← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
5.27.26 Ken Paxton’s landslide, Colombia’s presidential election, and a classical school for students with special needs
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- [00:06]
Lindsay Mast
Good morning. A Texas tussle determines who will take on James Tallarico for a seat in the Senate tonight.
- [00:13]
Kent Covington
We just made history.
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Nick Iger
That's ahead today on Washington Wednesday. Also today, world tour on presidential elections in Columbia. Later, how one mom started a school for her daughter and for other students who have special needs.
- [00:28]
Maggie Black
We can't send her to a school with 2,000 students just to kind of like hope she does okay and hope she catches truth.
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Nick Iger
And world commentator Daniel sir responds to Pope Leo's statement on AI.
- [00:47]
Lindsay Mast
It's Wednesday, May 27th. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Lindsay Mast.
- [00:54]
Nick Iger
And I'm Nick Iger. Good morning.
- [00:58]
Lindsay Mast
Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.
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Kent Covington
A chemical tank exploded at a paper mill in southwest Washington state Tuesday, killing multiple workers and injuring at least 10. The 80,000 gallon tank held a corrosive chemical brew used to break down wood for paper. Crews are still in the area and the cause is still unknown. Longview Fire Battalion Chief Mike Gorsuch called it a mass casualty scene. There were multiple critical injuries and patients
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Nick Iger
were transported to hospitals in Longview and
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Hunter Baker
throughout the Vancouver, Portland area.
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Kent Covington
Meantime, in Southern California, evacuations are easing near a chemical tank at an aerospace plant that nearly exploded last week. Some 16,000 residents are still waiting for the all clear to return home, down from about 50,000 evacuees. A small crack over the weekend let pressure out and averted a catastrophic blast. NASA is building a permanent moon base and it is investing big into moon buggies and aerospace drones. The space agency just handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to four U.S. companies. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman we are working
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Jared Isaacman
alongside our lunar lander providers, preparing for Artemis 3 crew announcement and getting ready to begin stacking Artemis 3 this summer with a target launch in mid-2027.
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Kent Covington
The Jeff Bezos founded company Blue Origin will build the landers. Astrolabe and Lunar Outpost will build the moon buggies. And Firefly Aerospace will fly drones to the surface. All of it has to arrive at the moon's south pole before the first Artemis astronauts land. Isaacman added that the mission will inspire a new generation of Americans.
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Jared Isaacman
It means people are looking up again, believing in big things again and paying attention as America returns to the moon again and this time to stay, he said.
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Kent Covington
Artemis 3 astronauts will begin landing on the moon as soon as 2028. Another Republican senator opposed by President Trump is out. Texans voting in a U.S. senate primary runoff on Tuesday and an incumbent senator John Cornyn, his walking papers. He will leave Congress In January, after four terms in the upper chamber, Trump had thrown his support behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an expensive drawn out race. Paxton remarked ahead of the vote.
- [03:12]
Hunter Baker
With the endorsement, it becomes a lot
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Nick Iger
clearer that I'm going to be the
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Hunter Baker
nominee and we wanted to focus on
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Kent Covington
the positive and then focus on our next job. And that job will be to defeat Democratic nominee James Talarico. Before endorsing Paxton, Trump had criticized Senator Cornyn as, in his words, very disloyal to me. Cornyn's defeat comes 10 days after another GOP incumbent senator opposed by Trump, Bill Cassidy, lost his primary election in Louisiana. Republicans face new setbacks to drawing new congressional maps ahead of midterm elections. World's Harrison Waters has more.
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Harrison Waters
A district court in Alabama temporarily blocked the state's 2023 house map on Tuesday. This came after the Supreme Court gave Alabama the green light to use that map instead of one drawn by the lower court. While the state held its primaries last week, it plans to hold special congressional elections in August. The new court order requires Alabama to use the revised map unless lawmakers draw a new one. Meanwhile, South Carolina's state Senate punted on a vote to pass a new election map. There, Republican State Senator Richard Cash explained why he changed his vote to block the bill on Tuesday.
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Kent Covington
South Carolina citizens are going to the
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Hunter Baker
polls today and neither my conscience nor
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Kent Covington
my common sense will allow me to
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Nick Iger
stop an election that is already underway.
