The World and Everything in It: September 2, 2025

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

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Israel pounds targets in Syria, as US diplomats work to head off a war that could draw in the whole region.

Also, addressing crime—and crime statistics—in the nation’s capital.

BOWSER: The difference between this 20-day period of this federal surge and last year represents a(n) 87 percent reduction...

NICK EICHER, HOST: And remixing the formula for Christian music.

BOWER: I want something that sounds like something that hasn’t been made yet.

Later, WORLD commentator Janie B Cheaney on the emptiness of the troubled soul.

MAST: It’s Tuesday, September 2nd. 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: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Ukraine latest » Vladimir Putin is not living up to his word.

That from U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

BESSENT: President Putin, since the historic meeting in Anchorage, since the phone call when the European leaders and President Zelenskyy were in the White House--the following Monday--has done the opposite of following through on what he indicated he wanted to do.

He characterized recent Russian attacks on Ukraine as despicable and said President Trump is considering all manner of responses.

Meanwhile, the European Union is accusing Russia of a cyberattack on an EU official's plane. Spokeswoman Arianna Podesta said the Kremlin intentionally jammed the navigational systems of a plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

PODESTA: We can indeed confirm that there was GPS jamming, but the plane landed safely in Bulgaria. We have received information from the Bulgarian authorities that they suspect that this was due to blatant interference by Russia.

Bulgaria issued a statement saying that “the aircraft's GPS navigation was disrupted as the aircraft approached the airport.”

The Kremlin denies any involvement.

Von Der Leyen is a fierce critic of Russia's war with Ukraine and of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Guatemalan children » The Trump administration is blasting a federal judge's ruling in another matter.

District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan on Sunday issued a temporary restraining order halting the deportation of 10 migrant children from Guatemala. She said the government cannot return the children to their home countries without a deportation order.

All of the children are unaccompanied minors who do not have parents in the United States.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche says the U.S. government has.

BLANCHE:  Working with the Guatemalan government for over a month to identify children who were smuggled into this country, away from their parents who are now sitting in foster homes and orphanages around this country to send them back to their parents.

But the judge says the government must prove that is in fact the case.

The court order could ultimately affect hundreds more — by some estimates, around 600 children — now in federal custody.

Maduro’s remarks » Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro says he would declare a “republic in arms” if the U.S. takes military action in Venezuela.

At a news conference on Monday, he called a nearby U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean—his words—unjustifiable, immoral, and absolutely criminal.

MADURO: [Speaking in Spanish]

He also called it the greatest threat his country has faced in a hundred years. But at whom is that threat actually aimed?

The U.S. government says it is the cartels within Venezuela that should be worried. The Pentagon says it is a “counter-narcotics operation” aimed at disrupting drug trafficking networks and routes.

U.S.-Venezuela tensions » But the U.S. military buildup, along with other measures, may also be a threat to Nicolás Maduro’s grip on power.

WORLD’s Benjamin Eicher has more.

BENJAMIN EICHER: The U.S., like many other nations, says that after multiple rigged elections in Venezuela, Maduro is not the justly elected president, but an illegitimate dictator and “narco-terrorist.”

And the Department of Justice is offering a $50 million dollar reward for his arrest.

There are no indications that President Trump plans to order a military invasion to oust Maduro by force. But analysts say that with the arrest reward, along with targeting his financial networks, sanctions, and shows of force, the U.S. may be working to make Maduro's hold on power unsustainable.

Following Venezuela’s last presidential election just over a year ago Maduro once again claimed victory, despite a mountain of evidence indicating he had lost.

For WORLD, I’m Benjamin Eicher.

SOUND: [Helicopter]

Afghanistan quake » In eastern Afghanistan, a military helicopter airlifting a group of Afghans to safety after a powerful earthquake that has killed more than 800 people and injured thousands.

Many desperate residents are searching for missing loved ones in the rubble.

VILLAGER: [Speaking in Pashto]

One man said his entire village was destroyed, and that children and elders were still trapped under the debris. And he added, “We need urgent help.”

The 6.0-magnitude quake struck late Sunday. A Taliban government spokesman said most of the casualties are in Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan.

Rescue operations are underway, with medical teams arriving from Kabul and other parts of the country. The quake, however, has worsened communications in the mountainous region, making rescue efforts challenging.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: conflict in the Middle East is spilling over Israel’s borders. Plus, the music of hope from despair.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 2nd 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.

