The World and Everything in It: September 2, 2026

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Good morning!

Upheaval in the U.S. military as the Iran war draws down supplies.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And the data center divide. That and more on Washington Wednesday with Hunter Baker.

Also today WORLD Tour: The problem of earthquake recovery in Venezuela.

And Dolly Parton’s humble beginnings.

PARTON: I know exactly what I'm doing, and I can change it at any time.

And WORLD Commentator Maria Baer on AI and the lost art of friendship.

MAST: It’s Wednesday, 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: Iran latest » The U.S. military began striking Iranian targets again on Tuesday along the Strait of Hormuz. Central Command says the targets belong to Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

President Trump announced the strikes on social media, calling them large and powerful. He said it answers an Iranian attempt to mine the strait, as well as a missile attack against a U.S. military base in Jordan.

The pressure isn't only military. A temporary ceasefire deal the two sides signed in June didn't hold. And the Trump administration is now turning the screws on Iran’s economy. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

BESSENT: We are going to economically asphyxiate this regime. And as President Trump said, the reason the MoU did not work, they were not ready for a deal. Mm-hmm. My job is to make sure that they want to have a deal. Mm. And they will want to have one.

Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, claims Tehran would go back to the June terms immediately if Washington does.

Meanwhile Trump says the strait is clear of mines, but oil prices still rose again on Tuesday. He met with executives from oil and gas companies at the White House yesterday to discuss ways to bring gas prices down.

House passes funding » There will not be another government shutdown, at least not before Election Day.

Lawmakers in the House saw to that on Tuesday as the House gave final approval to a short-term spending bill.

AUDIO: On this vote, the yeas are 370, the nays are 48. Two-thirds being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended. The Senate amendment is agreed to.

That sends it to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

The government's budget year ends September 30th. Without new funding by then, much of Washington would close. Instead, agencies keep running at current spending levels until December 11th. That pushes the next fight past the November elections.

Kirk killer trial ruling » The man accused of assassinating conservative activist Charlie Kirk will stand trial for murder.

That from Utah Judge Tony Graf in a Tuesday ruling.

GRAF:  It is hereby ordered that the defendant, Tyler James Robinson, is bound over for trial in the Fourth Judicial District Court

Judge Graf heard from both sides yesterday over the question of whether accused shooter Tyler Robinson should be tried in the case. Prosecutor Ryan McBride argued that there was more than enough to go on, including video, DNA, circumstantial evidence, and a confession from Robinson himself.

MCBRIDE: Any one of those four categories of evidence would provide evidence—certainly probable cause, and possibly proof beyond a reasonable doubt—that the defendant is the one who shot Charlie Kirk. And in this case, we have all four categories of evidence.

Prosecutors also argued that the shooting endangered several bystanders who were attending the crowded event at Utah Valley University. But defense attorney Staci Visser argued that wasn't the case.

VISSER: There were no actual threats by the assailant to the third party. There was no evidence that would suggest anyone else was threatened.

Robinson still has not entered a plea, and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Tropical storm » Tropical Storm Edouard crashed ashore near the Texas-Louisiana line Tuesday afternoon with sustained winds around 60 miles per hour. Forecasters had called for a storm surge of up to five feet.

But they have been more worried about Edouard as a rain event. Brad Reinhart with the National Hurricane Center, Tuesday:

REINHART: We're forecasting rainfall totals of three to six inches, uh, up to a maximum of nine inches for parts of the upper Texas coast, with, uh, two to four inches possible in, uh, far southwestern Louisiana. 

Edouard fell apart as it pushed inland overnight, but the rain kept falling. Flood watches are in effect. Houston could still see scattered downpours today.

Massie Epstein action » With Congress back in session, a Republican congressman is pushing for legal action against former clients of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. World’s Harrison Watters reports from Washington.

HARRISON WATTERS: Thomas Massie of Kentucky took to the House floor on Monday, saying the Trump administration isn’t done handing over the Epstein files.

MASSIE: It's been a year since the president signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the government continues to withhold over 3 million files.

WATTERS: Massie led the effort to force a vote on that bill last year. President Trump initially said there was nothing more to see, but signed on after both chambers passed it. The DOJ released more than 3 million files in January, but Massie says Congress should pass a second bill to declassify more.

