← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
12.9.25 The complex framework behind military operations, AI in cyberattacks, and two unique Christmas albums
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Good morning. Today, how the Pentagon is evaluating those drug war strikes in the Caribbean. As part of its internal review, we'll break it down with a military jag.
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Also today, the machine in the the future of cyber attacks.
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It's always going to be this cat and mouse game. That's what cyber security has been for decades.
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Only with AI, the damage can happen much faster. And music critic Arsenio Ortez is back with two more Christmas picks.
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We went into the studio with the intention of making a Christmas album and churned out quite a bit of music.
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It's Tuesday, December 9th. This is the world and everything in it from Listener supported World Radio. I'm Mary Reichardt.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. Good morning.
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Time for the news. Here's Kent Covington.
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President Trump is giving farmers some $12 billion in aid to help as they struggle to sell their crops while getting hit by rising costs. The move comes after the president raised tariffs on China as part of a broader trade war.
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This relief will provide much needed certainty to farmers as they get this year's harvest to market and look ahead to next year's crops. And it will help them continue their efforts to lower food prices.
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China has since agreed to buy more U.S. soybeans, but sales so far have been slow. Most farmers have backed Trump politically, but some of the industry have voiced concerns over tariff policies. Trump, however, says tariffs will help pay for the new program. Agriculture Secretary Brook Rawlins said farmers will get the money by the end of February. The U.S. supreme Court heard arguments Monday in a major case testing how much power a president has to fire leaders of independent federal agencies. The dispute centers on President Trump's removal of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause, a move that challenges a 90 year old precedent limiting whether presidents can oust agency board members. Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the administration's position could upend longstanding checks on presidential authority.
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If you take away a half of this bargain, you end up with just massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president. And it's really hard to affect both sides of this bargain because it's already been done.
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Justice Brett Kavanaugh pressed Solicitor General Dean John Sauer on whether the ruling could also threaten the independence of the Federal Reserve.
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The other side says that your position.
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Would undermine the independence of the Federal.
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Reserve, and they have concerns about that.
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And I share those concerns. So how would you distinguish the Federal.
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Reserve from agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission?
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We recognize and acknowledge what this court.
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Said in the Wilcox Harris state opinion, which is that the Federal Reserve is a quasi private, uniquely structured NDC that.
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Follows a distinct historical tradition.
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The court's conservative majority seemed to signal strong support for the administration's view over the objections from the three liberal justices. In the Middle East, Israel is facing renewed criticism after the UN's Palestinian aid agency says it was raided by Israeli troops. The agency, known as unrwa, says Israeli troops broke into its East Jerusalem compound. UN spokesman Stefan Dejarik says Israeli troops with trucks and forklifts cut communications to the compound while seizing furniture and electronics.
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The Secretary General strongly condemns the unauthorized.
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Entry into the United Nations Sheikh Jarrah compound held by unrwa, located in occupied.
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East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities.
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But Israel has long accused the organization of having ties to terrorism. Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bhadrazhin UNWRA has.
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Proven its enormous failures and it's time for it to be dismantled and it's time for the world to recognize that, including journalists as well.
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Meanwhile, Bedrosian says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the United States just days after Christmas.
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I can share with you that the prime minister will meet with President Trump on Monday, December 29th. They will discuss the future step, steps and phases and the international stabilization force of the ceasefire plan that US brokered.
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Agreement calls for an international governing body in the Gaza Strip, which is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. In Washington on Monday, US and Australian officials reaffirmed their security partnership amid rising tensions in the Indo Pacific. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth sat down with their Australian counterparts. The Taco for regional security and their partnership under Aukus that is short for the Australia UK US security pact, Exith told reporters.
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As we move, as was mentioned, full steam ahead on Aukus. We applaud Australia's upcoming delivery of an additional 1 billion to help expand US.
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Submarine production capacity, secretary Rubio said. They also talked about supply chains for critical minerals. Those minerals are key for high tech manufacturing, both commercial and military, and Beijing controls much of the world's supply.
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We have to have critical mineral supplies.
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And supply chains that are reliable and.