Up first: Israel striking targets in Syria as Washington scrambles to keep the conflict contained.

NETANYAHU: [Speaking in Hebrew]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlining strikes on Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Syria—coming just a week after U.S.-brokered peace talks.

MAST: Joining us now to talk about it is retired U.S. Marine Colonel Darren Duke; he formerly served as an attache to Israel.

Colonel Duke, good morning.

DARREN DUKE: Good morning. Lindsay, it's good to be with you.

MAST: Colonel, can you tell us what the goals were and whether they succeeded?

DUKE: Well, the Israeli strikes and ground operations near Damascus last week were, by one Israeli account, intended to destroy or seize Turkish surveillance equipment that had been installed to collect intelligence on Israel. These actions also reflect Israel's longer term policy of retaining a territorial buffer between Israel and Israeli held territory in the Golan Heights, especially the strategically important summit at Mount Herman, the Israelis have communicated very clearly to the regime in Damascus that they do not want any heavy maneuver forces south of Damascus to create that buffer zone, and they will continue to address those threats as they emerge.

MAST: The Associated Press reports Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes against Syria since the Assad regime fell last December. Syria calls it a breach of their sovereignty and has accused Israel of sowing chaos in the region… What are Israel’s interests at this point?

DUKE: Well, Israel is facing a complex array of threats from Yemen in the south, obviously, the continuing war in Gaza, the continuing presence of an armed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of whatever will become the new Syrian government. And those are all tremendous challenges to Israel. So Israel's approach to that strategically is to try to achieve some measure of quiet in Syria while retaining the freedom of action to address more pressing threats, such as the ongoing military action in Gaza.

MAST: I'm also curious about the American interests here. Last Monday, members of Congress met with Syria's transitional president, Ahmed al Shara. They're calling for the US to end sanctions on Syria and open up trade. Would that be helpful now, or is there more at stake? What's what's your take?

DUKE: Well, the US has a much more complicated set of interests in the region and globally than Israel does. Israel cares about quiet on its borders. The United States, however, has to be concerned about a whole array of interests, from energy policy, security interests, balancing alliances. Turkey, who has a large interest in Syria, is still a NATO ally and also has interest in the Black Sea, with regard to the the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. And so those interests have to be taken into account. And then there's the broader role of Iran in the region, and the United States policy towards Iran. So the United States is trying to balance a whole set of interests, and Israel has a more narrowly focused security concern, and so that's going to naturally bring the two allies into some tension, but I don't think that either leader will allow that to affect the very solid relationship the United States and Israel will continue to have.

MAST: The latest strikes came just days after Israel and Syria met for direct talks brokered by the U.S. What should we make of those talks given the actions of both sides since?

DUKE: I don't think it's unusual that states may be in conflict with each other as they conduct negotiations, I think actually that's the historical norm. I think frequently, many people look and see military action while diplomacy is going on is some type of contradiction, and I would offer that actually, that's probably historically the natural pattern of interactions between states, and so I wouldn't read too much into the military action and the diplomatic discussions as being contradictory, but rather part of an ongoing, complex engagement between an emerging Syria and what that will look like and an Israeli government that's seeking to protect its citizens.

MAST: You mentioned, sort of the larger context of the Syrian conflict. I don't want to let you go without asking you about two other countries of interest… Lebanon and Yemen. Last week, Israel’s airforce struck a site in Yemen where leaders of the Iran-backed Houthi group were gathered. Can you talk a bit about the larger picture?

DUKE: Let’s talk about Lebanon first, because it's right next door to Syria. The situation in Lebanon is essentially that Hezbollah remains the largest and most well armed faction inside Lebanon and has no intention of giving up that power easily or willingly. And so Lebanon is always faced with the specter of a return to the civil war that raged between 1975 and 1990 and this, this cows other elements in in Lebanon that would be willing to stand up to Hezbollah, and that makes it very difficult for progress to be made. And so that's likely to remain a unstable location and an unstable part of Israel's northern border. And therefore Israeli action in Lebanon will probably continue for the foreseeable future. When we speak about Yemen, what we're talking about is the continuation of Iran's proxy strategy throughout the region, and the Houthis ability to launch attacks on Israel and to threaten international shipping in the Red Sea in order to place pressure on Israel, both strategically and more locally with regard to the war in Gaza and the strike last week on Yemen and the death of the Houthi Prime Minister, does add an element of uncertainty to it. Whenever a state is attacked and its political echelons are attacked, that certainly raises the stakes. But with respect to Yemen, we'll have to see because of the relative inability to project force beyond primarily attacks on Israel. We'll have to see where that goes. I know that the Israeli government has increased the security profile of its leaders because of that result in Yemen, and it does bear watching. We'll have to see where that goes. I think all of this puts the UN General Assembly in the coming week in perspective, as we see all the global leaders converging on New York and where a lot of these issues will be discussed, there'll be lots of side meetings where global leaders will be engaged to try to reduce tensions or address the instability in the region and try to bring it back to some modicum of stability and quiet. But we'll have to see.