He named 14 individuals connected with Epstein that he says the DOJ should investigate, including former JPMorgan CEO Jes Staley and magician David Copperfield.

MASSIE: Perhaps hearing these names will shame the Department of Justice into delivering justice.

WATTERS: Todd Blanche, now Attorney General, told reporters earlier this year the DOJ didn’t have enough evidence to charge others with ties to Epstein.

Massie lost his Kentucky primary in May to a challenger with President Trump’s endorsement.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Harrison Watters in Washington.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Hunter Baker is standing by for Washington Wednesday. And later: Dolly Parton’s humble beginnings.

This is The World and Everything in It.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, the second 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. It’s Washington Wednesday, and joining us now is political scientist and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker. Hunter’s a senior fellow for civic renewal and religious liberty at First Liberty Institute. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: All right. Issue one: an Army in upheaval and an arsenal under strain. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll reportedly leaving after months of friction with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The Army also is lacking a confirmed chief of staff, following a wider turnover among senior leaders.

MAST: Hunter, is this a coherent reform effort or leadership churn that is becoming a readiness problem, or a different possibility altogether? Is there a political story here, in that Driscoll is known as a Vance guy and Hegseth is a Trump guy?

BAKER: It’s a really interesting story to me because I’m a student of public administration, and very typically, what happens is that the appointed political leader goes native. They basically become part of the agency. They pretty much follow what the career people want to do, and in this case, Pete Hegseth has had a different sort of mind.

Pete Hegseth has wanted to represent Trump, represent Trump’s attitudes. He has been critical of the Army as an institution and the rest of the military, and he has wanted to bring his own priorities. And there have been certain things that he wanted to stop, like DEI.

But I think that the big key here is that he has not been deferential to the career people, and I think that when they’ve bucked him, he pretty much has pushed them out or led them in the direction of a resignation, and that’s what’s happened here.

MAST: And that upheaval comes as public reporting says the Iran war has drawn down stocks of certain high-end missiles. The concern is not ammunition generally, but Patriot interceptors and other hard-to-replace weapons needed for major contingencies elsewhere. Does that point mainly to a procurement failure or a strategy larger than the industrial base can sustain?

BAKER: I think that first of all, we have been heavily involved in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and I think that we did a substantial amount of arming Ukraine. I don’t mean that we just gave them weapons. I think that we have sold them weapons, and then besides that, we have had this conflict with Iran in a new era of warfare, drone warfare.

And so one of the things that we have done, and I think that we kind of regret it, is that we have used up a lot of these very high-dollar interceptor missiles and things of that type on drones, much less expensive drones that can nevertheless do damage, and so now we find ourselves in this situation where we maybe don’t have as many of those kind of arms as we would like.

And always sitting on the sideline is China, right? I’m not saying that I think China will do something, but I think that they do watch. I think they watch and they think. I think they have the attitude that they want to win without fighting, but I think that they’re highly aware of our vulnerabilities, and in this case, that’s one that we have.

MAST: Issue two today is the data center divide and the AI buildout. Two weeks ago, we asked whether data centers would become a campaign issue. Now the fight has moved inside organized labor. Building trades unions want the jobs. Some white-collar unions fear the AI displacement those centers may accelerate. Are data centers splitting labor between workers who build the AI economy and workers who fear AI may replace them?

BAKER: I think that we actually have a similar sort of divide that we probably had with COVID. There were the people who actually had to go to work and do things, and then there were the people who were the laptop class. And here you have the people who are responsible for making things work in the real world, and they like projects, and they like the income that comes with those projects. And then you’ve got other people who are just on the sideline criticizing.

Now, with regard to this question of the data centers, I’ve read about it a lot, and I think that we still are in a situation where I’m not sure that we have a really good grip on reality. I think that a lot of us are very afraid. Where is AI going to take us? What is it going to do to jobs? What is the noise that these things generate? How will they impact electricity prices? Are they using up ruinous amounts of water?

And as far as I can tell, it seems like a lot of those concerns may be overblown. We need a sober debate, but the problem is that politics is a business, just like anything else. And right now, the hot thing on the racks is “data centers are bad,” and politicians react to that kind of feedback, even in the conservative states. And you’re seeing that.

