The World and Everything in It: September 25, 2023

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like us. Hello, I am Josiah Read. I live in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and work as a staff accountant at the Naval Supply Systems Command, which is the supply chain agency for the U.S. Navy. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! Some banks have shut down accounts for political or religious reasons. It’s an aggressive new form of cancel culture.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead today on Legal Docket. Also today: the Monday Moneybeat. We’ll talk business, markets, and the economy with David Bahnsen. And the WORLD History Book: 5 years ago, Elon Musk becomes rocket man.

ELON MUSK: Definitely one of the best days of my life. It's the culmination of a dream. Kind of mind blowing, actually.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, September 25th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

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

REICHARD: Up next, Kent Covington has the day’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Mayorkas/border » Speaking near the southern border in Texas, Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration is taking strong action to stem the border crisis.

MAYORKAS: We will work to remove as quickly as possible those who do not qualify for relief under our law.

Mayorkas heard there seated next to the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro. She met with the secretary in the border town of McAllen, Texas to talk about who the two countries can work together to convince migrants not to make the dangerous trek to the U.S. border.

Border Patrol officials say migrants encounters are surging again … to near-record levels, more than 9,000 per day.

El Paso, Texas Mayor Oscar Leeser migrants are overwhelming his city like never before.

LEESER: This is something that we have been prepared for what these numbers have really escalated a lot quicker than we ever anticipated.

Mayorkas blamed Congress for not passing immigration reform. But Republican lawmakers say despite the secretary’s claims the Biden administration has invited the crisis by not enforcing the border.

Government funding » Back in Washington, the clock is ticking as lawmakers now have less than a week to pass legislation to fund the government and avoid a shutdown.

GOP Congressman Jim Jordan says that’s not enough time.

JORDAN: Everyone wants to get the total appropriations bills done. I’m all for that. That’s how we should operate, but frankly, we’re not going to get it done in the next six days. So there’s going to have to be some stop-the-gap measure.

If Congress wants to buy more time, they’ll have to pass that stop-gap measure by the end of the night on Saturday.

Israel-West Bank » In the Gaza Strip, flames poured from two buildings after Israeli missiles struck what Israel says were hideouts for Hamas militants.

The strike came on the heels of an Israeli military raid in the northern West Bank that Palestinian officials said killed two people.

It was the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence during a sensitive Jewish holiday period. Palestinian militants recently launched incendiary balloons into Israel and threw an explosive at soldiers.

Nagorno-Karabakh » Meantime, 600 miles to the north, thousands of desperate ethnic Armenians are arriving in Armenia, forced from their homes by a bloody, decades-long conflict. WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has more.

JOSH SCHUMACHER: The first refugees from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region have arrived in Armenia with little more than the clothes on their backs.

That comes after the Muslim-majority nation of Azerbaijan imposed an almost yearlong blockade on 120,000 Armenian Christians, blocking food and other supplies from reaching them in an effort to starve them out.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, the mountainous border region was considered an autonomous part of Azerbaijan. For the last 35 years, ethnic Armenians in the region have battled Azerbaijan’s military for independence.

Persecution of Armenian Christians dates back more than a century. By the year 19-24, roughly one-and-a-half million people were killed in what’s known as the Armenian genocide.

For WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Menendez challenge » A New Jersey Democrat is set to challenge embattled Sen. Bob Menendez in the next election.

Congressman Andy Kim announced his campaign over the weekend saying the state "deserves better."

Prosecutors accuse Menendez with taking bribes.

Republican Senator Mike Lee:

LEE: The allegations in the indictment are serious and if true, if proven, these are certainly criminal offenses. I don't know what's going to happen. He has yet to have the opportunity to present his case and to make his arguments. I look forward to hearing those.

Menendez and his wife are accused of illegally using his power as head of the Foreign Relations Committee to perform political favors.

The senator denies any wrongdoing.

And is forcefully rejecting growing calls for him to step down.

Six years ago, a separate Menendez corruption trial ended with a hung jury.

SOUND: Touchdown!

Asteroid samples » NASA officials celebrated as a very special delivery parachuted from the clouds to the floor of a Utah desert.

The Osiris-Rex spacecraft launched the package from 60,000 miles away.