MAST: Darren Duke is a retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel who served in the Middle East. Colonel, thank you so much!

DUKE: You’re welcome. Thank you.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Up next, cracking down on crime.

The Trump administration’s takeover of policing in Washington, D.C. is showing results that even the city’s Democratic mayor admits are significant.

Those gains come as violent crime rates have been declining nationwide, but as one analyst puts it: better national averages don’t mean much if murders are still happening on your street corner. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has our report.

TRUMP: Everybody was getting hit and mugged. You people could not walk to your office without security. That’s how unsafe it was.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: President Donald Trump there speaking to members of the press last week. He claims that Washington, D.C., was incredibly unsafe before he deployed the National Guard and federal agents to the streets of the capital last month. Since then, the city’s Democratic Mayor, Muriel Bowser, admits crime has dropped.

BOWSER: The difference between this period, this 20 day period of this federal surge and last year represents a 87% reduction in carjackings in Washington, DC. We know that when carjackings go down, when use of gun[s] goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer and are safer. So this surge has been important to us.

But even before Trump deployed the National Guard, crimes such as assault, homicide, and robbery were on the decline in Washington and the rest of the country.

LOPEZ: I would not attribute anything directly to the Trump administration, without this evidence, and likewise, necessarily even to the Biden administration.

Ernesto Lopez is a research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice. He says that the data shows violent crime has been dropping since a massive spike during the COVID-19 pandemic.

LOPEZ: With homicide, there was a major about nationally, about a 30% increase from 2019 to 2020 and looking at the full year, and then there's a smaller increase, I believe it's about 5% from 2020 2021 maybe a little smaller, 2022 and then starts to bend downward a bit, and so but it looks like probably, I'd say, probably around starting 2024 you start to see some larger decreases, and then 2025, again, larger decreases.

Lopez says that there are many factors that could explain the drop. Things like shifting drug markets, or returning neighborhood violence prevention programs

While Lopez acknowledges that crime hasn’t decreased everywhere at the same rate, it has decreased by and large across the country.

LOPEZ: There's always going to be variation. Whenever you're looking at data, there's always going to be some cities that go up and some cities that go down, and some cities have declined in homicide much sooner than other cities.

President Trump doubts that data:

TRUMP: And I’m tired of listening to all these people say how safe it was before we got here. It was unsafe. It was horrible.

Vice President JD Vance points to the dramatic reduction in homicide rates since the administration deployed the National Guard in Washington D.C.

VANCE: This, town averaged one murder every other day for the last 20-30, years, which means that it's two short weeks the President and the team have saved six or seven lives, people who would have been killed on the streets of DC who are now living, breathing, spending time with their families, because the President had the willpower to say, no more.

When he was first deploying the National Guard to Washington D.C., Trump said that the city’s murder rate was worse than anywhere else in the world.

TRUMP: The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City, some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on earth. Much higher. This is much higher.

The data does show that the United States homicide rate is as much as 7 times higher than similarly wealthy and industrialized countries.

But crime statistics themselves have come under greater scrutiny over the last decade,with well-publicized instances of miscategorizing crimes or changing definitions in places like Buckeye, Arizona, and New York City.

More recently the Department of Justice has been investigating Washington D.C.’s police department for allegedly falsifying crime statistics to make the city appear safer.

Zack Smith is a legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

SMITH: Local DC police union officials have reported that many of their members have experienced a scenario where they respond to the scene of a violent crime, and shortly afterwards, a higher ranking police official will show up and order the officers on the scene to take a report for a less serious offense, essentially artificially making it look like crime, particularly violent crime, is not as bad as it may seem.

Washington D.C.’s police department did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment regarding those allegations.

