
Loading summary
Myrna Brown
Good morning. A new Barna survey shows Gen Z says it values marriage, but it's shaky on what marriage is for. We'll talk about what that confusion reveals.
Nick Eicher
John Stonestreet is back for Culture Friday. Also today, the new film Wicked for good.
Myrna Brown
The Wicked Witch can't elude us forever, not with Prince Fierro and his squadron hot on her trail.
Nick Eicher
World's Colin Garberino has a review and listener feedback.
Myrna Brown
It's Friday, November 21st. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.
Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Iger. Good morning.
Myrna Brown
Up next, Ken Covington with today's news.
Kent Covington
The US Secretary of the army was on the ground in Ukraine Thursday.
Colin Garbarino
Nice to see you.
John Stonestreet
Very well.
Kent Covington
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in Kyiv with Daniel Driscoll, who was helping with peace talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. Driskill praised the tenacity of Ukrainians in their fight against Russian invaders.
Colin Garbarino
The tragedy of having to defend your.
John Stonestreet
Right to exist and losing your neighbors.
Colin Garbarino
And your friends and your colleagues is horrific. And it is just something that no nation should face.
Kent Covington
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working with the Kremlin to draft a 28 point peace plan to end the war. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt the.
Caroline Levitt
President supports this plan. It's a good plan for both Russia and Ukraine, and we believe that it should be acceptable to both sides and we're working very hard to get it done.
Kent Covington
But the administration has said little so far about what that plan will look like. Washington National Cathedral hosting a remembrance for Dick Cheney. Former President George W. Bush eulogized the man who served him as vice president, calling Cheney smart and polished without heirs.
Colin Garbarino
Dick was funny and easygoing in a.
Nick Eicher
Style that his public image never caught.
John Stonestreet
Up with, though we can all agree.
Nick Eicher
He wasn't your standard issue politician.
John Stonestreet
If any voters came hoping for a kind word and a hug, they'd have to settle for the kind word.
Kent Covington
Former President Joe Biden also attended. President Trump was not invited. After years of very public friction with the Cheney family, the president has remained silent on Cheney's passing. Cheney had lived with heart disease for decades and received a heart transplant in 2012. He died November 3rd at the age of 84. New information on that deadly crash of a UPS cargo plane in Kentucky two weeks ago. World's Benjamin Eicher has that story.
Benjamin Eicher
Investigators now say there was evidence of cracks in the left wing's engine mount. The National Transportation Safety board says the MD11 plane only got 30ft off the ground. It's the first formal but still preliminary report about the November 4th disaster in Louisville. The NTSB said the plane was not yet due for a detailed inspection of key engine mount parts. Investigator Jeff Guzzetti said it appears UPS was conducting this maintenance within the required time frame, but I'm sure the FAA is now going to ponder whether that time frame is adequate. Fourteen people were killed in the crash. Three pilots were aboard the plane. All other victims were on the ground. Welcome back for World I'm Benjamin Eicher.
Kent Covington
The Department of Labor has finally released a key economic report after weeks of delay from the government shutdown, and the numbers are Strong. Employers added 119,000 jobs in September. That was more than twice what economists expected. Even so, the unemployment rate inched up a bit from 4.3 to 4.4%. That was due at least in part, because nearly a half million Americans entered the labor force. The shutdown also kept the government from calculating October's employment rate, so there will not be a full October report. Instead, those figures, including the October jobs gains, will be rolled into November's report. Next month at the Capitol, members of a House panel took a hard look at violence against Christians in Nigeria. GOP Congressman Chris Smith Churches burn. Mothers bury their children for the crime.
Colin Garbarino
Of singing Amazing Grace. Pastors are beheaded for preaching the Sermon on the Mount.
Kent Covington
Smith chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa. A Catholic bishop from Nigeria testified that radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram are targeting Christians, but that the Nigerian government does little to nothing about it. The top Democrat on the panel, Sarah Jacobs, suggested that cuts to the USAID program may have added to the crisis. She pressed State department official Jacob McGee about those cuts.
Nick Eicher
Ultimately, the violence must be stopped by the Nigerian government.