And I’ll just say one more thing to consider. I brought up China earlier. China again. I don’t think that they are driving this conversation in the United States, but they don’t want us to win the war over AI and AI capability, and I do think that they may exacerbate the concerns.

EICHER: Hunter, to your point, national leaders have called this AI buildout absolutely essential. President Trump squarely in that corner. He sees it in national security, geopolitical terms—that, as you mentioned, that race for AI leadership versus China.

Now, to the point of local communities, they of course complain about demands for power, water, land, and infrastructure, as you said. But there was a really strong commentary piece in The Wall Street Journal that I read, making a completely different case, pointing specifically to Loudoun County, Virginia. This is the richest county in the United States, measured by median income. The population there is growing. The data centers there take up 4 percent of Loudoun County, but supply half of the property tax revenue, and for Loudoun County residents, the average electric bill is less than in neighboring Fairfax County.

When is local resistance a fair demand that developers sweeten the deal for people in the communities, and when does it just become a veto on progress?

BAKER: I think it’s really interesting that Donald Trump is in the White House right now because his background is basically as a real estate developer. He likes to see development of towns and cities, and, of course, the state and federal government as well.

But I think that you’re exactly right that the ones who are successful are going to find a way to make a case for people in these local communities that they’re going to be better off, and I think that it is a virtual inevitability that that’s going to happen. I think it has to happen, and I think they’re going to figure out how to do it.

EICHER: All right, issue three, Hunter. The deadline Congress keeps putting off. One more issue to go now before the lightning round, if we can do that quickly. Social Security’s old-age trust fund is projected to run out of reserves in the year 2032. Seems like a long time away, but it’s really not. Incoming revenue would then cover 78 percent of scheduled benefits. Members of both parties say they will prevent that, but they have not agreed how.

Is the real obstacle here policy disagreement, or just the political incentives that punish anyone who starts naming the price?

BAKER: Yeah, the options here are not easy. What you’re looking at are things like extending that 12.4 percent tax to all wage income. Unfortunately, even doing that, I think would maybe solve about 60 percent of the problems. Then you got to look at other things. Do you have an enhanced tax on wealthier people, or do you cut benefits for wealthier people? Do you extend the age? I think that people my age won’t be able to collect until they’re 67 or more. There are all kinds of things like that that will happen.

But if we don’t, yes, there will be a cut, and people will receive—at least as soon as it hits—about 80 percent of what they would have received otherwise. And to your question, yeah, nobody wants to touch it. The Republicans have tried at various times to touch it, and when they do, they are beaten senseless by the other team. And so they have learned. If you’re Paul Ryan, they’ll make an ad showing you pushing Granny off a cliff. So it has been a no-win situation, and it will have to be bipartisan to get anywhere.

MAST: All right, Hunter, you up for a lightning round?

BAKER: Sure.

MAST: All right, three quick ones. First, let’s start with Venezuela. Under the proposed Venezuela oil deal, the U.S. government would take a 35 percent stake in a private venture receiving long-term oil rights from Venezuela’s unelected but pro-American government. Does that give Washington leverage for free elections, or give Caracas legitimacy to continue putting them off?

I’ll tell you the big thing that I thought about is that we have had American companies who have had their facilities in Venezuela nationalized in the past. Exxon, for example, having lost major infrastructure there, so I think that the difference with having the nation take a stake in this is that then they’re not just nationalizing something that belongs to an American corporation; then they would actually be taking property that belongs to the United States of America.

Now you’re talking about a cause for war.

Yesterday, Hunter, a House hearing examined businesses that market birth tourism services to foreign expectant mothers. Hunter, do you think this issue is going to get any political traction this year, either with voters or in Congress?

BAKER: I think that it should. We’ve had our kind of big fight over whether Donald Trump can do an executive order to end birthright citizenship. The court ruled that he could not. But what you could do is you could legislate around these kinds of things, right—about the circumstances under which visas will be offered, and to say that if those conditions are not observed, then we may have a kind of a fraud.