But Ernesto Lopez of the Council on Criminal Justice says that, while crime data may not be perfect, the trending line is consistent nationwide. He says it’s been measurably decreasing.

SMITH: We’re seeing that most crimes are falling to below pre-pandemic levels - so, pre-2020 levels.

The CATO Institute’s Mike Fox says that may be true, but it doesn’t mean much to someone living in a high-crime neighborhood.

FOX: So like, D.C., yeah, the crime rates overall are considerably lower this year than they were last year, and they're considerably lower last year they were in 2023. Yet, you know, when I see that there's routine violence in the neighborhood, I don't necessarily feel safe, and other people don't necessarily feel safe, so telling them that the murder rate went down. Doesn't really help when you know you're witnessing homicides on the street corner.

Yet Fox isn’t a fan of flooding D.C. with National Guard personnel and federal agents. He says they’re too focused on the symptoms and not really addressing the root causes.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is touting hundreds of arrests. Many of those have been for illegal firearm possession, drug offenses, and arrests of illegal immigrants.

Last week in the Oval Office President Trump announced that since he mobilized the National Guard, Washington, D.C. has seen a massive decrease in homicides.

TRUMP: In the last eleven days—again, I hate to say it because it sounds so ridiculous—but in the last eleven days we’ve had no murders. And that’s the first time that’s taken place in years, actually.

That statistic has emboldened the President to consider deploying the National Guard to other cities in the United States, naming Chicago and New York as possible destinations.

TRUMP: And after we do this we’ll go to another location and we’ll make it safe also. We’re gonna make our country very safe and we’re gonna make our cities very safe also.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Hear that? Believe it or not, that’s the real call of America’s national bird—the bald eagle.

Science confirms it: The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says our glorious patriotic icon sounds more like a squeaky dog toy than a symbol of strength.

So Hollywood does what Hollywood does and calls for a stunt double. Like this car commercial where a bald eagle swoops down for a salmon.

COMMERCIAL: Ah, so peaceful up here (yeah) … [screech of red-tail hawk] … introducing the new turbo-charged Golf all-track …

That shriek belongs to the red-tailed hawk. You hear it all over film and television. And no wonder … the eagle may be majestic—but it’s the hawk that delivers the “top-of-the-food-chain” menace Americans expect.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 2nd.

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

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a conversation with Luke Bower about his first full-length release since his 2024 EP Man on Fire.

MAST: By the time that Luke Bower turns 24 in December, he’ll have completed a tour in support of his new album, Dopamine and Jesus. WORLD’s music critic, Arsenio Orteza, got Bower to open up about the making—and meaning—of his music.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Luke Bower grew up in Boerne, Texas. His family attended church, and he attended a Christian school, acquiring what he calls “head knowledge” about faith in Christ. It was this knowledge that would later allow him to work Biblical references seamlessly into a song such as “Necessary Fault,” which alludes to Paul’s “thorn in the flesh.”

MUSIC: [“Necessary Evil”]

But another reason that Bower can identify with such Pauline language is that he himself has experienced “thorns in the flesh.”

BOWER: Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve always just randomly got extremely sad. I don’t know why. I remember going to my dad, and I’d say “I have bad feelings,” like “Help!” And it seemed to only get more intense, and that, like, dark spot seemed to get darker as I grew up.

Bower’s head knowledge, in other words, wasn’t much help during these periods. This crisis gave rise to his new album’s title and its title track.

MUSIC: [“Dopamine and Jesus”]

One night, during his first year of college, the crisis came to a head. He’d been on a pre-med track, but he realized that a career in medicine wasn’t for him.

BOWER: I talked to my parents, and I said, “I just want to do music.” And they gave me the hard No, like “That’s crazy.” I don’t blame them for that because they didn’t know that I did it. And I just remember there was this period of time after that where I was just at home, just kind of spiraling out, realizing I was never going to be able to do my dream, I guess. And that was the first time that I really got, like, actually suicidal. Long story short, I called out to God for, like, the first real time, in that moment, and, you know, I think he showed up for me there because I’m obviously still here.

It’s important to note that when Bower first signed to a Christian label, he was told that he had to make formulaic CCM at the outset if he wanted the finances and clout to do what he really wanted to later. He went along at first. Then he didn’t. There’s certainly nothing formulaic about either his debut, the EP Man on Fire, or Dopamine and Jesus.