Caroline Levitt
In terms of programming, will you recommend restarting this program?
Kent Covington
To the secretary, he said existing warning programs that the US Funds should be sufficient, reiterating that it's on the Nigerian government to curb the violence. President Trump has threatened to cut aid and even suggested possible US Military action if Nigeria does not step up counterterrorism efforts. The Democratic Socialist Mayor elect of New York City, Zoran Mamdani, is slated to meet with President Trump at the White House today, where Press Secretary Caroline Levitt.
Caroline Levitt
Told reporters, we have a communist coming to the White House because that's who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country. I think it's very telling, but I.
Kent Covington
Also think, she said, it speaks to the fact that the president is willing to meet with anyone to try and do what's right for the American people. Likewise, Mamdani said the meeting shows he's willing to meet with anyone on behalf of his city.
John Stonestreet
I intend to make it clear to President Trump that I will work with him on any agenda that benefits New Yorkers. If an agenda hurts New Yorkers, I will also be the first to say so.
Kent Covington
The mayor elect said his team requested the meeting and that he plans to center the conversation on how the two opposing leaders can work to make the city a more affordable place to live.
Benjamin Eicher
Foreign.
Kent Covington
I'm Kent Covington. And straight ahead, Culture Friday with Johnstone Street, a review of the new movie Wicked for Good, and your listener feedback. This is the World and Everything In It.
Myrna Brown
It's Friday, November 21st. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the World and Everything in It. Good morning. I'm Myrna Brown.
Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Eicher. It's Culture Friday. Joining us now, John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. John, good morning.
John Stonestreet
Good morning.
Nick Eicher
Well, John, we have new data from Barna. This is part of its State of Today's Family, and it reveals a striking contradiction inside Gen Z. What we have here is, on the one hand, a strong majority of young adults saying they value marriage, but on the other hand, this is the generation least likely to believe that marriage is important for raising children. In other words, Gen Z affirms marriage but seems unsure of what marriage is for. So it's a curious kind of confidence believing in an institution without having a clear sense of the purpose of that institution. And it does raise, I think, a bigger question for all of us. If you detach marriage from its mission, what exactly is it that you're valuing? How do you make sense of this?
John Stonestreet
John well, listen, we have been in an era where we have tried all kinds of things with marriage. We've replaced marriage with other relationships. We have substituted it out for cohabitation. We quote, unquote, expanded it. I mean, there's all kinds of things that we've done to marriage without actually asking, first and foremost, what is marriage for? Now, that actually is not just an indictment on kind of what's happened in the Western world. The church has spent an awful lot of time talking to its people about how to do marriage. And in a sense, it's been gnostic. It's been gnostic from the very beginning because it's treated marriage as if it were merely an institute of personal fulfillment and that it didn't actually have a created structure to it. And there's just so much evidence of the fact that we have tried all kinds of things with marriage but have lost the plot. We've lost what marriage is. We've lost what marriage is for. And this study, I think, just points to that. And it even points to it in the church in the past. It was seen as something not as a capstone, but as a cornerstone of building an adult life. You do it with someone else, and you do it with some of these thresholds into adulthood, such as moving out, living on your own, getting married, having babies. These aren't things you do to complete your personal fulfillment. These are things you do because it's what humans do. There was an inherent sense of purpose here, and I just think that there's so little of that here. When Jesus was asked in Matthew 19 about whether something should be done to marriage, he went right back to the creation narrative, talked about men and women being one flesh, bringing in kind of the things that we should learn about marriage from the human body. And if we do not recover what marriage is for, then we will not be able to fix it, and certainly fix it to what it should be, which first and foremost should be an institution that advances the creation mandate to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, and is the best place for raising kids. You know, even the way some of these questions were framed betray this understanding that what marriage is really about is adult happiness, and we need to fix it so that we can fix adult happiness. None of that's the point. Or it's not not the point. It's the secondary point. There's a primary purpose for marriage given to how God created us. And keeping the primary and the secondary purpose is something that's missing in the way we think about marriage. This study both reflects that and it reveals that.