Earlier this year, NASA Recovery Manager Mike Moreau described the landing this way:

MOREAU: It has to hit a corridor in the atmosphere that's just about three miles wide, so that's like kicking like 120,000 yard foot field goal on the football field or something like that.

Inside the package: the first sample of a deep-space astroid ever to land on Earth.

Scientists hope the samples will teach us more about our solar system and about the building blocks of the asteroid itself.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: banking with cancel culture. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday morning, September 25th and you’re listening to The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket. Today, cancel culture.

You’ve heard how university students shut down invited speakers with whom they disagree. So many examples. The following three come to mind:

PROTESTER: to protest male supremacy! 
CROWD: male supremacy! 
PROTESTER: not give it 
CROWD: not give it 
PROTESTER: a platform. 
CROWD: a platform. 
PROTESTER: Christina Sommers! 
CROWD: Christina Sommers!

Back in 2018, students protested philosopher and author Christina Hoff Sommers at Lewis and Clark College.

PROTESTERS: No justice, no peace! No justice, no peace! Black lives matter!

EICHER: Last year at the University of Buffalo, protesters shouted down conservative former congressman Allen West.

PROTESTERS: Trans lives matter! Trans lives matter! Trans lives matter!

REICHARD: And this year at the University of Pittsburgh, when conservative commentator Michael Knowles was shouted down and burned in effigy in the street.

EICHER: What’s new today about cancel culture is the speed and magnitude with which cancel culture spreads. Social media and activists pressure businesses to act or speak in certain ways, to do things seemingly unrelated to the products they produce or what average customers want.

REICHARD: To be sure, cancel culture comes from both the left and the right.

DYLAN MULVANEY: Hi, how are you!?! There’s been a lot going on. And I was feeling a little down today, *but I was walking on the sidewalk in New York…

Anheuser Busch InBev famously this summer felt the wrath of conservative consumers tired of LGBT causes. So did the retailer Target.

But then a different kind of pressure comes from the left: not consumer boycotts, but rather pressure for businesses to target certain of its own customers. For eck-sample, banks that suddenly won’t do business with customers who hold certain beliefs.

This Spring, nineteen states accused JPMorgan Chase of closing bank accounts and discriminating against customers due to their religious or political beliefs.

EICHER: Or consider Bank of America customers who were in the Washington area between January 5th and January 7th, 2021. The bank allegedly handed over private information of those customers to the FBI.

That’s not proven. But listen to Congressman Thomas Massey on Fox News last month commenting on the ongoing investigation there:

MASSEY: This isn’t the FBI going to Bank of America and saying we have 12 suspects and we’ve got a warrant and we want you to look at their data. Bank of America, according to this FBI whistleblower, was generating lists of suspects on their own and giving them to the FBI without a legal process.

I called up a man who leads efforts to combat corporate cancel culture, Jeremy Tedesco. He’s senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.

I asked him to begin by clarifying terms:

JEREMY TEDESCO: Corporate cancel culture is when corporations censor and engage in religious discrimination at the behest of external activists and internal activists who push them to enter into the culture wars and take a side on key issues.

But is it illegal for companies to do that? The First Amendment requires the government to comply with free speech and religious exercise guarantees, but it doesn’t apply to private entities.

TEDESCO: There are many instances where they may engage in behavior that violates the First Amendment. And those are instances where they cooperate with the government in some kind of censorship scheme. And that's what we've seen with the social media companies. The social media companies have been pressured, as we all know now. by the Biden administration and by other state offices as well, to engage in censorship on highly contentious issues that are being debated in the public square. And so when these private corporations collaborate or cooperate with government, they're potentially violating the First Amendment themselves becoming government actors, because of their cooperation with the government.

We mentioned earlier how certain banks are succumbing to pressure to cancel certain customers. I asked Tedesco for some examples.

TEDESCO: Well, one of the key examples that's going on right now are banks debanking people for what appears to be political and religious reasons. Something called politicized de- banking for short form of it. And they all kind of follow the same storyline: the banks will tell a longtime customer, you’re no longer consistent with our risk tolerance or your reputational risk for our corporation. So we can no longer do business with you. But they won’t tell them exactly what the problem is. And when the client goes back and asks for a specific reason, the banks stonewall them.

Tedesco had several other examples of this.

