WORLD Radio Rewind

LEIGH JONES: This is WORLD Radio Rewind: a 10-minute review of some of our news coverage and features from the past week on WORLD Radio. I’m managing editor Leigh Jones.

First up, peering into space. On Tuesday’s program, Bonnie Pritchett talked to astrophysicists about NASA’s new space telescope.

BONNIE PRITCHETT, CORRESPONDENT: After lifting off from French Guiana aboard the Ariane 5 rocket, the James Webb Space Telescope will begin a month-long journey to reach its destination. This gravitational sweet spot in the solar system is called a Lagrange point. And it’s 1 million miles from Earth.

Klaus Pontoppidan, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, explained why NASA chose that particular spot.

PONTOPPIDAN: This spot in space is significant, because due to the combined gravity of Earth, the Earth and the Sun, it's solid, it can stay there for an extended period of time with only a little bit of, of rocket burns to keep it there over time. And so, it means it doesn't drift away from the Earth, that allows us to have very stable communication with with a high bandwidth…

Like its predecessors Webb will provide not only views of a place in the universe, but a place in time.

Danny Faulkner is a retired professor of astronomy and physics at the University of South Carolina and staff astronomer for Answers in Genesis. He explains how we see light and its relation to time.

FAULKNER: When we look at something, light to us seems to be instantaneous. You see something taking place, and and you cannot see any any evidence to delay at all….

Light travels at a constant speed throughout the universe and takes time to reach the human eye or a telescope lens. Scientists use that passage of time as a means of measuring distance between places in the vast universe. For example, light from the moon takes about one second to reach Earth. Light from the sun, 8 minutes.

FAULKNER: When you're talking about stars. It's even more if you're talking about galaxies, and presumably, it's going to be far, far more than that. …

Klaus Pontoppidan says the desire to explore is part of our basic humanity.

PONTOPPIDAN: I think, I think it's, it's part of our basic humanity to, to explore… [26:16 -] I think, as humans, I think we have this innate desire to, to understand where we come from, and to understand our place in cosmos. And there are different ways to go about that…

Danny Faulkner from Answers in Genesis compared the universe to a giant billboard.

FAULKNER: The heavens do declare God's glory. And the heavens proclaim His handiwork. That's interesting that astronomy is singled out in that way. It's part of why God made what he did.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Bonnie Pritchett.

LJ: Next up, promoting democracy. On Wednesday’s program, Mary Reichard talked to Dalibor Rohac about President Biden’s summit challenging the spread of authoritarianism.

REICHARD: What do you think the summit itself ultimately accomplished last week?

ROHAC: We saw in the build-up to the summit, the release of the White House's new strategy on corruption and kleptocracy, which also was featured prominently at the summit. I think having this conversation with America's allies is important, holding especially advanced Western liberal democracies, market economies to high standards of financial transparency so that we don't become really a safe haven for dictators and their money is a worthwhile goal. But again, there is a sort of disconnect between the rhetoric and the reality. Because just hours before the summit, Congress actually killed all of the proposed anti-corruption and anti-kleptocracy bills that were in the legislature. So, again, that sort of signals to our friends and foes alike that maybe America's political class is not quite as committed to this idea of pushing against authoritarian regimes as the summit would like to signal.

REICHARD: Dalibor Rohac has been our guest today. He’s a foreign policy analyst and scholar and now a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. Thanks so much!

ROHAC: Thank you for having me.

LJ: Next, pieces of the past. On Wednesday’s program, Paul Butler outlined some of the most significant archaeological finds of 2021.

PAUL BUTLER, REPORTER: Scott Stripling is director of excavations at Shiloh for the Associates for Biblical Research—or ABR.

When the Israeli government began loosening COVID restrictions this year, the Israel Antiquities Authority—or IAA—went back to work on a number of projects. Scott Stripling says a few of them led to significant discoveries. The first is a synagogue in Magdala.

STRIPLING: Just a few days ago. Magdala, on the Sea of Galilee, between Tiberius and Capernaum, produced a second synagogue. And so this is the first New Testament city to have two synagogues, dating clearly to the first century from the time of Jesus.

That’s important because in recent decades there’s been a growing number of historians claiming the gospel references to synagogues are made up. The fact that the IAA uncovered the most recent 1st century synagogue goes a long way to reinforce the Biblical record.

Nine months ago, the IAA also uncovered more Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the Qumran region. They were found in a previously unknown cave.

STRIPLING: And these fragments date to the Bar Kokhba period, or the second revolt, but the fact that new scroll fragments, and these come from Zechariah, and Nahum, they come from the book of the 12 Minor Prophets, is just very significant...

Another important find from 2021 comes from Lachish—in the Judean foothills. A milk-bowl there provides evidence of the Hebrew language appearing earlier than many secular scholars have been willing to acknowledge.

STRIPLING: It appears to be the oldest alphabetic script found so far. And so these discussions are going to be very interesting, but at the least it tells us something about literacy in that time of the conquest...

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Paul Butler.

LJ: And finally, picking up the pieces in America’s broken heartland. On Thursday’s program, Kim Henderson talked to aid groups helping with recovery efforts following last week’s devastating tornadoes.

KIM HENDERSON, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Patti Sawyer and her husband own one of the few homes left standing in the Whispering Hills Subdivision in Bowling Green, Kentucky. She lived through harrowing moments as the tornado passed through early Saturday morning, and now she’s living through some tough moments in the aftermath.

Like when bulldozers arrived to deal with all the debris.

SAWYER: There was a state police officer standing there just watching this guy remove debris. And I thought, “Why is he just standing there watching him?” And then it hit me that he was sitting there watching him because he was looking for what could be in the debris, including maybe victims of the tornado. And it just really hit hard, how awful and gruesome that this was.

Samaritan’s Purse has three staging areas set up in the tornado disaster zone. Clay Steelman is overseeing the work in Truman, Arkansas, just south of Jonesboro. There, trees are down, roofs are missing, and homes have been knocked from their foundations. Samaritan’s volunteers have come to work and to give Christian comfort.

STEELMAN: It's a ministry of presence. You can use platitudes and those type things, but a lot of it comes from just standing beside them. And then jumping in and helping them.

By Sunday a volunteer team from The Rock Church in Jonesboro had joined Steelman. They were working with a woman whose home had slammed into a house next door.

STEELMAN: She had a mahogany door that I believe her husband gave to her when they got in that home. So a couple of volunteers made it their task to pull it out from underneath the rubble. So they spent an hour or so digging that out and got out some mattresses and a chest of drawers and some keepsakes for her that she wouldn't have been able to get out otherwise. So that’s how you comfort them.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson.

LJ: That’s it for this edition of WORLD Radio Rewind.

We’ve posted links to each of the stories we highlighted today in our transcript. You can find that on our website.

Next week, we’ll find out why school counselors are in short supply, just when students need them most. And we’ll tell you about a new requirement coming to all vehicles … that’s designed to prevent drunk driving.

For the latest news, features, and commentary from WORLD News Group, visit wng.org. For WORLD Radio, I’m Managing Editor Leigh Jones.

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.