Nick Eicher
Yeah. You know, John, your point about losing the plot on marriage. It makes me think of something that I heard recently. Allie Beth Stuckey was interviewing Frank Turek, and Frank mentioned a conversation he'd had with Charlie Kirk. This was just a day or so before Charlie was assassinated. Kirk told him that rebuilding a healthy marriage culture was absolutely what he was trying to achieve culturally to preserving the West. So let me connect that idea to this Barna data. If Gen Z says that it values marriage, even if it's not for the right reasons, is that not still a meaningful opening? In other words, is there a sense in which the instinct to value the institution, even without the framework, grant that that that might be the kind of bounce back that we need, you know, get married and get your on the job training.
John Stonestreet
Oh, I think it's good news to like marriage rather than not like marriage. Like it's better to be in a place where people, I mean, just a few years ago another study pointed to the fact that the majority of young people at the time, which I guess at that time we would have been talking about older millennials basically thought marriage was an irrelevant institution. And you know, it's one thing to think it's good, it's another thing to think it's bad. Like the feminist, it's another thing to think it just doesn't matter at all. And I think there has been a bounce back from that. And part of that is just the challenges of reality. But there has to be clarity on this, right? I mean, when you live in cultural waters that treats everything having to do with adult relationships and adult sexuality as primarily a purpose of happiness and self fulfillment, then you've got to do some recateg from the top down. You've got to talk about it differently. And there's other trends too that this study in particular didn't reflect. But we know from other places, for example, that if you actually dig deep on young men and young women, more young men now want to get married than young women do. This is just another way of reflecting the trend lines which seem to indicate that young men and young women are moving in the opposite direction about fundamental values, about what they really believe. So the fact that there is some sort of return kind of a bounce back from the myths, that's good news. But we have to clarify what it is. I mean, part of it, it's like, man, if young adults right now actually value marriage for anything other than kind of personal fulfillment, then God bless them. That's God's grace. Because we can't take any credit for kind of what we've done. And building the cultural norms and churches should be at the lead of this. And I think if you look at some of the things that Charlie Kirk said, particularly in the last couple years of his life and his mission, as his widow put it in her memorial tribute to save the Lost boys of the west, there's not a saving of the lost boys of the west outside of rebuilding the institution of marriage. If you have a broken down marriage culture, you have broken down young people, and eventually the need outgrows the ability to meet the need. It's just impossible to keep up with the brokenness. And you know, we've certainly seen that breaking point achieved in many communities. And. And there's not a way forward in terms of saving the west or saving the young people of the west unless we get back to what marriage is and what it's for.
Myrna Brown
Well, switching gears here in Germany, the Christmas season is colliding with a new reality. So, John, several towns have canceled their traditional Christmas markets. And these are events that typically draw millions of people. Now, this is not about a lack of interest or bad weather, nothing at all like that. It's about the small town's inability to afford the security measures now required. So I learned about this in an article, the European Conservative. Evidently, localities are looking over their shoulders because of last year's likely terror attack. In a small city in the center of Germany on the Elbe river, the memory is still fresh of a car ramming at a Christmas market that killed five people and injured more than 200. Local organizers say the cost of barriers, surveillance, and extra guards now just really outweighs what small towns can pay. Here's the question, John. Christmas markets are not church events. They're civic events rooted in Christian tradition. So what happens when public expressions of Christianity require extraordinary security just to continue?