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Harrison Waters
A motion to end debate and bring the bill to a vote failed. Then 14 Republicans joined all Democrats in a vote to continue the bill and go on recession. Lawmakers are set to return one day after the June 9 primary. Reporting for World, I'm Harrison Waters.
- [04:50]
Kent Covington
In Pakistan, at least 47 people are now confirmed dead after a suicide bomber struck a train this week. Pakistani security forces raided the suicide bomber's family home and detained several of his relatives. His vehicle bomb went off next to a shuttle train carrying Pakistani security personnel and their families. Two train cars overturned and caught fire. Nearly 100 more people were wounded. A separatist group in the Balochistan province known as the Balochistan Liberation army claimed responsibility. The group has been fighting for the province's independence from Pakistan for years. I'm Kent Covington and coming up, can right wing presidential candidates send Colombia in a different direction? Plus a classical school for kids with special needs. This is the World and Everything in It.
- [06:00]
Lindsay Mast
It's Wednesday, 27th May. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the World and Everything in It. Good morning. I'm Lindsay Mad.
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Nick Iger
And I'm Nick Iker. First up on the world and everything in it. Washington, Wednesday. Well, the dust is beginning to settle this morning after one of the biggest Republican primary upsets in years. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton crushed four term Senator John Cornyn in last night's Senate runoff. He won by a margin so large that the race was effectively over almost as soon as the polls closed.
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Lindsay Mast
Yeah, Cornyn had the backing of Senate Republicans, enormous fundraising support, and a voting record closely aligned with President Trump. None of it mattered. Republican voters overwhelmingly sided with Paxton, the scandal scarred but combative Attorney general whom Trump endorsed just days before the election.
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Nick Iger
Joining us now, political scientist Hunter Baker. Good morning, Hunter.
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Hunter Baker
Good morning.
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Nick Iger
Well, now we've had a little bit of time to absorb this and think about it. What does the result actually say about the Republican Party? I mean, this was not a squeaker, it wasn't a protest vote. Republican primary voters in Texas. Texas made a very emphatic choice, did they not?
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Hunter Baker
We know that before the runoff in the original primary that the two were basically neck and neck with Cornyn having a very slight edge. And then post Trump endorsement, we have Paxton absolutely blowing Cornyn away. And that's with John Cornyn having been completely unbeaten in the past, easily winning Texas on his previous campaigns. So you can only conclude, yes, it is Trump's party. Republican voters at least are listening to Trump. You know, there was no assertion of independence. We like our senator, we like our guy. No, they listened to what Donald Trump said and they did it. And, you know, the important thing to say here is that historically, and I looked into this question, I thought to myself, has any sitting American president actively campaigned against a senator of his own party? And the answer is basically no, all the way back to fdr.
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Nick Iger
Wow.
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Hunter Baker
FDR campaigned against some of the conservative Democrat senators who were opposed to the New Deal. And generally speaking, he was unsuccessful in unseating any of them. Trump, on the other hand, has done that. But that gives you a sense, right? I mean, FDR was the guy who thought that he was so popular and so strong that he could campaign against his own sitting senators. And now we've had Trump do it, and he's taken out two of those senators, Cassidy and now Cornyn. So that tells you something. Yes, it's Trump's party. Now what my question is, what is the value in making it Trump's party when he's in his second term and approaching the midpoint of the second term? I'm not sure how that cashes out where you're the king, and you're nearly 80 years old.
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Lindsay Mast
Well, speaking of cash, Cornyn's closing argument was essentially electability, that Paxton could actually put a Texas Senate seat into play against Democrat James Tallarico. Obviously, that doesn't carry much weight, but from a national standpoint, the money it's going to cost to win a seat that would be a cakewalk draws GOP resources from elsewhere. Assuming Paxton holds the seat for the GOP and they lose elsewhere, does the finger pointing go to Texas?