TEDESCO: One is JP Morgan Chase canceled the account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom, which is actually Sam Brownback’s organization. Sam Brownback’s a former governor of Kansas, a former senator, a former ambassador of the US, who opened an account for a new organization, C-4 that was going to do work protecting religious freedom in the States. And he opened the account. Three weeks later, it was shut down. And they would never give him an explanation until media started to report. And so in the end, what happens with these banks, they debank you for vague reasons. And they never really give you a satisfactory reason for why you're debanked, leaving you with just one explanation for what's going on: You don't like my religious or political beliefs. But you can hide that, because you have these vague policies that allow you to claim reputational or risk tolerance problems with the account holder.

History is often instructive in these matters. I asked him to go back further.

TEDESCO: So one of the big ones was up in Canada, when the convoy of truckers were objecting to COVID restrictions. And folks who were supporting the truckers as they were trying to speak out against the COVID restrictions in Canada, Canada came out and decided to start debanking those people, threatening to seize their bank accounts if they were giving to the truckers. And so you know, this really kind of put the risk of debanking for political reasons on the map.

And there’s been several other examples in the states very recently. Bank of America debanked a nonprofit called Indigenous Advance that serves orphans and widows in Uganda. And they had had a bank account at Bank of America since 2015. And Bank of America back in April of 2023, told them, we're going to end our relationship with you. And again, our client went to them and asked over and over for an explanation, no good explanation was ever given.

Alliance Defending Freedom has created a tool by which consumers can evaluate companies with whom they do business. It’s called the Viewpoint Diversity Score.

TEDESCO: It measures corporations’ respect for free speech and religious freedom. That's why it exists. We have 42 benchmarks, essentially, that we judge these corporations on the basis of: Do you respect your employees religious and free speech rights? Do you respect the rights of your customers, and your vendors? And then in the public square context, are you taking actions that build up or tear down a culture of free speech and religious freedom? And then we judge whether those corporations are living up to that standard.

That index gives abysmally low scores to the biggest banks and tech companies.

TEDESCO: Well, they’re getting very low scores for a very obvious reason. It’s really been a one way communication until very recently with these companies where progressive activists and groups are telling them what they want, what they want them to do, who they want them to do business with, and who they don’t want them to do business with. So that’s resulted in a lot of really bad policies at these companies and practices that give them low scores at an index like ours.

From a far left perspective, Human Rights Campaign puts out a scorecard, too.

TEDESCO: Sure, that's the Corporate Equality Index and it's great you brought that up, because when you're talking about ESG, environmental, social, and government, that is kind of the left's and the progressive agenda, packaged for corporations. When you talk about the “s,” the social category, Human rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index is one of those external kind of guideposts of whether you're doing well on the "s" when it comes to corporate conduct. And the problem with the CEI, the Corporate Equality Index, is that it drives corporations further and further left on LGBT issues. This year to get 100% on the CEI, corporations have to cover puberty blockers for minors in their health care programs. That is one of the most contentious issues in the country and that particular position of providing puberty blockers for minors is one of the most divisive issues of all, in that when we’re talking about gender identity and transgender issues….So you know in even some of the things that have happened with Bud Light and Target are a product of this, the CEI, because the CEI requires these corporations to engage in marketing that pushes the LGBT agenda.

Tedesco concluded our interview with advice for people who just want to buy products without indoctrination: speak up, ask questions, and do your research.

As for the businesses themselves? There’s advice from Bob Parson, the founder of Parsons Xtreme Golf. He told the Wall Street Journal that he avoids commenting on political matters. As Parson says: “Both Republicans and Democrats—far left, far right—all buy golf clubs. Why hit the beehive with a stick?”

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: the Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: All right time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnson. David is head of the wealth management firm, the Bahnson group. He is here now, David. Good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

AUDIO: No deals, no wheels. No justice, no jeeps.

EICHER: Well, that certainly escalated quickly. The union expanding the auto workers strike last week, David, that still seems to be quite a top economic story this week.

BAHNSEN: What is happening in Detroit is likely to continue escalating for a while. As of right now the White House is claiming that on Tuesday of this week President Biden is planning on going to actually march in the picket line with the workers, which strikes me as a kind of bizarre idea. Maybe not the good look they think it will be. I don’t know politically what to make of that.