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That are diverse and not overly invested in one place where they can be used as leverage against us or our partners of the world.
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals deal with the US during a recent visit to the White House.
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Paramount has launched a hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, challenging the earlier offer that Warner leaders accepted from Netflix. World's Benjamin Icker reports Paramount is appealing.
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Directly to shareholders with a larger all cash offer worth about $108 billion when debt is included. And unlike Netflix, Paramount wants to buy the entire company, including Warner's cable network division. The company says it went hostile after Warner management didn't meaningfully respond to earlier proposals. Paramount argues its bid offers more cash and may face fewer regulatory hurdles. Critics of the Netflix proposal warn the merger could raise competition concerns across streaming and theatrical markets, but either deal would face extensive antitrust review before moving forward. For World I'm Benjamin Eicher Homeland Security.
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Secretary Kristi Noem delivered bonus checks to a number of TSA employees in Tampa on Monday. She said it was a way of thanking them for coming into work during a recent record setting six week government shutdown.
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I'm so proud of them and I'm proud of everyone in leadership who inspired them to continue to do their jobs and to do them well.
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Because of that hard work, I'm here.
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To present each of them that are behind me and many, many more will also receive the $10,000 bonus checks.
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She said the checks went to TSA employees nominated by their supervisors for going above and beyond during the shutdown. Noem praised all TSA employees who she said helped keep Americans safe even while temporarily not receiving their paychecks.
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I'm Kent Cuffington. And straight ahead, the legal arguments surrounding the military action against cartel drug boats. Plus more musical selections for Christmas from Arsenio Artesa. This is the World and Everything in It.
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Today is Tuesday 9th December. This is World Radio and we're so glad to have you along today. Good morning. I'm Mary Reichardt.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. First up on the World and Everything In It, Legal Counsel and Lethal Force. National security committees and Congress got a closed door briefing with top military officials last week as critics of US Airstrikes on Venezuelan drug boats continue asking questions.
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And top of the heap, did the US Military have legal standing to launch a second strike on remnants of a vessel with survivors hanging on? On Saturday, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth answered questions about whether his department would release video of the strikes.
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So Mr. Secretary, you will be releasing that full video. We are reviewing it right now. Is that a yes or no?
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Hegseth went on to say the departmental review was to make sure releasing it does not expose classified methods or military secrets. Joining us now is retired Colonel Greg Thompson. He served the US Air Force on the JAG Corps. He's currently professor of criminal justice and national security at Cedarville University.
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Colonel, good morning.
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Good morning. It's great to be with you. Thank you for having me.
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Well, let's start with a process question. My understanding is that attacks like these in the Caribbean don't happen without strict legal oversight. So how involved are lawyers and legal analysts in military decisions with these types of missions?
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Very involved. And one thing I could say is I've had the opportunity throughout my career to give advice on military strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the way this is being reported as if one person in this case, either Secretary Hegseth or Admiral Bradley is making a decision in a vacuum, I would be shocked. Having been in the military, all decisions are extremely well staffed, looked at by echelons of command lawyers and people to include. What I would expect in a very first strike like this September 2nd to have a very robust concept of operations detailed. That would have gone all the way up to the Secretary of Defense identifying what the proposed plan of action, where the force is going to come from, what ammunition is going to be used, where do we expect based on intelligence these boats are going to come from? And I will add based on my experience, I will also be surprised if there wasn't some consideration of a restrike or re attack.
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Well, we will follow up with some of those points. But a lot of the media coverage on that second strike back in September on the same target makes it sound like the US military specifically targeted the survivors. There are anonymous allegations that Secretary Hegseth said kill them all, but that has been contradicted by other people in the same room. They say those reports are false. So what are we missing here?
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Well, I start off with a Christian perspective which is that we need to two or more witnesses before we start accusing people of being war criminals. So that was entirely concerning. When I saw the heard about the Washington Post report with two anonymous sources, I was concerned from that perspective. Now as time has gone on, we've discovered that that was probably inaccurate.
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Well, let's talk about the second strike. Specifically just straight up ask you is it legal to hit the same target again if there are survivors first, when.
