The World and Everything in It: September 9, 2024

PREROLL: The World and Everything in It is made possible by listeners like me. My name is Pastor Dan Gottwerth, and I am the chaplain at Granite Farms Estates in Media, Pennsylvania. I travel three states to get to work every day, and listening to this program makes my commute so much more enjoyable. I hope you enjoy today's program.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! The social media platform X is banned in Brazil. Why?

MARY REICHARD, HOST: I’ll talk about it with an Alliance Defending Freedom international advocate and lawyer.

HENRÍQUEZ: The moment that you start going for misinformation, you are simply opening the door to having individuals becoming a law unto themselves.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on today’s Legal Docket.

Also today, financial analyst David Bahnsen is standing by. We’ll talk economic policy and the big debate tomorrow night.

And the WORLD History Book. 65 years ago, a space race milestone.

NEWSREEL: In one spectacular, well-timed move, Russia scores a major scientific advance.

BROWN: It’s Monday, September 9th. This is The World and Everything in It. I’m Myrna Brown. 

REICHARD: I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning

BROWN: Up next, Kent Covington with today’s news.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Presidential politics/debate prep » This could be a pivotal week in the presidential race as the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump gear up for tomorrow's presidential debate.

And the campaign surrogates were out in force on the Sunday talk show circuit.

Former Trump White House Press Secretary and current Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC’s This Week that during Trump’s presidency …

SANDERS:  We actually had a safer world. We didn't have conflicts left and right all over the place. She has to be held responsible for these things. She doesn't get to run away from them. And I think that's what makes this debate so difficult for her this week.

But Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy predicted that Vice President Harris will make a strong case for her agenda.

MURPHY: Everybody has the chance to succeed. And that’s  very different than Donald Trump's agenda. Donald Trump has made it very clear. If you put him back in power, he's going to think only one group of people, and that’s his friends at Mar-a-Lago, another massive tax cut for the richest people in America.

The candidates will face off tomorrow at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania, of course a critical swing state in this election.

ABC News will host the debate at 9pm Eastern Time.

Campaigning, polls » While Harris has largely been hunkering down to prepare for the debate, her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has been campaigning hard, working to fire up political supporters.

WALZ: It is not a stretch and the facts are there. This is the most pro-LGBTQ+ administration in American history.

He spoke over the weekend to a gathering of the LGBT activist group the Human Rights Campaign in Washington.

Meantime former President Trump campaigned on the economy and inflated prices in Wisconsin.

TRUMP: We will defeat inflation and we will make America affordable again.

Kamala Harris plans a four-day campaign trip through major swing states after tomorrow’s debate combined with a new TV spot, canvassing events and programs designed to target important voting groups.

After replacing President Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Harris enjoyed a surge of enthusiasm that saw her take a slight lead in many national and swing state polls. But recent polls have shown the race tightening again. The latest survey from the New York Times gives Trump a 1-point edge nationally.

Voter ID, avoiding shutdown » Members of Congress are getting back to work in Washington this week as they work to pass a government funding bill and avoid a government shutdown.

And House Speaker Mike Johnson is aiming to attach a measure that requires proof of citizenship in order to vote.

GOP Congressman Pat Fallon calls that “common sense legislation.”

FALLON: There’s nothing more sacrosanct in a republic than to make sure you have secure, honest, transparent, and open elections.

But many Democrats argue that requiring an ID will make it tougher for some minorities and the elderly to vote.

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has signaled that if the measure does pass in the House it might be dead on arrival in the Senate.

McCaul on Russian disinformation » The Justice Department is accusing Russia of spreading disinformation after discovering a propaganda campaign funded by Russian state-owned media outlet RT. Money was allegedly being funneled to online influencers to unwittingly spread disinformation.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul:

MCCAUL:  Well, Russia has been trying to do this, uh, you know, many years. So is China. So is Iran for that matter. Um, it's intensified. And I think, um, I didn't blame anybody for it. I blame Russia for putting disinformation in the United States that does get picked up by people unwittingly in many cases.

That from CBS’ Face the Nation.

He added that some Americans are often unaware that some of what they see and hear online could be lies spread by foreign adversaries.

Federal prosecutors say RT paid a Tennessee company to create pro-Russia media. 

Kentucky shooting » A dramatic manhunt in Kentucky on Sunday.