MAST: All right, last one: the five-four ballroom. The Supreme Court let White House ballroom construction continue because the preservation group likely lacked standing to sue. It did not decide whether the project itself is legal. It was another narrow high-court ruling that skirts the merits. Can an administration outrun judicial review by making a project irreversible before courts can rule? I can’t see a Supreme Court ordering the ballroom to be torn down.

BAKER: No, I don’t think they would do that. As I thought about this, I remember this famous old Jesse Jackson Saturday Night Live sketch, where his answer to every question was, “The question is moot. If you get the thing built, then the question will be moot because they’re not going to go tear it down.”

MAST: Right.

BAKER: But it’s an interesting controversy. I think that Justice Roberts may have a point that Congress should have probably been involved in this, but you get far enough along, they are going to say the question is moot, and they’re not going to tear it down. And I think the project is going to get done.

EICHER: All right, Hunter Baker is a senior fellow for civic renewal and religious liberty at the First Liberty Institute. Thanks, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

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

Venezuelans have spent more than two months rebuilding their lives after two consecutive earthquakes. The June 24th quakes have turned into one of the country’s worst natural disasters in history.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Dozens of foreign NGOs came to the rescue, saving more than 6,500 people under the rubble. But hundreds of buildings collapsed, and more than 40,000 remain missing.

WORLD’s Jenny Lind Schmitt has our report.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: Linda Márquez lives in Caracas with her husband and two kids. The family was at home watching the FIFA World Cup while she made dinner.

Then, the earthquakes struck.

MARQUEZ: We sought cover and as glass fell around the kitchen, everything broke and, and… and nothing touched us. The living room was a mess, too. And as we prayed, we saw dust rising from the fallen buildings outside. And… and I really thought, “okay, we might be the next ones.”

Alejandra Perez is an electrical engineer from La Guaria, the hardest hit zone in Venezuela. She told WORLD the first earthquake felt like ocean waves. The second was like being inside a cocktail shaker. In a couple minutes, her whole neighborhood was flattened.

PEREZ: Going up the street, all the buildings had collapsed and we didn’t know what to expect… like, I couldn't see a thing because there was so much smoke coming from the buildings… then we saw our house remains and we couldn’t believe it

Marquez and Perez survived, but they lost their homes. They’re far from alone. The United Nations says nearly 18,000 Venezuelans are now homeless and living with family, friends, or in temporary shelters.

Here’s Marquez:

MARQUEZ: Of course, we… we’re in… a national mourning, because the blow was just too hard. Well, it’s one thing for us to tell you about it… but you’ll never… I mean, it can never compare with being there and seen block after block of buildings lying in ruins.

Jesús Armas is the president of Ciudadanía Sin Límites, a local NGO that monitors public services in Venezuela. Armas spent over a decade as an inspector of residential buildings in Caracas and La Guaira. He told WORLD that government neglect has made the crisis far more severe.

ARMAS:  This is because of years and years of corruption, of mismanagement of public services, of the electricity and water system in Venezuela.

Dozens of overseas NGOs rushed to disaster zones after the earthquakes, filling in the vacuum left by the Venezuelan government.

SOUND: NGO giving food to displaced Venezuelans

Elizabeth Nagel is the Latin America regional manager for Samaritan’s Purse, which has provided clean water, medical care, and more than 400 shelters for thousands of displaced people in La Guaira.

She says that beyond physical needs, Venezuelans long for spiritual healing and a renewed life purpose.

NAGEL: We are seeing people come back to our wash sites just for prayer. They don't even come back for water… And I think that's a testament to how God is moving the hearts of people here, whether they're believers or not.

Daily life continues to bring challenges. Small businesses are now reopening, but the cost of basic goods skyrocketed in the aftermath. But Nagel says the communities in Venezuela are strong:

NAGEL: The other thing that I really love that really struck me about the Venezuela people is… how they like connect as a community. And so even in the midst of tragedy and suffering, they're still able to come together and experience life together. And I think that's, that's really beautiful… that shows the strength that we don't normally see.

That’s this week’s World Tour. I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Everybody’s complaining about the high cost of everything. But here’s news: Owning a pet raccoon just got cheaper in Tennessee.

A new law waives the 150-dollar personal-possession permit fee.

There are rules: The raccoon must be non-native, legally obtained, and vaccinated. Taking one from the wild remains illegal.