- [09:46]
Hunter Baker
It'll be part of the post mortem now. I just don't know what happens. I mean, yes, I think that Cornyn would have won easily because Cornyn gets the standard Republican voter, right? Paxton maybe loses some of those folks, Paxton loses some of those anti Trump Republicans. And so, yes, that makes the task harder. But then again, here's the other thing. I mean, the Republicans have not done didn't do very well in the midterm during Trump's first term. And I think the logic there was that he's not on the ballot, and Republicans don't turn out as well if he's not on the ballot. Well, in this case in Texas, Trump is not on the ballot, but he has done the next best thing, right? He has put his hand on Paxton and said, this is my guy. So maybe he gets better turnout. It's all about that kind of, do you want the broadest electorate, or do you want the intensity of the electorate? And, you know, Trump is putting his bet on intensity.
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Nick Iger
So Paxton's supporters seem almost immunized against scandal. We had indictments, impeachment, allegations of infidelity. It all appears priced in. What does that say about how Republican voters are evaluating candidates?
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Hunter Baker
I think there's two different things going on. First of all, American politics is binary. And I've always thought that it was unfair, the degree to which some people judge Americans based on their voting, you know, to say that they're hypocritical for voting for a Democrat who's badly behaved or a Republican who's badly behaved. Well, what's their choice? Their choice is to vote for somebody of the other party with whom they totally do not agree. And so that's the situation. We have a binary political system. We're not like Germany, where you have, like, five or six choices and the top two or three choices can make a coalition. So you just have to go with A or B. And that's why we have these kind of results in US Politics.
- [11:51]
Lindsay Mast
I want to talk about James Talarico. He's Fascinating, because Democrats are trying to present him not as a secular progressive firebrand, but as a religiously fluent, culturally moderate figure. Is that a winning message for Democrats in red states?
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Hunter Baker
Of course. I mean, that's the way you have to go with it, right? I mean, a Democrat has not won in the state for a very long time. It was the period before George W. Bush began his dominance in Texas when you had Democrats who could regularly get elected statewide. That time is over. But the idea is always that you can find the right year, probably not a presidential year, probably a midterm year where you can pick off the state and change the balance in the Senate. And you know, the other thing is, is that maybe you can help on some of those down ticket races. So, for example, when Beto O' Rourke came within, I don't know, probably less than two points of beating Ted Cruz in 2018, he lost. The Texas Senate seats remain strongly in Republican hands, but he probably shifted the balance in some of those down ballot races in favor of the Democrats. So even if Talarico weren't to win, if they can position him to the point where he comes anywhere close, he may be able to help the Democrats in some of those other races.
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Nick Iger
Hunter moving on past Texas, even though that's a huge story. 3. Voting rights and redistricting fights erupted across the south yesterday, just weeks after the Supreme Court sharply limited the use of race in congressional mapmaking. And the reaction from the lower courts and state officials has been anything but uniform. So after the Supreme Court appeared to say pretty clearly that race based redistricting has constitutional limits, why do we still see lower courts and in some cases political systems themselves, acting as though the old Voting Rights act framework is still largely in place.
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Hunter Baker
I think that a lot of people took those old rules as sort of the permanent state of affairs for the American republic. You know, that the Southern states would hence, henceforth be supervised and managed in this fashion, where sort of the remedy or the correction for past misdeeds which were substantial, we all know, has been to try to carve out these special majority black districts. And we should be clear we're talking about majority black districts. We don't carve out majority Hispanic districts. We don't carve out majority Asian districts or majority Jewish districts. It's this particular thing and it's a response to sort of the Jim Crow era in the South. But the question is, does that go on forever? Does it even make sense? You're talking about African Americans who constitute 13, 14% of the American population. I think a lot of people don't realize that. I think a lot of people think that that number is much larger, 13, 14% now, a larger percentage in the South. But it just doesn't make sense that you're going to do that forever. And let me give you a very good reason why. Look at South Carolina. South Carolina was the southern state that was perhaps most eager to go to war with the north back in the 19th century. South Carolina was the state that had Strom Thurmond as a dominant politician and who was the Dixiecrat candidate for president at one time. That same state now has Senator Tim Scott, African American elected statewide and in zero danger of being knocked out of office. So I'm not sure you need to draw special districts in that case.
- [15:58]
Jared Isaacman
Right.