KENTUCKY DISPATCH AUDIO: [SIC] Northbound, southbound I-75. We’ve got several people shot. 

Dispatchers informing police of an active shooter situation after someone opened fire on passing cars along a stretch of highway in Laurel County.

Authorities say they have recovered an SUV belonging to a person of interest in the shooting of nine vehicles … which wounded five people.

Laurel County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, Gilbert Acciardo:

ACCIARDO: We located an AR 15. It's, uh, going to be processed, uh, and it is in a wooded area next to the interstate, uh, in a location that he could have shot down upon the interstate from that wooded location.

Authorities were looking to question 32-year-old Joseph A. Couch as a person of interest.

Venezuelan opposition leader flees country after arrest order » Former Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has fled into exile in Spain. That comes after the government of disputed President Nicolas Maduro ordered his arrest supposedly to help restore “the country’s political peace and tranquility.”

That comes after a presidential election that many believe was rigged. Numerous foreign governments, including that of the United States believe González was the legitimate winner of July’s election.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Censorship in Brazil on this week’s Legal Docket. Plus, the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Monday the 9th of September. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Time now for Legal Docket.

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter and reorganized it as X, some authorities have raised concerns. They say they’re worried about certain kinds of content allowed on the platform.

Then last week, a Brazilian Supreme Court judge went one step further. He single-handedly outlawed X in Brazil. 

EICHER: Justice Alexandre de Moraes said the platform failed to suspend certain accounts: those posting what he called hate speech and misinformation.

A panel of justices backed up de Moraes, supporting the ban. And Brazil’s leftist president, Lula de Silva, went on to say, “The world is not obliged to put up with Musk’s far-right ideology just because he is rich.”

BROWN: But the ban doesn’t affect Musk alone. It affects everyday users in Brazil, many who use the platform to get their news.

SAMUEL KULTZ: You try to open your X account, and it goes like, “Page not found.” It's like it doesn't exist.

Samuel Kultz is Head of Academic Affairs for a conservative organization in Sao Paulo. Before the ban, Kultz used X to follow news about his city’s upcoming election for mayor.

KULTZ: With Twitter, I felt I was much more close to that. I was much closer to knowing live what is happening during the debates, during the elections, or what people are thinking, what people are seeing and what debates are happening around the election thing, around something political.

But with access denied, and other news outlets controlled by government authorities, Kultz says the situation feels like something out of George Orwell’s 1984:

KULTZ: You know, to me it's the first time in my life where I feel like I'm living under a dystopia, under a moment where everything that you can have access to is being moderated and somebody's watching and feeding you whatever that person wants.

EICHER: Joining us now to talk about the ban on the social media platform X is Tomás Henríquez. He is director of advocacy for Latin America & the Caribbean with the International arm of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

REICHARD: Tomás, good morning!

TOMÁS HENRÍQUEZ: Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, Tomás, would you give us some background on how politics landed Brazil in this situation? I mean, it wasn’t that long ago, the country was led by a conservative, Jair Bolsanaro. This seems like a dramatic shift.

HENRÍQUEZ: Yeah, indeed. Brazil has had a long and unfortunate history having to do with corruption, and it was within this context that in 2019 there was a news report that was coming out that at least made mention of the fact that the wife of then president of the Supreme Court, minister or judge Diaz Toffoli, was mentioned in the landmark corruption investigation in Brazil, the Lava Jato Investigation. When this happened, the president of the Supreme Court issued a decision in which the Court did a very creative interpretation of its own powers, by which, in case that there is a crime committed in the seat or premises of the court, the court can initiate an inquiry, an investigation of its own. 

Well, the court came to the view, or pushed the view, that whatever happens in the internet can plausibly be said to happen inside the courtroom. And so with that, they started an investigation that was not being directed by independent prosecutors, but rather by the court itself on what they called defamation or attacks on the honor of the court itself, its judges or its family members. And from that moment on, Judge Diaz Toffoli designated Minister Alexander de Moraes as the lead investigator with respect to this investigation. 

So from that moment on, we see an escalation of a power grab, because there's no other way that you can put it, by the Supreme Court in giving what the New York Times said, absolute power to Judge Alexander de Moraes to become the great investigator and censor in Brazil. It has gotten to the point where Mr. de Moraes has explicitly said in speeches that are publicly available, that it the court has been under attack by an unnamed enemy which is part of a large global conspiracy trying to undermine democracy, so that any criticism on the actions of the court is nothing more than a part of the vast conspiracy, and therefore not to be taken seriously.