John Stonestreet
Well, they die out. And I think that's what happens. Most civilizations do die out. I mean, that's the history of the world. Civilizations don't last forever. The west has largely been a Christian civilization, and it will have Christian cultural markers, Christmas being probably the most visible and important one historically, in many ways. And the fact that this choice is being made is another aspect of this. In other words, the choice is that it is not important enough to maintain these traditions, to maintain these markers, to make the kind of hard decisions that need to be made, for example, I don't know, on immigration policy, in order to maintain the kind of civilization you are, and to even bring this sort of thing up then gets one accused of racism, nationalism, and things like that. But, okay, maybe it does. It's still the observable math. It's either you get Islam on Islamic terms or you have some expectations culturally of those who want to join your country. And you have expectations of citizens, and you have expectations of those who want to become citizens from another place. And that has to be demonstrated. And that, of course, was known up until yesterday as common sense, and now it's called something else. And so that's just kind of the place that we're in. I do think also this is another example of something we realized, that we were indeed in the midst of a clash of civilizations. Samuel Huntington's classic thesis, Post Cold War, about how the world was going to be made up and where the conflicts were going to be. And, and boy, that guy really got a lot right. And we forgot a little bit about the prediction about Islam and Islam in the west because maybe we got distracted by this or that or the other. But the cultural fault lines remain between Islam and the Christian or post Christian West. And this was a victory. This is a victory for Islam. You know, it's what fear can do. And then the legislatures of these nations make their decisions. And so there you go. I do think there is more than a little bit of a groundswell among the citizens pushback in many European nations. We'll see what happens in a place like this. How much will people miss these traditions that are such an important part of their lives? And maybe we'll see a return to some of those traditions like we've seen a return of people going to church, for example, in England, man in the United States. So, you know, it's hard to know what the future will hold, that there's a lot going on beneath the surface here.
Myrna Brown
John Stonestreet is president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. Thank you, John.
John Stonestreet
Thank you both.
Kent Covington
Additional support comes from Boyce College, where truth comes first. Every class begins with scripture and prepares students to live with wisdom, conviction and Christlike faithfulness. Boycecollege.com from Ridge Haven Camp in North Carolina and Iowa. Winter camp starts December 29th. Registration open@ridgehaven.org and from the Brainerd Institute, training pastors and equipping churches to make God's glory visible in rural places. More@brainerdinstitute.com.
Nick Eicher
Today is Friday, November 21st. Thank you. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day. Good morning, I'm Nick Eicher.
Myrna Brown
And I'm Irna Brown. Coming next on the world and everything in it, a final stop in the land of Oz. The film Wicked for Good opens this weekend, taking the story to its big finish. But every journey changes as you go. World arts and culture editor Colin Garbarino says this one takes a different turn than you might expect.
Colin Garbarino
Cinematic musicals have fallen on hard times in America, but last year's Wicked defied the odds by offering audiences a joyful romp full of over the top dance numbers set against lavish backdrops. Now, after a 12 month intermission, it's time for act two. But fans who aren't familiar with the original Broadway show might feel a little let down as the story takes a darker turn.
Myrna Brown
There's no going back.
Colin Garbarino
Wicked for Good picks up the action at some undefined time. After the first movie, Elphaba, once again played by Cynthia Erivo, has become the Wicked Witch. She lives alone, but she makes excursions into the world to continue her struggle against the wizard of Oz and his oppressive regime. Ariana Grande is back as Elphaba's friend Glinda. She is living in the Emerald City, being groomed for leadership by the wizard and the magical Madame Morrible. The story revolves around the question of whether Glinda and Elphaba's friendship is strong enough to survive being on opposite sides. Elphaba Throb I know you're out here. Just come in before the monkeys spot you. When a certain girl from Kansas shows up with her little dog in tow, an already difficult situation gets worse.
John Stonestreet
Bring me the broom of the Wicked Witch of the west.
Colin Garbarino
Those who loved last year's Wicked will probably want to see Wicked for Good. It succeeds in wrapping up the first film in a satisfying manner, and those who aren't yet familiar with the musical's story will be interested in seeing how the story incorporates the events of the wizard of oz movie from 1939. But to be honest, Wicked for Good is a bit of a letdown.
Myrna Brown
You're the only friend I ever had.
Colin Garbarino
And I've had so many friends. Last year's Wicked felt like such a triumph because it was fun. Sure, there was a bit of subtext about tyranny and the oppression of truth, but the film didn't take itself too seriously. How could it, when everything revolved around Glinda's skill at tossing her hair? Most of the first film is set during the protagonist's carefree college days, which adds to the amusement with big dance numbers full of fellow students and a lot of witty banter from the ensemble cast. But in this movie, Elphaba and Glinda have left college life behind. The wide world proves to be a lot lonelier and a lot less fun.