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Nick Iger
And just very quickly before we leave this issue, I would ask, do you think this is really a fight over race at this point or increasingly a fight over partisan power that both sides now frame in racial terms Real quickly?
- [16:15]
Hunter Baker
I do think it is mainly about power. I don't think that what we're really fighting about is race here. The Democrats recognize that they have had an advantage in the south for this reason. We know that in Democrat dominated states there are a number of states that have zero Republican congressmen. And this is an attempt for the Democrats to kind of make sure that they hold on to those one or two seats that they have in some of those Southern states.
- [16:39]
Lindsay Mast
Well, Hunter Baker is a regular World Opinions contributor, our regular Washington Wednesday guest and provost at North Greenville University. Hunter, thank you so much.
- [16:48]
Hunter Baker
Thank you.
- [16:55]
Kent Covington
Additional support comes From Water's Edge, today's investment, tomorrow's thriving churches 3.25% APY on demand watersedge.com invest from Pensacola Theological Seminary
- [17:12]
Nick Iger
preparing students to preach God's word.
- [17:15]
Kent Covington
Go PCCI edustartseminary and from St. Dunstan's,
- [17:22]
Nick Iger
inviting young men into the building arts
- [17:25]
Hunter Baker
and the adventure of holiness on a Blue Ridge Mountain farm.
- [17:29]
Nick Iger
St. Dunstan's Academy.
- [17:49]
Lindsay Mast
Coming up next on THE WORLD AND Everything in IT World tour, Colombia votes for a new president next Sunday, and the outcome of the race could reshape the country's direction after four years under the nation's first left wing president, Gustavo Petro. Voters are weighing questions of crime, security and the country's relationship with the United States. World's Emma Eicher has the story.
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Emma Eicher
The presidential election comes as Colombia grapples with high crime, political violence and government corruption in the May 31 election. Twelve candidates are running with platforms ranging across the political spectrum. But the top candidates from the radical left and right lead the polls.
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Miguel Silva
The center is disappearing.
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Emma Eicher
Miguel Silva is a political consultant and analyst in Bogota, Colombia.
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Miguel Silva
There are two very good candidates from the center, but they just, they were crushed by the forces of the extremes.
- [18:41]
Emma Eicher
For a candidate to win the first round, they must receive the majority popular vote. If there's no clear majority, the two candidates with the highest totals will proceed to a runoff. Three candidates currently have a shot at winning the first round. Ivan Cepeda is one of them.
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Miguel Silva
He is very ideological, very radical, and the continuation of what has been this government.
- [19:04]
Emma Eicher
Cepeda is a popular left wing senator and orthodox Marxist. He's widely considered an ideological successor to current President Gustavo Petro.
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Miguel Silva
All they want is to, you know, create a bigger state and a bigger state and a bigger state and disappear the private sector.
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Emma Eicher
Cepeda's two challengers are Abelardo de la Esprilla, a far right defense lawyer, and center right wing senator Paloma Valencia. Their platforms focus on reversing many of Petro's reforms and strengthening ties with other nations.
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Miguel Silva
So it's very hard to tell who has the lead between those two. It's been a fascinating campaign in any case because they are battling for the vote of the right.
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Emma Eicher
Polling shows that Cepeda holds an advantage over the two right wing hopefuls with sizable support within a voting base who wants him to uphold Petro's policies?
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Miguel Silva
He's gonna get 35% of the vote, probably a couple more points, and then the question is who's gonna be against him in June.
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Emma Eicher
Public safety, armed groups and cartel violence are major issues in the election. Some analysts say recent attacks against civilians and military bases, largely in southwestern Colombia, may sway voters to the right. Gleo Des Gonzalez is a political analyst for the International Crisis Group.
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Gleo Des Gonzalez
There was in late April more than a dozen of attacks against security forces and civilians.
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Emma Eicher
Both of the right wing candidates hold similar views on tighter security measures and stronger action against these insurgent and criminal groups. However, left wing Cepeda supports negotiations under the country's current security policy called total peace. Colombia previously used police or military teams to physically destroy crops of coca leaf, the plant used to make cocaine. Petro's government abandoned that tactic, opting for a more permissive approach. In the first year of Petro's presidency, the United nations estimated that Colombia's potential cocaine production increased by 53%. Still, it's unclear whether that's a direct result of a more lenient strategy.
