and he loves you. This is one of the greatest expressions of God’s love. Adoption.

Throughout all these stories, Pastor Tony Evans provides theological commentary, and on the whole, the message is solid. But sometimes, I felt the film conflated God’s divine promise to send Jesus with tips for good parenting.

TONY EVANS: In the Bible, the blessing was everything, everything. Every father is responsible for passing on the blessing. There was the touch of transfer. I am passing on what God has given me to you.

The documentary also might have been stronger if the Kendrick brothers had focused on one of the three stories or broadened their interviews to include more perspectives on the importance of fathers. For example, we don’t really get to hear about the legacy that a good or bad father can leave on a woman’s life.

In spite of these quibbles, the film is worth watching. It’s one families can enjoy together, and it’s likely to provoke good theological discussion. The stories are powerful, and you’ll be stunned by some of the ways God heals and restores.

STEPHEN KENDRICK: It’s amazing to me that some of the best dads in the world that I’ve ever met had terrible dads themselves. My own father was not looking at his own dad as an example to pass on to us. He was reading the scriptures. He was reading books by great men. He was on his knees asking God to help him. And I’m so grateful that he let go of those tough cards that he’d been dealt and he decided to pass on a legacy for us as his kids.

But the best part of this film is its unapologetic focus on Jesus. That makes sense, of course, because apart from Him, you can’t see the Father.

I’m Collin Garbarino.


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

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: And I’m Paul Butler.

Over the summer we heard from several listeners wondering when Listening In would return. Well, I am happy to announce that Warren Smith is back with an all new season of interviews. Last week he talked to theologian and author Os Guinness. This week, he talks to Robert Wolgemuth. In the coming weeks you can listen in on his conversations with Owen Strachan, Caleb Kaltenback, Claire Culwell, and WORLD’s very own Marvin Olasky.

BROWN: And those are just a few of the guests Warren has lined up for this season. Trust me, you won’t want to miss an episode. We release a new one every Friday. Search for Listening In wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe.

BUTLER: Alright, well moving now from listening to speaking. Communicating in a foreign language is hard—especially if that language is English.

BROWN: Right, and not just because you say tomato and I say tomato.

Here’s George Grant with this month’s Word Play.

GEORGE GRANT: Though it is spoken the world over, English is a notoriously difficult language to learn. It is filled with peculiarities, irregularities, oddities, and inconsistencies. Though there certainly are rules for spelling, grammar, and pronunciation, the language is rife with exceptions to those rules.

If that weren’t complicated enough, the English language features innumerable homophones: words that sound the same but have different meanings. For instance, there are homographs: words that sound and are spelled the same but have different meanings. There are heterographs: words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. There are multinyms: words that sound the same but have more than two different meanings and spellings.

Confusing, right?

And then, there are also heteronyms: words that have the same spelling but with different pronunciations and different meanings. So for example, address is speaking before an audience while address is a location on a map. To advocate is to make the case for another while an advocate is the supporter of a cause. An attribute is a characteristic while to attribute is an acknowledgement of credit or ownership. Appropriate is something suitable or apt while to appropriate is to set apart. August is something that inspires awe while August is the eighth month of the year.

A bass is a fish; but a bass is a low-pitched instrument. To be blessed is to know divine favor; but blessed is that estate of graciousness. A bow is ribbon on a present or clipped into hair; but a bow is a gesture of respect or alternatively, it could be the front of a ship. A buffet is a self-serve meal or the sideboard upon which that meal is served; but to buffet is to batter and strike repeatedly.

To close is to shut; close is nearby. To combine is to mix and assimilate; a combine is a threshing and harvesting machine. To compact is to compress; compact is something that is small. To convict is to find guilty; a convict is someone who has been so convicted.

To desert is to abandon; a desert is an arid wasteland. To do is to act; but do is the note that precedes re and follows te. Does is an action verb; does are two or more female deer. A dove is a bird; dove is the past tense of dive.

These are just a few of the A, B, C, and D heteronyms. But, you’ll find more across the whole span of the dictionary: entrance and entrance, intimate and intimate, learned and learned, lima and Lima, object and object, present and present, record and record, separate and separate, tear and tear, wind and wind. Heteronyms abound.

Virgil, the first century Roman poet laureate once quipped, “Trust not too much to appearances.” Perhaps that is apt wisdom for both life and language—especially our surprisingly rich, maddeningly unpredictable language.

I’m George Grant.


PAUL BUTLER ,HOST: Before we go, I’d like to remind you about our standing offer to try out our daily video news for students, WORLD Watch. We’re offering up to 1,000 free trials and the signup is easy at WORLDWatch.news. Look for the orange button in the middle of the screen—it says “Claim your free 30-day trial.” Click it and follow the instructions. Zero risk here. You can cancel at any time in the trial and owe nothing. But I think you’ll love it and want to keep it coming. It’s created for middle-to-high-school students, but really parents say the entire family loves it.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Paul, I love my WORLD Watch work. I love working with you and Mary and Nick here on the radio side, of course. But what’s special to me at WORLD Watch is that I come from commercial television and what we’re doing with a Biblical worldview and real news is just so rewarding to me personally. It’s every bit as good, from a professional standpoint, really better technically in lots of ways, but there’s no substitute for the Christian perspective. WORLD Watch is such important work.

BUTLER: Agreed! So again, go to WORLDWatch.news and take us up on the free trial offer. WORLDWatch.news.

It is time to thank our team.

Mary Reichard, Nick Eicher, Kent Covington, Katie Gaultney, Kristen Flavin, Anna Johansen Brown, Sarah Schweinsberg, Hayley Schoeppler, Kim Henderson, Onize Ohikere, Les Sillars, Joel Belz, Josh Schumacher, Amy Lewis, Collin Garbarino, and George Grant.

BROWN: 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.

Jesus said, Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

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.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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