Myrna Brown
The Wicked Witch can't enmud us forever, not with Prince Fiyero and his squadron hot on her trail.
Colin Garbarino
It's not that director Jon M. Chu has made a bad follow up, it's just that this movie isn't as good as the first one. It's not entirely his fault. The Broadway musical's best songs come during Act 1. There's nothing as catchy, as popular, or as stirring as defying gravity, so this sequel is left with a selection of numbers that range from serviceable to forgettable.
Caroline Levitt
I've heard it so that people come.
John Stonestreet
Into our lives for a reason.
Colin Garbarino
I know I'm who I am today.
Caroline Levitt
Because I knew you.
Colin Garbarino
We can't blame Q for the music, but we can blame him for the pacing. It's 22 minutes shorter than Wicked, but it feels longer. Many of the scenes drag out the emotional beats. I suppose we're meant to feel the character's turmoil, but instead the Deadwood merely gives the audience more time to remember that things aren't as enjoyable as last time.
Nick Eicher
Think of what we could do together.
Colin Garbarino
Wicked for Good is rated PG for action and some suggestive material. And the suggestive material is much more suggestive this go round, parents might want to think twice about bringing young children. During one of the musical numbers, two characters strip off layers of clothing. And in the Land of Oz, folks wear elaborate costumes so they have many layers to strip off. And then they fall into bed together. I'm not sure I would call it objectionable, but it's, well, very suggestive. Much more suggestive than I would expect from a PG movie in 2025.
Myrna Brown
For a while there, I thought you changed. I have changed.
Colin Garbarino
How should we assess the morality of Wicked's story? On the one hand, you could cheer for its condemnation of totalitarianism, and you kind of get this sense that everyone's complicated with some mixture of goodness and wickedness. Maybe that sounds like a biblical understanding of fallen humanity. On the other hand, in its condemnation of tyranny's monopoly on truth, the movie flirts with the idea that there's no such thing as truth, per se. There's just my story and your story and his story and her story. It starts to feel like postmodern moral relativism. In this story, the villains turn into heroes and the heroes turn into villains. And sometimes those villains turned heroes turn back into villains and vice versa. No one's good. No one's Wicked. We're all just doing stuff, trying to survive. Anyway, if you are planning to see Wicked for Good in theaters, there's probably not much I can say that will dissuade you.
Myrna Brown
I'm off to see the Wizard.
Colin Garbarino
Just go into it expecting that you might find this visit to the Emerald City disappointing to any. I'm Colin Garbarino.
John Stonestreet
Something bad is happening in us.
Caroline Levitt
Something bad happening. That's it.
John Stonestreet
I'm leaving O while I can still speak the word. Goodbye.
Myrna Brown
Time now for listener feedback for the month of November. We begin with longtime listener Laura Laster. She's a pilot and aviation professor at Letourneau University, and she had a response to our recent conversation with transportation expert Bob Poole about air traffic control funding.
Laura Laster
So I just want to give another perspective from a flight school perspective with privatization atc. That is going to make learning to fly even more expensive. That makes it more expensive to fly for all pilots in the United States, where we enjoy amazing freedom that you don't see in other countries because we don't have privatization of ATC like in Canada and in Europe and much of the rest of the world. It really wasn't caused specifically by any kind of air traffic control problem, but it was the issue of the government not being able to stay open during its funding issues. And that could be solved by something else than like the Aviation Funding Stability act, which would allow the FAA to continue operate during government shutdowns if it were to be passed, which I would encourage something like that.
Nick Eicher
Well, next a comment from listener Megan Blanchard. She was responding to Seth Trout's recent commentary on how Christians ought to think about interacting with artificial intelligence.
Caroline Levitt
Hi world. Thank you so much for the quality work you do through journalism and editorials that you send to us each day. I thank you for inspiring and educating us. I'm always warning my children, you're not allowed to have a relationship with anything that does not have a heartbeat. But practically sometimes that can be hard to know what leads up to that. And I think Seth had such great ideas identifying ways that we can just humanize AI and let it creep in slowly and before we know it, we do have that relationship with something without a heartbeat, that is a but or anything like that. So thank you so much for this excellent peace and continue to do a great work. I appreciate you guys so, so much.