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Gleo Des Gonzalez
The number of criminal groups have grown in the past four years and have expanded their grip on local communities through different types of mechanisms. Extortion, recruitment and kidnapping.
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Emma Eicher
The election has sparked political violence from these growing criminal groups. Right wing Senator Miguel Uribe, a potential presidential candidate, was assassinated last year after repeated attempts on his life.
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Gleo Des Gonzalez
So that has marked the election since the start of it and this shadow of the possibility of Colombia returning to this type of practices by criminal groups and trying to impose their agenda.
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Emma Eicher
Petro is leaving behind a tense relationship with the US in 2025, President Donald Trump sharply criticized Pedro's anti drug policies and later announced cuts to U.S. assistance for the country. Cepeda has said the U.S. remains an essential trading partner, but at the same
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Gleo Des Gonzalez
time, he has said that he will not abide by Washington's interests.
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Emma Eicher
By contrast, de la Espreya and Valencia have welcomed stronger diplomatic ties with the US and the European Union. In March this year, Trump started the Shield of the Americas initiative. It's a coalition to combat drug trafficking and organized crime in more than a dozen countries. Colombia is currently not a member, but both right wing candidates have expressed support for closer security cooperation with the US Political analyst Silva says while the country still approves of its left wing government, perspectives are shifting.
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Miguel Silva
Public opinion has shifted towards the right. I think if that part of the vote were not divided in two, it would probably get 51% of the vote and win in the first round.
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Emma Eicher
Barring unforeseen events, analysts predict a runoff election between Cepeda and a right wing challenger. Then it will be up to the voters to continue another four years of the same or choose change. That's this week's World Tour. I'm Emma Eicher.
- [23:34]
Nick Iger
Thousands gathered at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, England, for the annual Cheese Rolling competition. Competitors submit to gravity to chase a seven pound wheel of double Gloucester down a hillside so steep that running can only be described as theoretical. German YouTuber Tom Koppel Kopke won the first men's downhill race for the third straight year.
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Hunter Baker
It was crazy.
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Nick Iger
I think this was my most controlled run ever.
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Lauren Dunn
I don't know how it looked.
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Nick Iger
I know how it looked. And controlled was not the word that sprang to mind. Koepke says during the race, he managed to spot a rival ahead of him and figured he'd better pick up the pace. I need to go faster, yeah, he says he sprinted the rest of the way down, though. At Cooper's Hill, sprinting appears to mean falling with purpose. It's the world and everything in it.
- [24:36]
Lindsay Mast
Today is Wednesday, May 27th. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your Day. Good morning. I'm Lindsay Mast.
- [24:43]
Nick Iger
And I'm Nick Iker. Coming next on the world and everything in it, classical education for students with disabilities. Classical schools have grown rapidly over the last decade. But for families of students with moderate to severe disabilities, finding a school that fits can be difficult.
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Lindsay Mast
That's left some families with few options. So in Wichita, Kansas, one mother decided to build the kind of school she could not find. World's Lauren Dunn has the story.
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Maggie Black
I pledge allegiance to the flag of
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Hunter Baker
the United States of America.
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Lauren Dunn
It's Friday morning, and like many other schools around the country, Joy Academy starts the day with the pledge my cash. But it doesn't take long to notice some differences. For one thing, there are only 11 students gathered around a big table in what used to be a house. Latin phrases in students handwriting decorate the walls. And all of these students have disabilities or learning difficulties.
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Maggie Black
We have three students with down syndrome. I have one student with a genetic disorder called coffin syndrome.
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Lauren Dunn
Maggie Black is founder and principal at Joy Academy.
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Maggie Black
We have one student with autism, a couple with adhd. Two of our students have fragile X syndrome.
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Lauren Dunn
Black and her husband Josh helped start the classical school of Wichita, which meets at the church across the street 20 years ago. But when they adopted their daughter diamond and realized she had serious learning needs that the classical school couldn't accommodate, they enrolled her in public school. That worked well for a while.