REICHARD: That is a lot of background but very important to understand. So, let’s talk about the facts in the case of Elon Musk. What accounts did de Moraes (day-MORE-ice) demand the X platform suspend?

HENRÍQUEZ: Well, there are dozens and dozens, and that includes journalists and just what you would nowadays call influencers. But the most egregious case has to do with the censoring of independent journalists. It's not that the court, de Moraes, decided to or ordered that specific tweets needed to be taken down. But what he did, he issued orders that were not notified to those that were being investigated, but rather given directly to X with this explicit order of not mentioning to the individuals that were affected why this was happening and that this was done under the terms of service by X, as opposed to by a judicial order, and their accounts were suspended. And in many and some of the more extreme cases, it didn't just affect them online. The court and de Moraes went as far as to cancel their passports so that they could not legally exit the country, or, in some cases, reenter it, as they were part of this long standing investigation that doesn't seem to be coming to an end anytime soon. 

REICHARD: You know, some people are getting around the restrictions by using VPNs. Those are the virtual private networks that encrypt internet traffic. But Judge de Moraes’ order doesn’t just ban Twitter, it actually finds people who are caught using VPNs. What do you make of that?

HENRÍQUEZ: Indeed, that, in our view, is absolutely disproportionate, and I would go so far as to say unlawful. I mean, there is nothing illegal in using or downloading a VPN. None of the potential users that are affected by this order are even a part to the proceedings here. So he's adopting a decision that does not affect X directly, but rather goes against every citizen in Brazil who is not even part of the process in which this order has been issued. In that sense, this is a due process violation for every single one of them.

REICHARD: Yeah, and another consequence: the judge ordered the assets of Starlink to be frozen until X pays its fine. Starlink is Elon Musk’s satellite company. So what message does this send to other global companies who do business in Brazil?

HENRÍQUEZ: I think that's probably one of the more egregious parts of this particular order by the judge. I read the order, and the theory that he brings up to do this is that of a single economic unit. So under the public persona of Elon Musk, everybody knows to be a very outspoken and sort of bigger than life figure in our age. Everybody knows that he is an investor in SpaceX and he's heavily involved. Everybody knows that he owns Twitter. But the fact of the matter is, is that, as you mentioned, there are two entirely separate legal entities. And, you know, it's just factual that Elon Musk is a minority stockholder in SpaceX and Starlink, so that, in fact, by doing this freezing of assets, what then de Moraes is is doing is not really affecting primarily Elon Musk, but everybody else that has a majority stake in that company. Again, there's a huge due process violation with respect to this, because to the extent that we know, Musk and the company that, and really it's the company, because it's not Musk that's being affected, they didn't even have an opportunity to defend themselves or even discuss the, what I would call a very far fetched theory by the judge on this quote, unquote single economic unit that should have, at the very least been subject to a discussion with the attorneys for the parties, and that being, in this case, the representation of SpaceX and Starlink. That didn't happen.

REICHARD: Tomás, you mentioned that this order violates Brazilians’ freedom of speech. Here in the U.S., of course, we have freedom of speech protected in our Constitution and our laws. Do Brazilians have that?

HENRÍQUEZ: They do. The Brazilian Constitution has explicit provisions prohibiting any sort of censorship, and specifically for political reasons, which is what, in some ways, has been so intermingled with everything that has been happening as so much of the speech that has been censored by de Moraes has been political in nature. Judge de Moraes goes so far to say that the reason why he is throttling or trying to bring down X has to do with the potential for its existence to affect the outcome of the 2024 municipal election that is coming up in the country. So, you have a very clear recognition here that Judge de Moraes thinks he knows best on how the election should be run, what the outcome should be, and how there are some forms of speech that he deems to be unacceptable, as they have the power of swaying the voting public. We have, quite literally, a national censor for public discourse. That is unacceptable.

REICHARD: Well, all of this is quite concerning. How has the U.S. government responded so far?