Nick Eicher
Well, up next, listener Jeb Rice picked up on this week's Washington Wednesday about border policy and offered a reminder that God's work is not confined to the borders of the United States.
Colin Garbarino
If, as a Christian, I thought God.
John Stonestreet
Only was active in the United States.
Colin Garbarino
Then we should let everybody come here. But having been to other countries, knowing.
John Stonestreet
That God is extremely active all over.
Colin Garbarino
The world and you can fulfill our commands from God anywhere in the world, they do not have to be in the US So I think people who think that the only answer is to let them in has a very narrow.
John Stonestreet
View of who our God is and.
Colin Garbarino
What our God can do. Thank you very much. I appreciate you. What you guys do.
Myrna Brown
This month we've also heard from several listeners grateful for world's commitment to send reporters into the field.
John Stonestreet
This is Sally Driscoll from the west.
Colin Garbarino
Side of Michigan, and I think of.
Myrna Brown
Calling often after different pieces, especially Kim Henderson's pieces.
Colin Garbarino
But I just wanted to comment.
Myrna Brown
I just was listening and Caleb Weldy's.
John Stonestreet
Piece on Ukraine was haunting and moving.
Colin Garbarino
And very thoughtful and I just appreciate the work he did and that you're sending people around the world.
Myrna Brown
Listener Mary Norton thought so too. Not only the Ukraine piece, but other international reporting. Thank you for having Boots on the ground. I just listened to Caleb Weldy's report of life in Ukraine that encourages me to keep praying for the people of Ukraine, the people of Nigeria and Sudan. Thanks Emise, for your reporting there and for Israel and Gaza. Keep up the good work.
Nick Eicher
Well, finally today we received a wave of appreciative mail this month about one episode in particular, Travis Kercher's long form conversation with a CCM pioneer.
John Stonestreet
Hey Matt Brown, Chief Fund, Arizona this segment on Twilight Paris was just amazing and I did not know the context of upbringing and that was so incredibly well done.
Kent Covington
Hi, I'm Lorraine from Menifee, California.
Myrna Brown
Twyla's songs are rich in theology and yet so singable. Thank you for highlighting this wonderful singer songwriter.
Paul Kingsnorth
As an aging child of the 70s Jesus revolution, I very much enjoyed listening to Travis Kirschner's interview with Twyla Paris. Hearing both the short segment and the full Weekend edition. Twilight's music has been inspiring and encouraging.
Kent Covington
To me through many years of ministry.
Nick Eicher
Many listeners have been so encouraging. About our long form interview series we've been running this fall, so we've got a few more lined up we think you'll enjoy tomorrow. A thoughtful conversation between World's Les Sillers and novelist and poet Paul Kingsnorth on his new book against the Machine, on the unmaking of humanity.
Paul Kingsnorth
We have been trying to build a world in which we are in control, often for understandable reasons, in which we can manage and control every aspect of life. And we've got to the point now where our technologies are so advanced that we're able to, or we hope or think that we're able to do things like creating super intelligences, creating artificial minds, potentially not just extending our lives, but ending death. At least this is the dream. So the story that it tells is really the attempt to replace nature with technology. Another way of looking at that, if you wanted to look at it, say through a religious lens and specifically through a Christian lens, is that it's the same story that played out in the first book of Genesis where we decide that we're going to eat the apple of the eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and, and become as gods. We're trying to be gods. And we've got to the point now where many of the people creating these technologies openly speak in those terms.
Nick Eicher
Join us tomorrow for the half hour conversation with Paul Kingsnorth. Anywhere you get our podcast.
Myrna Brown
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. If you'd like to comment on a recent segment, send us an email or a recorded message to editorng.org you can also phone it in 202-709-9595.