In terms of where they are in the negotiations, it’s difficult because there really aren’t any talks going on right now. They’ve escalated it from where it was last week—a little bit, not to the extent I thought they would. They didn’t include Ford in the latest level of new plants that are in strike, but they did involve the other two. And so they’ve expanded it.

I think most of the public is aware of the high level circumstances, in that they’re viewing it as an opportunity to get raises. The automakers offered roughly 20%; the unions are asking for 40%. The most interesting thing to me is an end to tiering, which means essentially that people would not be paid more for more experience. Whether you’ve been doing the same job for three weeks or the same job for three decades, you would be getting paid the same. And I’m not sure that there’s a lot of room for the automakers to move on some of these points.

EICHER: All right, a lot of stories we need to touch on David. Let’s go to the Fed, which chose last week to leave interest rates where they were, which was more or less in line with expectations. But did anything strike you about Chairman Jay Powell statement afterwards?

BAHNSEN: I think that the whole entire story is in the markets right now. The financial aspects of the economy are evidenced in the bond market where you see the long end of the curve, let’s call it the “10 year Treasury yield” has gone up about 38 basis points—0.38%—just in the last month. It’s up well over 1% in just about the last six months—a little less than six months, really. It had gotten all the way down. It wasn’t there for a long time, but it touched 3.3% back in April. It came all the way up to around the 4.5% range this week.

I hate to get into more technical sides of financial markets, but I think a lot of this is because while everybody has been focused obsessively on the Fed with the interest rates for the last year and a half. The Fed had also, simultaneously, been doing this thing called quantitative tightening, which is the opposite of quantitative easing that they had been doing to the tune of trillions of dollars before that. And what quantitative easing was, is when they were buying bonds from Treasury with money that didn’t exist, then putting it on their own balance sheet, in effect reducing the bonds that are on their balance sheet. So it’s a way of removing liquidity from the banking system.

And when there aren’t buyers on some of the longer end, or when those buyers who are buying 10 year treasuries are people like you and me or local banks who care about the interest rate, those yields go higher. When the Fed is buying them, they don’t care about the interest rate. They’re what we call a “non-economic buyer”. So you more or less have—and I wrote about this and put a chart to this effect in dividend cafe.com a couple of days ago—half a trillion dollars that is off of the Fed’s balance sheet of treasuries in the last year or so, and a little over a trillion dollars that has come onto households’ balance sheets.

And you know, why wouldn’t they? They like 4% or 5% yields more than they like 0% or 1% or 2% yields. The difference is that it isn’t just an apples to apples switch. The Fed didn’t care about the yields, but the new buyers do, and that’s caused the long end of the curve to come up. People start to wonder: Is the Fed really going to stay higher for longer? I think that’s the pickle the Fed is in—that they can definitely lower the short end of the curve (and in fact will end up starting to do so next year, in my opinion), but what do we believe about the long end? There’s a lot of confusion in there and the Fed is not giving great signals about this.

EICHER: I saw that a chart that you posted on the Dividend Cafe, David. Do you mind if we grab that chart and place it in today’s program transcript, I found it a useful chart to visualize that dramatic move and the correlation to the Fed rate rise. Do you mind? Can we do that with your permission, of course?

BAHNSEN: Oh, of course. I think it’s a great idea. It’s very effective, just to be able to see what exactly has happened. And I think the point I’m trying to make is it does have an economic impact.

Chart published with permission, ©The Bahnsen Group, 2023

EICHER: Yeah, thank you. So let’s move on to a couple more items. I was thinking about the looming government shutdown, get your comment on that. We’re down now to days. It is not looking as though the Republicans are coming together. They appear headed for a collision. What do you make of the drama in Washington? We did talk a couple of months ago about the debt ceiling deal, but we’ve not talked about government shutdowns. Does it matter much, do you think, beyond politics?

BAHNSEN: Well here’s a little history: There’s been 20 shutdowns in my lifetime, and I’m not quite 50 years old. The average duration of those 20 shutdowns was eight days. The fact of the matter is that, from a market standpoint, looking at all the shutdowns in the 80’s 90’s, and 2000’s, 11 out of 14 times the market was up during it. And the three times it wasn’t, it was just barely down: Literally 1% or so. And so it isn’t a generally a big market event.