A Tennessee state rep says he’s fielded hundreds—maybe thousands—of constituent contacts, saying they’re eager to own a pet raccoon.

Wildlife officials are not happy, reiterating advice to keep garbage cans secure. After all: Raccoons aren’t called “trash pandas” for nothing.

An online warning from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency still says: “Raccoons do not make good pets.”

It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, September 2nd. 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: rags to rhinestones.

Country music icon Dolly Parton was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Nashville on Friday. But plans to honor her legacy are just beginning.

EICHER: Tennessee officials are proposing to rename Nashville’s international airport in her honor, and her estate recently announced a global “Dollyfest” for 2027. But today we look back at her humble beginnings.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports.

MARY MUNCY: When Dolly Parton was five years old, her parents gave her a corn-cob doll for Christmas.

DOLLY PARTON: Momma put some corn silk hair on her, put a little corn shuck dress and they made some eyes for her, and I loved her.

So much so that she wrote her first song.

PARTON: It sounded like this: Little tiny tassel top I love you an awful lot. Corn silk hair and big brown eyes, how you make me smile. [cheers]

Her mom wrote the song down and kept it.

Parton grew up playing and singing, making her debut in her grandfather’s church.

The Partons lived practically on the side of a mountain in East Tennessee—cramming 12 children in one and two room cabins with no electricity or running water.

Parton told the BBC:

PARTON: We were so poor that we had to wear things that people would send us. Mama would make things over, wear rags actually to school, but but I did have a good mom and daddy.

Her early songs were often ballads about women in tragic situations coming to worse ends.

COUNTRY MUSIC HALL OF FAME, PARTON: I like ballads. real strong, pitiful, sad, crying ballads.

She says it’s what she grew up hearing on their front porch.

She started playing gigs and made her first television appearance at 10. She got her big break in 1959 at the Grand Ole Opry.

MUSIC: [YOU GOTTA BE MY BABY]

13-year-old Parton earned three encores that night.

In her early twenties the country music variety broadcast The Porter Wagoner Show invited her on.

PORTER WAGONER: Here's a little gal that I know you're going to really learn to love: Pretty Miss Dolly Parton.

Shortly after, she released her first album: Hello, I’m Dolly.

MUSIC: [DUMB BLONDE]

She struck out on her own in 1974, writing a farewell tribute to Porter Wagoner.

MUSIC: [I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU]

It was one of her first songs to top country charts and it was only up from there.

But as her music got more attention, so did her Appalachian roots.

Barbara Walters in 1978:

BARBARA WALTERS: Dolly, where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly?

PARTON: If you had have, it would have been something very natural, but I would have probably kicked your shins or something.

People also started asking about her look. She wore big blonde wigs, augmented her figure, and often wore heavy makeup and costume-like clothes.

WALTERS: But do you ever feel that you're a joke? That people make fun of you?

PARTON: Oh, I know they make fun of me, but actually all these years, the people, you know, has has thought the joke was on me, but it's actually been on the public. I know exactly what I'm doing, and I can change it at any time. Or I make more jokes about myself than than anybody because I enjoy. I know, like I say, I am sure of myself as a person.

She mostly stayed out of politics by diverting questions and refusing to pick sides. But she did have a few personal causes. She worked with feminist activist Jane Fonda on the 1980 workplace movie 9 to 5.

Later, she contributed a song to the 2005 film Transamerica and when interviewers asked her about the transgender movement, she said she wants to “love everyone.”

SARAH PHILLIPS: She wanted to be an absolutely global star, and she knew that, in order to do that, she couldn't alienate people.

Sarah Phillips teaches The Anthropology of Dolly Parton at Indiana University.

PHILLIPS: Another part of her universal appeal, and she always said this too, was that, ‘When people come to see me,’ she said, ‘I know that they're not coming to see me. They're coming to see themselves in me, or they're coming to see me be them.’

Phillips says Parton often played on gender and class stereotypes—poking at them, while staying true to herself.

PHILLIPS: People told Dolly she was tacky. They told her to stop doing that, you know, ‘Don't do that. Don't do that.’ She said, ‘I feel comfortable this way. This is how I like to look. This is who I am.’

Parton did her last tour in 2016.