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We'Re talking about a restrike, we're going to be looking at a couple things from a legal perspective. One is what is the identified target in this case? I have read that those three things have been identified. It was the ship, the narcotics on the ship and the narco terrorists on the ship of which there are initially 11. Now we haven't seen the video or the footage and this is why we need to have a full inquiry and go through detail minute by Minute review, but it appears that the boat was at least damaged or disabled in some way. So an assessment would have to be made. If the target and the mission is completed, I think that's accurate. Having said that, if there are individuals who are now defenseless on the vessel, we're going to have to look at an issue of proportionality, and that is we're not going to kill innocent defenseless people unless the military objective is great enough to warrant it. Collateral damage will only be accepted if it's proportional here. I think that might be a hard argument, but again, I'm not in a position to say it is or isn't. The second issue is going to be whether or not these individuals are engaged in the fight because they're in their own right, are a target. As we mentioned, they're not a target if they're helpless under international law. If they're out of the fight, they may not be targeted. And that's really what we're talking about here. But if they're part of the fight. So for example, in Afghanistan, it wouldn't be unusual. Maybe someone's able to call in reinforcements or has the ability to, to still do other things and engage in harming our forces. They're still obviously engaged in the fight and we can target them. I would say also the video is not going to be enough for me as a lawyer because it's, as you know, Mary, the facts and circumstances are critical and there's facts and circumstances that just can't be in that video. Where are the other forces? How far off of the coast is this vessel? Where are US Personnel in relation? What is our intelligence on what these narco traffickers are likely to do if they're in the water? All of those things would be really important to reaching this decision. The important thing is that we have a full investigation in Congress.
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Well, Colonel, before we go, can you think of any aspect of the story we may be missing?
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I've given advice on many strikes and I've seen many strikes. War is ugly. People die when we engage our military forces. And it's going to be hard to watch no matter what the final conclusion is. I think this is a situation, my opinion, that would be advisable to allow our representatives to do their job for their country along with military members. Watch this video in thorough review and be able to make decisions and, and if further action is needed. Of course, anyone who needs to see it should have a view, only opportunity to see it.
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Retired U.S. air Force Colonel Greg Thompson, thanks so much for your time this morning. I really appreciate it.
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Absolutely. Thank you, Mary.
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Coming up next on the World and everything in it, the next frontier of the cyber attack. Last month, AI developer Anthropic said it detected the first known cyber espionage campaign orchestrated by AI. Here is World Radio executive producer Paul Butler.
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Movies tend to portray computer hacking like a shadowy figure in a black hoodie taps a few code words into a computer and within moments, the criminal accesses the secret files.
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But in reality, hacking is a very slow and just a trial and error process. So you kind of like knock on multiple doors, see what's open, what you can crack open to get further into a system.
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Victor Benjamin is an assistant professor at Arizona State University's Department of Information Systems. He says that trial and error work has gotten easier as artificial intelligence allows hackers to automate the manual work of hacking and scale up their attacks. Using large language models, or LLMs, hackers can quickly research targets and spot an organization's security gaps.
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If you find something that may be a vulnerability, like it's running outdated server side software or something, then you can use an LLM further to write code to target that vulnerability. So the LLM and how the attackers used it, it basically is a kind of like a partner in the whole cyber attack chain.
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Software company Anthropic believes that China used its Claude tool to attack about 30American targets. Hackers overrode the software security features, a process known as jailbreaking. They told the chatbot that they belonged to a cybersecurity firm and used Claude to research the intended targets. So CLAUDE organized the information and created malware to take advantage of the weak points in each target's systems. While hackers successfully compromised only a handful of victims, Benjamin says the attacks mark a troubling technological milestone.
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So this has been a long threat against the US what we're finding is that these attack groups are using Western technology now to help further scale and automate their attacks against Western systems. I think that's the part where it's like, okay, now we have solid proof. Other nation states are actually doing this against us.