Nick Eicher
And that's listener feedback for November. Well, time now to name the crew who contributed to this week's programs. Jenny Ruff, David Bonson, Emma Eicher, Mary Reichardt, Lauren Canterbury, Josh Schumacher, Addy Offrens, Candice Waters, Lindsay Mast, Hunter Baker, Amy Lewis, Carl Truman, Carolina Lumeta, Kim Henderson, Cal Thomas, John Stonestreet and Colin Garbarino. Thanks also to our breaking news crew, Kent Covington, Steve Klosterman, Daniel Devine and Christina Grube. And thanks to the Twilight techs, the Moonlight Maestros, the overnight outfitters making those evening edits to serve up the program each weekday bright and early, Benj Eicher and Carl Peets. Harrison Waters is Washington producer, Kristen Flavin is features editor, Paul Butler is executive producer, and Les Sillers is editor in chief. I'm Nick Eicher.
Myrna Brown
And I'm Myrna Brown. If you enjoy this podcast, help a friend find it, too. Send a link to a favorite story or the home podcast right from your app. One click helps a friend start the day the way you do and helps make the program grow. 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, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as as God in Christ forgave you. Verse 32 of Ephesians, chapter 4. As you head into the weekend, we hope you'll gather with God's people on the Lord's Day, find a good church, be strengthened by the Word and encourage one another in Christ. And Lord willing, we'll be right back here Monday morning. Go now in grace and peace.
Podcast: The World and Everything In It
Episode: 11.21.25 Culture Friday on marriage without mission, a review of Wicked: For Good, and Listener Feedback
Date: November 21, 2025
Hosts: Myrna Brown, Nick Eicher
Featured Guest: John Stonestreet (Colson Center, Breakpoint Podcast)
Special Segments: Colin Garbarino (Wicked for Good review), Listener calls and feedback
This episode examines key cultural topics through a biblical lens, with a particular focus on contemporary confusion about the purpose of marriage, a critical review of the film "Wicked for Good," and a heartfelt listener feedback segment. The hosts and guests discuss new data on Gen Z’s attitudes about marriage, shifts in public Christian traditions in Europe due to security threats, and the mixed messages presented by modern entertainment. The episode concludes with thoughtful listener responses, reinforcing the show's commitment to field reporting and long-form, theologically grounded storytelling.
(07:00–18:30)
“We’ve lost what marriage is. We’ve lost what marriage is for. And this study, I think, just points to that... It even points to it in the church.”
“It’s good news to like marriage rather than not like marriage…part of that is just the challenges of reality.”
“There’s not a saving of the lost boys of the West outside of rebuilding the institution of marriage. If you have a broken down marriage culture, you have broken down young people.”
(14:18–18:23)
“Civilizations don’t last forever…this choice is being made. It is not important enough to maintain these traditions…this was known up until yesterday as common sense, and now it’s called something else.”
(19:41–25:09)
Reviewed by Colin Garbarino (WORLD’s Arts & Culture Editor)
“Last year’s Wicked felt like such a triumph because it was fun…this movie isn’t as good as the first one. It’s not entirely [director] Jon M. Chu’s fault. The Broadway musical’s best songs come during Act 1.”
“No one’s good. No one’s Wicked. We’re all just doing stuff, trying to survive…It starts to feel like postmodern moral relativism.”
(25:37–32:12)
“We’ve lost the plot. We’ve lost what marriage is. We’ve lost what marriage is for.”
—John Stonestreet (08:02), on why Gen Z is confused about marriage’s meaning
“If you have a broken down marriage culture, you have broken down young people, and eventually the need outgrows the ability to meet the need.”
—John Stonestreet (13:28), on marriage as foundational for individual and civilizational health
“No one’s good. No one’s Wicked. We’re all just doing stuff, trying to survive.”
—Colin Garbarino (24:08), critiquing the film’s postmodern moral relativism
“If, as a Christian, I thought God only was active in the United States, then we should let everybody come here…God is extremely active all over the world.”
—Jeb Rice (28:07), on a global Christian perspective
This episode of The World and Everything In It offers a considered examination of how foundational concepts—like marriage, tradition, and objective truth—are being reexamined or eroded in today’s culture. The hosts and guests underscore the importance of return to biblically grounded understandings, strong institutions, and a countercultural witness in both public life and personal relationships. The listener feedback affirms WORLD Radio’s impact in providing in-depth, faith-driven journalism and conversation.