HENRÍQUEZ: Well, the Biden administration hasn't issued any any statement having to do with the situation in Brazil, and there are many people that are critical, not only about their lack of response, but what their actions have been ramping up to this. That said, there has been a lot of concern on behalf of U.S. lawmakers and I, we've already seen statements from Senator Marco Rubio, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Mike Lee from Utah. They have all been following the situation closely, and so have many members of the House of Representatives, most notably Representative Chris Smith, who has been actually engaged on this issue for several months already, because, as I said, this didn't happen overnight. It's been going on for quite a while.

REICHARD: One more question here. There are people in the West who say the dangers of misinformation and hate speech warrant some level of censorship. Tomás, how do you respond to people making that argument in light of what's happening in Brazil?

HENRÍQUEZ: I have yet to see any single country where this turns out well. The moment that you start going for misinformation, you are simply opening the door to having individuals becoming a law unto themselves. This is a rule of men and not a rule of law. Now and ultimately, it comes down to the judgment of those individuals who have their own sensibilities on proclivities on what counts or does not count as misinformation. This is a cautionary tale to avoid that outcome precisely.

REICHARD: Tomás Henríquez is director of advocacy for Latin America & Caribbean with ADF International. Tomas, thank you so much for your time!

HENRÍQUEZ: Thank you very much for having us.

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

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. He’s head of the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he’s here now.

David, good morning!

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

EICHER: First thing I’m curious about, David, is a story last week in The Wall Street Journal, front page, so it’s by the news division and considerably more supportive of corporate woke policies. But the report is interesting. Headline: Ford, Coors Light, and Other Brands Retreat From a Gay-Rights Index. Subhead: Human Rights Campaign used a ranking of companies to advance same-sex benefits; now an activist is using the index to pressure CEOs.

The story points to several companies: the big automaker Ford along with Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, rural retailer Tractor Supply, distiller Brown-Forman, and brewer Molson Coors.

It notes that “Nearly all of them had ranked well on [the gay-rights] index. Some of the companies said they would stop [cooperating] with [the Human Rights Campaign] after they had been targeted by [a] social-media activist [called] Robby Starbuck.”

What can you tell us about this, David?

BAHNSEN: Yeah, there's a number of perspectives here. It's there's a few moving parts that I've been following for some time, and I do think that the bulk of it has to do with, particularly in this case Ford, I think to a lesser degree some of the other companies The Wall Street Journal named, but you're going to see it across the board with a lot of other companies too. And it does not necessarily mean companies that are wanting to be outside of left wing social engagement. It means they don't want to be a pawn in somebody else's activism, and that they now have cover to just sort of get out of it.

And so, what has happened is there was a big push from this Human Rights Campaign to get people to participate in what was a very far left initiative and kind of blackmail them with “You're going to do certain policies or we're going to score you negatively.” But then there was a backlash to that, with a big campaign against the people who were participating in that campaign, and I think it's caused them to say, “Okay, now we can just simply argue we're pulling out not because we want to oppose LGBT or because we want to support LGBT, but because we just simply don't want to be used in the midst of this kind of culture war back and forth between competing social and cultural agendas.

Now, of course, the way to not get pulled into these campaigns to begin with is to not enter into these campaigns to begin with, and I would far rather companies just recognize what's going on with a lot of the DEI, certainly some of the more extreme culture war issues out there that many of them are being used and threatened. You know, there's a sort of soft blackmail at play where that you will risk reputational damage if you don't try to play ball and set certain policies that we think will be in line with this agenda.

What you're seeing here right now is not the final step in all this. I think we're in earlier innings of the pendulum shifting back away from a far left cultural agenda to a more market oriented agenda where companies say we're no longer willing to risk the ire of people who feel differently on these issues, and therefore we would rather have no score at all than a good score from your index that creates a bad score in another index. I just want to remind everybody, there is no neutrality.

EICHER: Alright, debate night is tomorrow night, probably the only one we’ll get. Last time the former president stepped in the ring was the last time for the current president, so lots of anticipation politically. What I’d like to hear from you is what you’re looking for in terms of economic policy from each of the combatants and let’s begin with President Biden’s replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris. What do you hope to hear from her?

BAHNSEN: Well, what I would like to hear from her, we're not going to hear, which is a little more unpacking as to why she has gone back on so many of the far left agenda items from 2020. And of course, the reason why is because it isn't a mystery. It isn't like I'm over here confused. She can't say what the reason is, and the reason is that it's politically untenable to hold to the positions that she held to four or five years ago, around eliminating private health insurance, around the Green New Deal, and trillions of dollars of public spending projects that are environmentally driven. People could think that there's good or bad in some of the policies, but they're not politically tenable, and that's the reason she's gone away from them.