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But the China angle is only one troubling aspect of the report. Anthropic described the cyber attacks as being almost fully autonomous. AI carried out up to 90% of the cyber attacks. Each hacking campaign only needed about six human prompts. Anthropic detected the attacks in September and notified the affected companies. They also hardened their own security measures. Artificial intelligence may be sophisticated, but it isn't at the level yet of carrying out attacks without human prompts. Along the way. Amar Singh is CEO of security consulting firm Cyber Management Alliance. He gives an example of what AI just isn't quite ready to do.
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Go and hack this bank and withdraw 1 million, full stop. And AI will do everything that it takes, think and rethink and rethink and rethink until it succeeds and withdraws 1 million and comes back to you and gives you that million. I think the good news is we're not there yet.
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He adds that humans will likely always be needed to give that initial hacking command. But Victor Benjamin believes that it won't be long before AI can do the rest of the work without prompts.
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So the whole concept of prompt engineering will probably go away in the near future. You know, you won't have to manipulate the LLM to give you the output you're seeking for it's going to better understand the nature of your request. So it will require less prompting in the future. As far as being completely autonomous, I don't, I don't see why not.
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More intuitive cyber attacks are concerning because the world is becoming what Benjamin calls cyber physical. Computers have become integrated into just about everything from cars to dishwashers, meaning everyday tools are suddenly vulnerable to cyber attacks.
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These security issues aren't just attacking a server and like stealing your credit card. Now they can attack, you know, autonomous vehicles or traffic lights and cause like chaos in the real world. Right.
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Benjamin thinks it's too late to scale back reliance on artificial intelligence. So instead he recommends fighting fire with fire.
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Here's what I would say. Just like AI is being used to attack systems, we can have AI based defenders. So I think at some point cybersecurity will become less managed by humans and more managed just directly by AI. You know, it's always going to be this cat and mouse game. That's what cybersecurity has been for decades. There's always new defenses, the attackers circumvent them and then back and forth. AI is kind of just a new frontier of it for world.
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I'm Paul Butler. Becca Bernhardt wrote and reported the story.
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Additional additional support comes from the Longshore, a faith based audio drama that brings history to life. Iwitnesspod.com that's the letter I witnesspod.com from Ridge Haven camp in North Carolina and Iowa. Winter camp starts December 29th. Registration open@ridgehaven.org and from his words about Abiding in you A Bible memorization podcast designed for truck drivers. His words abiding in you on all podcast apps.
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More than 5,000 cheeses went head to head this month at the World Cheese Awards in Switzerland. Judges say the first test was not flavor, it was smell. The culprit was a tiny microbe called Brevibacterium linens. It's famous for two things. One for making world class cheese and two, for making feet smell so memorable.
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This was one of my bucket list.
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Ambitions to be judging at the World Cheese Awards. I'm just pinching myself.
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I can't believe it's real.
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Oh, it's real. And the judges needed real courage to push through. One said a certain entry opened like a teenager's gym bag, but the taste was the payoff. Call it the bee linens paradox. The stinkier the start, the better the finish. This year's first place finisher was a Swiss Gruyere. So just in case you ever doubt the power of humble bacteria, do remember this in the cheese world, there is a limit to what the nose knows. It's the world and everything in it.
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Today is Tuesday, December 9th. Thank you for turning to watch World Radio to help start your day. Good morning, I'm Mary Reichard.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. Just a quick reminder here about World Watch, our 10 minute daily video news for students. Every daily episode is packed with thoughtful, fact based reporting that helps kids to build discernment and maybe even brightens their outlook on the world. And right now, you can try World Watch for free for 90 days. If you never tried it before, just visit Worldwatch News. Look for that purple button that says get 90 days for free. Find that and click that. That's Worldwatch News 10 minutes. We think the whole family will agree on.
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A
All right, coming next on the World and Everything in it. Part two of 2025 Christmas Albums to Season youn Holidays. And World's Arsenio Orteza is back with two Christmas albums you've probably not heard, but might end up loving.