It isn’t usually an economic event. The only caveat I want to give is: You don’t often have a government shutdown happening when the Fed is in the middle of tightening monetary policy, when the United Auto Workers are on strike, and when China’s growth is slowing and having an impact throughout the global economy all at once. So it may not be a big event, but I think it’s an entirely absurd event.

Just in terms of how it adds to overall economic sentiment and reality, it may end up being a bigger factor. But what we know historically is that these don’t usually last a super long time. They usually end with the party that started it very embarrassed. And they don’t usually accomplish a whole lot.

EICHER: Well, there was one other factor, and I want to raise that again before we go. I know the listener is seeing prices at the pump headed north. But I looked at the three month view on Brent Crude oil. David, we were in the $70 range at the end of June around the end of June. Now here toward the end of September, we are up over $90 a barrel, and it feels like 100 is not far away. Are you concerned about that?

BAHNSEN: I think that is a story in this sense. Nobody is going to say with a straight face that the Fed is causing oil prices to go up. What I think oil prices going up does is make the Feds job a lot harder, because you really did have quite a bit of disinflation going on in almost all aspects and, in some cases, outright deflation. In oil’s case, it’s obviously responding to the mismatch of supply and demand. That is, demand is higher than supply.

Saudi Arabia has no interest at all in helping the United States here. And the Biden administration has lost the ability to use the tool they used last year, which was pulling from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the tune of hundreds of millions of barrels. If oil prices don’t stabilize here, does the Fed have to treat it as if it’s part of their inflationary circumstance they’re dealing with? Or do they carve it out. It puts them, again, in another very difficult position. So oil prices absolutely matter. 90-ish is around the limit as to where I think they can go without really starting to erode demand. If you get up near 100, or above 100, it definitely becomes very problematic for the economy.

EICHER: All right, David Bahnson, founder managing partner and Chief Investment Officer at the Bahnson group. You can keep up with David at Bahnsen.com. That’s his personal website, B-A-H-N-S-E-N, bahnsen.com weekly dividend cafe, you can find that at dividendcafe.com. David, thank you and I hope you have a terrific week. We’ll talk to you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick. 

NICK EICHER, HOST: You’ve heard of the Nobel Prize.

Well, move over, No-bell. Make room for the Ig-no-bell Prize. It’s a parody that celebrates unconventional science discoveries by our best and brightest.

PRESENTER: The chemistry and geology prize! Awarded to Jan Zalasiewicz for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks!

Ahh, say what? Maybe it just proves a wet surface reveals so much more than a dry one.

Any case, it’s ten prizes just like these:

PRESENTER: The literature prize is awarded for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And of course our winner is ready, ready, ready.

PRESENTER: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

EICHER: And then my favorite: Experiments on how electrified chopsticks can change the taste of food.

REICHARD: Makes ya laugh, then makes ya think.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: the WORLD History Book. Fifteen years ago, SpaceX takes off. And 50 years ago, the supersonic Concorde crosses the Atlantic in record time. But first, the 100th anniversary of a story about a deer and life in the woods. Here’s WORLD Executive Producer, Paul Butler.

MUSIC: [BAMBI]

PAUL BUTLER, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: In 1942, after five years in production, Disney releases its 5th animated feature film: Bambi:

AUDIO: Walt Disney, the world's greatest storyteller brings the world's greatest love story to the screen.

Disney’s film is based loosely on Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Jewish author Felix Salten, published in 1923. The animated retelling reduces the tale to a love story—with a strong anti-hunting message. But the original book is a much more compelling coming of age story, and what a young buck can learn from his parents. Audio here from a Chapter Book Story Time video posted on the Caribou Public Library YouTube channel.

AUDIO: He came into the world in the middle of a thicket, in one of those hidden forest glades which seem to be entirely open but are really screened in on all sides.

The setting of Salten’s story comes from the forests around Vienna. Often seen as a children’s book, Bambi, A Life in the Woods wasn’t initially intended for young audiences. Many creatures in the book die—and not just at the hands of man. As Salten was an avid sportsman, the story is not intended as a general critique of hunting.

The book is filled with imaginative conversations with woodland animals, insects, and birds…leading many to claim it as one of the first environmental novels. But many literary critics see it instead as an allegory for Jewish life in Europe during the early 20th century. Adolf Hitler saw it that way and banned the book in 1936. When the Nazis took over Austria, Salten fled to Zurich, Switzerland.