So, what would be great out of a debate like this is for a candidate to have to give an explanation as to why their worldview has changed, and what their worldview really is now. But politically, that's impossible for her to do, because, you know, they're pretty smart people involved in the campaign that realize there are positions here that jeopardize her electoral prospects.

So, I expect you're going to get a lot of platitudes and a lot of generic rhetoric about helping the middle class, about an Opportunity Society, and mostly solutions tied to that rhetoric that center around government handouts, whether it's price controls on groceries or subsidies on housing. But I don't think you're going to get anything more meaningful than that. And I don't think you're going to see her or her opponent address anything to do with national debt, with government spending and with ongoing deficits.

And so, the fact that we will very likely have a big debate on Tuesday night that does not get into the issue of $35 trillion in national debt that is going up by 1 to 2 trillion per year without a recession, that's the real shame of this. That no one is willing to tackle the fact that debt has grown far higher than GDP for the last 10 years.

EICHER: Alright, and what about former President Trump?

BAHNSEN: Well, I would love for him to address the various issues that he addressed in 2016 where there was a vision for making America more competitive by reducing what was then our extremely high corporate tax rate. I think the lowest hanging fruit for a supply sider, like myself, in the, you know, suboptimal parts of American economic policy is that we are running at far too high deficits, that we have really destructive entitlement commitments that have to be addressed for the future, and that there's always a need for more incentives via deregulation, optimized tax policy and energy independence.

Some of these things are things that President Trump is very sympathetic to philosophically, but there's a lot less meat on the bone this time around than there was in 2016. So, rather than more about child tax credits and various things, the government will spend money on some of the things that, very candidly, sound like pandering to me, like no tax on tips that may or may not be good politics. It is obviously, though not broad based supply side, you know, incentive driven reform. That's what I'd really love to see.

And President Trump's already said he's not going to talk about entitlements. And that's a political decision he made. I think it's the wrong one, both as in terms of leadership and the politics, I think it needs to be discussed, but we're not going to get that out of them. He has said that they're going to get rid of the national debt, and I don't really have any idea how he's planning on doing that. But I wouldn't mind hearing what the kind of version 2.0 of the supply side agenda is – where there's meaningful tax reform possibility, where there is ability to make the corporate tax code more competitive or the regulatory.

So, you know, again, he's not immune either from the criticism that some of us have with Vice President Harris, for lack of specificity. There was a website in 2016 with dozens of policies. There's a lot less of that this time, and maybe some more of that will come out in the debate. And it would be, it would be helpful to see if it can follow up on, rather than big government solutions to some of the economic component, where there might be ideas for getting the government out of the way.

EICHER: Ok, David Bahnsen is founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group.

Check out David’s latest book Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life at fulltimebook.com.

Have a great week, David!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, September 9th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

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

Next, the WORLD History Book. Today, the debut of a breakthrough breakfast pastry. Then, the first manmade object hits the moon. But first, a scientist who studied dog drool, sort of.

Here’s Anna Johansen Brown.

AUDIO: [Bell] Pavlov’s aim was to discover what caused saliva to flow.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Ivan Pavlov was studying the digestive systems of dogs. It was almost an accident that he wound up discovering one of the most fundamental learning principles of all time. Audio here from a reenactment of his experiments.

AUDIO: [speaking in Russian]

Pavlov is born September 14th, 1849, in the old Russian Empire. His father is an Orthodox priest, and at first Pavlov wants to follow in his footsteps. But while in seminary, he abandons his faith and turns to studying science instead: Chemistry and physiology.

In the late 1890s, he begins his famous experiments on dogs.

AUDIO: After taking many measurements of spittle, he confirmed that the dogs drooled automatically when their tongues touched food.

But Pavlov begins to notice something. The dogs are starting to drool before the food arrives. They’re drooling as soon as they see someone in a white lab coat. So Pavlov shifts his focus.

AUDIO: He introduced a stimulus that was totally unrelated to feeding. [ticking] A ticking metronome…after a number of trials, the dog began to connect the ticking with the arrival of meat.

Pavlov uses a variety of stimuli—a whistle, a tuning fork, flashing lights. Researchers debate whether he actually used a bell or not. Regardless, soon, the stimulus alone makes the dogs drool.