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The lutenist Ron Andrico and his wife, the mezzo soprano Donna Stewart, met in the early 2000s in a small choir that sang for a weekly Latin mass in Cleveland, Ohio. Since then, under the name Minyarda, they've released 19 albums of early music, 20 if you count Stewart's stunning 2022 a cappella solo disc, Veni Sancte Spiritus, Gregorian chant, hymns. And.
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Of those recordings, over a third comprise the kind of Renaissance era sacred music in which the couple is steeped. So far this year, they've released one album, but will soon release another. The album Christe Polyphonic Motets for Lute came out in June. It's a program of 10 selections from the 15th and 16th centuries. And among other things, it's a fitting introduction to the Minyarda sound.
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The duo's second 2025 release, called In Dolce Ancient Music for Christmastide, comes out on December 18th. As its subtitle makes clear, it's an album of Christmas music. What its subtitle doesn't make clear is that Christe Redemptor, the Minyarda album that came out in June, was an album of Christmas music, too. I asked the couple where they got the idea to do what no recording artist has ever done, release two Christmas albums in the same year.
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We went into the studio with the intention of making a Christmas album, and we churned out quite a bit of music. And we. We got in touch with Edgardo, our producer, the owner of the label, and he said, this is too much music. And he said, why don't we just break them into two albums? And, you know, that is sort of like a good commercial fix for the idea that we have too much music.
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Edgardo is Edgardo Vertensian, the founder of Prima Classic, the label for whom Minyarda has been recording for the past two years. Before entering the classical music scene, Vertinesian spent a quarter of a century handling live sound for the likes of Luciano Pavarotti, Madonna, the Killers, the who, Lollapalooza and South by Southwest. In other words, he knows a good thing when he hears it.
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The real challenge was to figure out.
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What to do when the first Christmas album came out in March, you know, during Lent. So that was a bit of a challenge to spin, but it's done well. So, you know, Edgardo knows what he's doing.
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The way we approach it was Christmas all year long.
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Yeah.
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And if Vertinesian's decision to divide Minarda's latest Christmas recordings into two albums is a good commercial fix, it makes aesthetic sense as well. Andrico and Stewart placed the 5th and 16th century Latin motets onto Christe Redemptor and devoted Indulce Ubilo to more familiar Christmas melodies.
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We had a lot of Latin motets that we love to perform, but we wanted to couch them in more familiar Christmas songs or Christmas carols, so it wouldn't be all one intense experience of, you know, all this polyphony that's actually quite engaging, but too much of anything is a little. A little wearing. So we wanted to mix it up a bit.
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For listeners who'd like to mix it up even more this year, there's a noteworthy new Christmas album that's not only not by Miniarda, but that's also about as far from the Minyarda sound as possible. Its Evergreen Melody the Christmas Recordings the latest release by the synth pop maestro and evangelical Free Church of America pastor Ronnie Martin.
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Evergreen Melody contains neither Latin polyphonic motets nor familiar Christmas songs, but what it does contain is eight original Christmas themed compositions featuring Martin's trademark bouncy pop textures.
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That's the title cut and it's representative of the album as a whole. The lyrics aren't theologically oriented. Rather, they focus on the goodwill toward men component of the holiday, with an emphasis on goodwill among friends and family who depend on Christmas to rekindle their mutual affection. There's an emphasis on letting nostalgia put one in the Christmas mood. One song is even called Christmas Nostalgia.
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All of winter seems to pass.
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I.
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Can hear you saying dismay Silver pine cones We've a tapestry in the scenes of our holiday I pause and I meet your eyes don't forget Christmas time.
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And this song, the Sound of Snowflakes, refers to listening to Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. When I spoke to Martin earlier than this year, I asked him how he manages to write and record so much music in addition to being an author and full time pastor.
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Making music is just kind of part of my routine and so yeah, it kind of fits itself kind of in the mix of everything else I do and it sort of has to at this stage of life, but it really is something that's constantly kind of pouring out on me.
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I I don't watch sports.
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I'm not a handyman, so I do no home projects.
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I only pay people to do those things.
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So I, I think I may have.
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Just mentioned 30 hours a week right there that most people spend doing those types of things.