BOWER: When we came in for this, I’m like “I want to leave a mark that’s different than other stuff. I want something that sounds like something that hasn’t been made yet. So we really dove into finding everything that was kind of weird, pursuing every weird idea just to see if it worked. So we just lived really creatively, tried to make all of the sounds, like, match the words.

What Bower has come up with could be called “Christian music without guardrails.” Consider the way that he ends the sides of Dopamine and Jesus’s vinyl edition. Side one’s closer is called “Spirit”:

MUSIC: [“Spirit”]

Side two’s closer is called “Truth”:

MUSIC: [“Truth”]

If you think they sound similar, you’re right—they’re the same song.

BOWER: There’s something in Christian music that I really don’t like. Everything’s really hype all the time, and it’s like “Young people, everyone come, like, dance at this concert and just be happy the whole time.” And it’s just not how life is. So I feel like a lot of people are going to that and being let down when it gets hard. So, basically, that’s a test, where “Spirit” is the hype one, and you don’t even really hear the words because it’s just faster and more like you just want to feel good. And “Truth” is the same words, but you can hear it because it’s pretty much only words.

After our conversation, I realized that while I’d asked Bower about his relationship with Jesus, I’d forgotten to ask about dopamine. So I asked via email, and this, in part, was his response: “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to control dopamine. I’ve gone to therapy, taken meds of various kinds…nothing really worked. These days I recognize it as something I can’t control. It’s the lack of control I have of it that earned [it] its spot in the title of the album. Both faith in Jesus and my mental state are things that I cannot control. […] Like the air in my lungs and the blood passing through my heart, these things are on the move. That movement is what we call life.”

MUSIC: [“What It’s Like Believing”]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Finally today, commentary from WORLD’s Janie B Cheaney on the emptiness that leads to tragedy.

JANIE B CHEANEY: The FBI has a new crime designation: Nihilistic Violent Extremism, or NVE. The term could serve as a default explanation for random killing sprees like the one that pierced our hearts last Wednesday in Minneapolis. What motivates anyone to deliberately set out to kill children? What disordered the mind of the Covenant school shooter, or the Sandy Hook mass murderer? Clues strewn along a shooter’s past may indicate certain leanings toward violence, but not the rock-solid determination to do it. These were not crimes of passion—passion we understand. But that vacant space in the heart of a cold-blooded killer mystifies us.

To call it “mental illness” seems inadequate. Nihilistic violence is more specific, though most of us might just call it evil. Yet to say such a heart was filled with evil is to say nothing. And “nothing”—the root meaning of nihilism—may be closer to the truth than we realize.

Augustine’s “privation theory” wrestles with a conundrum: how falsehood, hatred, and murder could have flourished so quickly in a world created by goodness and love. If God created all things and evil is a thing, then it must follow that God is the creator of evil—a conclusion that devastates our faith. Augustine did not deny the problem but believed it was misunderstood. What if evil is not actually a “thing”? What if it is instead the absence of a thing?

In The City of God, he summed it up this way: “Evil has no positive nature, but the loss of good has received the name ‘evil’.” He reasons that God is the source of all being, and being is good in itself, and no goodness exists outside of God. Rejecting God therefore creates a hole in the human soul, and whatever fills that emptiness is the residue of corrupted being.

The privation theory isn’t perfect—no intellectual heavy-lifting could encompass this great mystery—but it seems to come close. It doesn’t mean that all unbelievers are potential mass murderers, nor that evil has no real effect. It obviously does. But its essence is emptiness. In The Great Divorce C.S. Lewis pictures condemned souls in hell as consumed by their vices. After the narrator witnesses a silly old woman reject potential glory in order to keep complaining, his mentor explains that she has ceased to be a grumbler and become a grumble: “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing.”

The collapse of a human being into itself can happen on this side of the divide. For example, did jet-setting financier Jeffrey Epstein cease to be a predator and become a predation? Or was there enough of a person remaining in him to repent? Only God knows.

Psalm 115 verse 8 describes how the idols one embraces while turning away from God can’t see, hear, taste, or touch. And “those who make them will become like them.” The bad news is that we often don’t recognize these empty souls among us. The good news is that good will eventually overcome by its very nature. Something always defeats nothing.

I’m Janie B. Cheaney.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker. And, how short-term mission volunteers and local organizations work together to improve conditions in Ecuador. 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 Bible records that: “One of the criminals who were hanged railed at [Jesus] saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.’ And he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And [Jesus] said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.’” —Luke 23:39-43

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.