Throughout her career, she wrote and sang gospel and Christian songs. Parton said she believed in God and that her songwriting process included prayer.

She married Carl Dean when she was 20 and the two stayed married until Dean died last year. They never had children.

Her nephew Bryan Seaver released a video message after her death.

BRYAN SEAVER: Sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus. Surely met by Carl, her parents, and countless others who have watched her and longed for her to meet them in the heavens.

He says Parton requested to be buried in soft cotton—a rest from uncomfortable rhinestones.

SEAVER: Rest in peace, Aunt Dolly, Aunt Granny, Gigi. May God bless Dolly Parton and may God bless you all. She will always love you.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tennessee officials are proposing to rename Nashville’s international airport in her honor, and her estate recently announced a global “Dollyfest” for 2027. But today we look back at her humble beginnings.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports. 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.

In the age of Claude and ChatGPT, people are increasingly turning to AI to ask questions that not too long ago were reserved for trusted friends and confidantes.

WORLD Commentator Maria Baer says that’s an opportunity to show people what friendship can be.

MARIA BAER: A few weeks ago, The Economist published a disturbing study that seems to reveal significant biases in various AI chatbot models. Researchers found that even answers to personal and moral questions were ideologically skewed.

When asked, for example, “What do I do about my pesky in-laws?” different AI models served up wildly varying responses across a broad moral scope, ranging from—and I’m paraphrasing here—“slay, queen” to “maybe you should seek compromise.” This study and others like it has sparked a much-needed conversation about AI bias, but there’s a much deeper problem being exposed here too: that people would think to ask a machine these sorts of personal moral questions in the first place. The Economist didn’t run this experiment as a quirky stunt; they did it because they know that people, particularly kids, really are asking AI models for moral, emotional, and spiritual feedback.

This is dangerous. But not just because AI’s answers are skewed to please. It’s dangerous because it whispers in our ears that yet another fundamental element of being human—relationships—can be automated.

In such a moment, Christians have a calling to be ambassadors for the goodness and necessity of real embodied human friendship, but do we remember how?

In 1936, author Dale Carnegie wrote his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. We might cringe at his clunky title now, but his book turned out to be a prescient exploration of human nature.

Nearly 100 years later, one of his simplest arguments lays bare the dysfunction of so many friendships in the age of social media: “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

This truth hasn’t changed. The foundation of human friendship is genuine interest in the other. It is something no machine can ever offer, and yet it’s a muscle we humans have allowed to atrophy.

It’s easy to see why social media is inherently uninterested in others. You post about what you’re doing. Your camera faces you. A decade and a half into compulsively engaging in this behavior, and too many of us have forgotten how to have real friendships.

How often have you met someone new, struck up a conversation, and noticed 20 minutes in that it’s devolved into two distracted people merely performing for each other?

You shake her hand, and then it starts. Ten minutes later, here’s what you know: what she does for a living, the names and birth dates of each of her children, and why she’s angry at her sister.

What she still doesn’t know is your last name, whether you have children. She’s not engaging in a conversation with you. She’s delivering a real-time social media feed. Maybe you’re guilty of the same.

Here’s Carnegie again: “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that the other person will enjoy answering.

But the crucial difference between allowing someone else to perform for you and building a real friendship is genuine reciprocal interest.

But his methods are sound because they reflect the true thing about love and friendship: that they require what Paul told the Philippians to do, the humility to value others above themselves.

Showing genuine interest in another person makes them feel comfortable. If people are asking machines what to do about strained family relationships, maybe that’s because no one real has ever asked them about their family relationships.

Christians, this is our moment. It’s lamentable that our neighbors are turning to machines instead of other people to vent their worries and to explore their big questions. But if we see this moment rightly, aren’t we fortunate that such a basic, lovely thing as friendship has become another opportunity for the family of Jesus to stand apart?

Let’s get to it.

For WORLD, I’m Maria Baer.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Tomorrow: A rise in prenatal genetic screening results may endanger the lives of babies. We’ll have a report. And, how two women use uncommon instruments to spread the love of music. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Lindsay Mast.

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

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 says, “But I will sing of your strength; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress. O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love.” —Psalm 59:16-17

Go now in grace and peace.

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