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30 hours per week times 52 weeks equals 1560 hours or 65 days per year. Martin's 2025 musical output is a clear example of how much one can accomplish when he sets out to redeem the time.
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I'm arsenio orteza.
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Good morning. This is the world and everything in it. From listener support welcome to Supported World Radio. I'm Nick Eicher.
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And I'm Mary Reichard. Millions of Americans are not healthy. About 3 in 4American adults are overweight or obese. For children, the numbers aren't much better. And almost half of all Americans have one or more preventable chronic diseases, many related to what people eat and how often they eat it.
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World Opinions contributor Seth Trout says it's a warning call we need to heed. But, he argues, the rules real battle is not on the plate. It's in the heart.
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Recently I received this message from a member of my when are you going to teach on gluttony? You couldn't pay me to have sex out of marriage or steal, but I'll eat a bag of chips and a box of cookies at the same time in my living room watching tv. The guilt. It's horrible. I appreciate her self awareness, honesty and courage. She's not alone, especially during this holiday season. It raises the perennial question, what are the eating patterns that represent such a problem? Gluttony is thankless, mindless overeating. It's rooted in comfort seeking and incubated in entitlement. It's acting as though every bite of food is salvific. Gluttony is the standard American diet high carbs, high fat accompanied by low fiber and low protein. Can someone gluttonously eat broccoli and beef? Unlikely, as the fiber and protein naturally satiate. Yet ultra processed foods, mechanistically stripped of their fiber and protein in order to make them more immediately gratifying and addicting, serve as the foundation for the way many Americans eat government food. Agricultural and pharmaceutical subsidies incentivize unhealthy eating patterns in multiple directions. Things like underwriting weight loss drugs and allowing $23 billion in SNAP benefits to be spent on sugary snack desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar. Proverbs 28:7 says a companion of Glutton's shames his father.
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Why?
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The glutton doesn't delay gratification. His God is literally his belly. He's unwilling to steward the good gifts of his body and food. Unable to stop scratching the itch, he's on the trajectory of prematurely ending his life. So how is gluttony different from feasting? To begin with, feasting is more than just overeating. It's indulgence with a conscious purpose. Giving thanks if entitlement is the soil in which gluttony grows, gratitude is the environment in which feasting flourishes. We raise our glasses to the king. We give honor where honor is due. We celebrate victories and appreciate friends and family. When we feast, there are toasts, speeches, prayers, and shared stories. History is remembered, blessings are counted, and hope is spread like too much butter on warm toast. If you add up all the feast days that were prescribed in the Old Testament, it accounted for about 19% of the annual calendar. It wasn't mindless indulgence. It was a time of focused remembering the works of the Lord and reminding one another of his promises. Surprisingly, proper feasting, not just fasting, is the antidote America needs to address its gluttony problem. The age of cynicism has begotten the age of gluttony. When you lack thankfulness and embrace spirits of negativity, you start to feel entitled to foolish pleasure seeking. After all, who cares? Likewise, the spirit of nihilism begets gluttony. If there's no life after death, then your only hope is to maximize your return on every moment, one morsel of pleasure after another. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. It's harder than ever to be mentally and physically fit. Billions of dollars are invested every month to make you envious, intense, entitled, engorged and enraged. America needs the holiday feasts now more than ever. So plan a feast, attend her host, make speeches, sing a hymn, drink to the king and wear your stretchy pants. Feast in rebellious resistance to gluttonous, entitled and cynical culture. I'm reminded of the dying words of the Dwarf King, filled with regret. Thorin near the end of the book the Hobbit. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. The psalmist put it this give thanks to the Lord of lords for his steadfast love endures forever to him who alone does great wonders. I'm Seth Trout.
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Tomorrow, more on the war on drugs and rules of engagement with Hunter Baker on Washington Wednesday. Also world tour and an interview with apologist and former journalist Lee Strobel. That and more tomorrow. I'm Mary Reichardt.
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And I'm Nick Eicher. The world and everything in it comes to you from World Radio. World's mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates and inspires. The Bible says, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my laws into their minds and write them them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Verse 10 of Hebrews, chapter 8. Go now in grace and peace.