At times, the story seems a not-so-subtle critique of religion and God. In one scene, a hound corners a wounded fox. The woodland creatures call him a traitor for serving “Him” or man. The hound replies:

AUDIO: I worship Him, I serve Him. Do you think you can oppose Him, He’s all-powerful. He’s above all of the rest of you. Everything we have comes from Him. Everything that lives or grows comes from Him.

Then the dog shakes the fox to death.

But there are also strong reminders that the evil crashing into the forest is not what God intended. That someday, as Isaiah chapter 11 promises, the lion and lamb will lie down together.

AUDIO: They say that sometime he’ll come to live with us and be as gentle as we are. He’ll play with us, and the whole forest will be happy, and we’ll be friends with him.

Toward the end of the story, the now mature Bambi and his father come upon a poacher who’s died in the woods. Bambi had thought men were all powerful. That they were to be feared above all else. But the old stag teaches Bambi otherwise.

AUDIO: There was a silence. “Do you understand me Bambi?” asked the old stag. “I think so,” Bambi said in a whisper. “Then speak,” the old stag commanded. Bambi was inspired and said trembling, “There is Another who is over us all over us and over Him.”

Simon and Shuster published an English translation of the story by Whittaker Chambers in 1928. Chambers’ translation is the most well known, but it’s not always true to the original German text. The story was well received by American critics and readers alike, selling 650,000 copies by 1942. Disney’s adaptation had a slow start, but it’s still one of the top 20 highest grossing animated films of all time.

Next, September 26th, 1973.

NEWSREEL: 193 feet long 38 feet tall with a wingspan of 84 feet.

After nearly twenty years of planning and testing, the Concorde supersonic jet makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time…three hours and 32 minutes.

PROMOTIONAL FILM: With its long slender fuselage and sculpture delta wing is the shape of high design technology.

Even though the distinctive looking plane with the lowered nose cone has been flying since 1969, it doesn’t actually begin carrying commercial passengers until 1976, as many fliers are uncomfortable with the idea of traveling that fast.

AUDIO: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. As soon as we've cleared the coast, which will begin our acceleration to supersonic speed.

But Concorde’s success is relatively short lived. Each plane can only carry about 100 passengers. And as Concorde burns more than 6700 gallons of jet fuel every transcontinental flight—it’s extremely expensive to fly. As the airline industry changes in the 80’s and 90’s, shrinking margins make it impossible to stay afloat. Then, a devastating accident in 2000 ends the lives of 113 people, leading British Airways and Air France to retire the program in 2003.

STEWARDESS: I wish you a safe journey, and thank you for choosing the British Airways Concorde. Thank you for flying with us.

Finally today, a supersonic breakthrough of another sort…

LAUNCH AUDIO: 3, 2, 1, 0. We have lift-off.

On September 28th, 2008, SpaceX successfully launches a Falcon 1 rocket into orbit from the South Pacific.

LAUNCH AUDIO: [CELEBRATION]

With the launch, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately-developed, fully liquid-fueled launch vehicle to enter orbit.

Three previous test launches failed, putting the program at risk. After the September 28th success, Musk struggles to find the words to express his relief.

MUSK:  It's the culmination of a dream. It's just kind of mind blowing, actually. I mean, my nervous system almost got fried. Just watching that that flight. So you know, it's ah, yeah, wow.

NASA awards a contract to SpaceX shortly after the launch—injecting more than one and a half billion dollars into the company.

SpaceX retired its Falcon 1 platform in 2009 to focus on its larger orbital rocket: the Falcon 9. Its Dragon spacecraft has made 10 successful crewed visits to the International Space station. And Musk is currently testing his Starship vehicle and delivery system with dreams of sending manned missions to Mars by the end of the decade.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: Another migrant surge on the southern border. Now the mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, has declared an emergency. We’ll talk with an expert on border policy. And, the film Sound of Freedom is raising awareness about a troubling crime, but does the film send the wrong message about what anti-trafficking really looks like?

That and more tomorrow.

I hope you’ll continue rating, reviewing, and sharing this program with friends. It’s already making a big difference! So thanks!

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

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 the fellowship of early believers: "They were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." —Acts 2, verses 45 through 47.

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.