AUDIO: He called this new response the conditioned reflex. [music, sound] Whatever the stimulus, his dogs could soon be conditioned to produce saliva.

His discovery becomes known as classical conditioning, and still provides the bedrock of most learning theories—for dogs and humans alike.

In 1904, Pavlov wins a Nobel Prize, but not for that experiment. He earns it for his research into the animal digestive system.

NEWSREEL: Soviet Russia scores a dramatic victory in the exploration of space, with the launching of the first rocket to hit the moon.

Next, a Soviet achievement sends the U.S. space program into a tizzy. Audio here from Universal International News.

NEWSREEL: It’s the first manmade object to voyage from one cosmic body to another.

On September 13, 1959, the space probe Luna 2 crashes into the Moon.

NEWSREEL: In one spectacular, well-timed move, Russia scores a major scientific advance.

Luna 2 is a silver sphere, with long spiky antennas sticking out of it. It carries instruments to measure potential radiation bands or magnetic fields around the moon as well as metal pennants bearing the hammer and sickle of the USSR.

The news shakes the American public. Reporters refuse to believe it until the news is verified by a third party. Many in the U.S. thought that although Russia might have more powerful rockets, NASA had superior guidance systems. But so far, when NASA has tried to hit the moon, the closest they’ve come is 37,000 miles.

NEWSREEL: Moscow shot for the Moon, and scored a bullseye.

Luna 2 is a massive success for the Soviets. But the U.S. gets a little consolation prize out of it. Shortly after the mission, the USSR creates an exhibit of its economic and scientific achievements. The exhibit goes on tour through several countries, and it includes a display of Luna 2.

During the tour, CIA operatives successfully pilfer the entire Luna display. It’s not a replica, it’s a fully operational system. The team is able to disassemble the spacecraft, photograph all its parts, and put it back just the way they found it. As far as the CIA can tell, the Soviets never find out.

The Space Race goes on for another decade. It’ll be another three years before the US can achieve its own “hard landing” on the moon, and another four years after that before it can pull off a successful “soft landing,” paving the way for the Apollo program.

We wrap up today with competition on a smaller scale: The breakfast market.

AUDIO: Hey kids, I’ve got news. Post’s Grape Nuts Flakes is giving you a chance to win one of 6,000 terrific prizes. [duck under]

In 1964, the cereal company Post is a giant on the breakfast scene. In February, the company announces it will be releasing a toaster-warmed breakfast pastry. But the product isn’t ready to launch yet. So, the enterprising folks over at Kellogg’s spring into action.

They develop their own on-the-go breakfast pastry: A sweet filling between layers of crust.

AUDIO: Four, three, two, one, Pop Tarts! New, from Kellogg’s! 

On September 14th, 1964, the Pop Tart is born. The name is a play on the contemporary art movement, “Pop Art.” Not to mention those little pastries popping up out of the toaster, piping hot.

AUDIO: [Ad music]

Pop Tarts take the market by storm. It’s not just the sweet flavors, or the bright marketing aimed specifically at kids. It’s the convenience. In the 1950s and 60s, efficiency is the name of the game, and everything is about spending less time in the kitchen.

AUDIO: [Singing] Kellog’s Pop Tarts! Loads of flavors for big and little shavers, Kellogg’s Pop Tarts!

Pop Tarts may be the opposite of a balanced breakfast, but they’re flying off the shelves.

AUDIO: Strawberry, blueberry, brown sugar cinnamon, apple berry, and brand new concord grape and raspberry apple.

For the next fifty years, Pop Tart sales go nowhere but up. Literally. Sales continue to increase steadily for five decades, at least in the US. In other countries, like France and the UK, Pop Tarts are illegal. These days, the ingredients include a laundry list of preservatives and dyes that are linked to serious health issues like cancer.

But the pastries continue to sell in the U.S., partly because of their flavor, and partly because of the American culture of busyness and desire for instant breakfast-dessert-on-the-go.

AUDIO: Newwwww, from Kellogg’s!

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: China halts international adoptions. We’ll hear what it means for families caught in the middle. And, the first of our three-part series on a movement known as “living books” lending libraries. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Nick Eicher.

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

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, “And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, ‘Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.’” —Luke 22:41, 42

Go now in grace and peace.

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