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Maggie Black
We cannot send our daughter, who really functions more, you know, socially, emotionally, academically, like a first or a second grader. We can't send her to a school with 2,000 students just to kind of, like, hope she does okay and hope she catches truth or whatever.
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Lauren Dunn
The blacks wanted a school that could combine classical education's emphasis on truth, beauty and goodness and natural development sequence with the accommodations diamond needed. Then a friend offered a solution.
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Maggie Black
He said to Josh, we were talking about this. He's like, why don't you just start a school for Diamond? And we thought, can we do that?
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Lauren Dunn
Black got in touch with the classical education advocate, who wrote a book in curriculum for children with disabilities. Then, in fall 2023, Joy Academy began with two students, diamond and a boy named Cooper.
- [27:19]
Hunter Baker
So I made a baseball of clay. I shaped the ball, took the rangers on it, and painted a blue.
- [27:26]
Lauren Dunn
Today, Cooper and his younger brother Camden attend the school. They both have fragile X syndrome. Their parents, Danny and Katie back, say the genetic disorder affects the two boys differently.
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Jared Isaacman
Cooper's biggest hurdle is his intellectual disability. Camden, on the other hand, his biggest hurdle is his hyperactivity, impulsivity, and probably the lack of connections that he seems to struggle with because of his autism.
- [27:54]
Lauren Dunn
The backs say the classical model has enriched their boys education.
- [27:59]
Jared Isaacman
There's just no fluff. If our boys with special needs have limited capacity, then it is all the more important that we fill their buckets with exceptional things and not waste that capacity on things that just don't matter.
- [28:13]
Lauren Dunn
Katie Back says her biggest goal for Cooper was that he would learn to read. The high staff to student ratios at Joy Academy helped him make quick progress toward that goal. That was huge for me, like I just knew, like oh, this is what I wanted.
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Maggie Black
Like it's happening.
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Lauren Dunn
That individualized attention is a built in feature at Joy. The school employs five full time and two part time staff members, plus a handful of volunteers including grandparents who serve as lunch buddies or help with writing. 12 high school students from the classical school across the street also volunteer throughout the week as mentors. Most of Joy Academy's current students came from public schools and brought with them individualized education programs, or IEPs designed to address their unique learning needs and goals. As a private school, Joy Academy isn't required to follow those, but Black says they're a good starting point.
- [29:07]
Maggie Black
The needs are so different for each student that that has become, I would say a learning opportunity or a challenge. Just trying to decide again what each student needs to be successful here at Joy Academy and then ultimately in life.
- [29:26]
Lauren Dunn
Another challenge is tuition a year at Joy Academy costs $12,000, about 20% more than partner school across the street. But donors and grants provide scholarships to help and now demand is outpacing what the school can do. The term special needs encompasses a wide range of abilities and needs and one small school can't address them all. That brings another difficulty, turning some students away.
- [29:52]
Maggie Black
We've had three students just in the last probably three months applied and we did some readiness screenings that are nonverbal at this point point we're not going to do that. I just think the broader you build a school, it's just it's difficult to manage and to staff Lack says interest
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Lauren Dunn
is up, but the school plans to only add three new students this fall.
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Maggie Black
And it's heartbreaking because these families that love the Lord and desire for their children their most precious earthly possession to be able to, to be in an environment where they are getting taught with a Christian worldview and Christ is at the center of all that we do.
- [30:38]
Lauren Dunn
Black says she hopes to see more schools open for students with a variety of needs. In the meantime, these 11 students are rounding out their school year the same way they start each day with joy. Reporting for world, I'm Lauren Dunn in Wichita, Kansas.
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Daniel Sir
Rejoice. Rejoice Again, I say rejoice.
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Maggie Black
Okay, thank you, guys.
- [31:14]
Nick Iger
Good morning. This is the world and everything in it. From listener supported World Radio, I'm Nick Iker.
- [31:20]
Lindsay Mast
And I'm Lindsay Master. Pope Leo XIV this week issued the first encyclical of his papacy. For non Catholics, an encyclical is essentially a formal teaching letter from the Pope, an attempt to apply Christian moral reasoning to major issues facing the Church and the wider culture.
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Nick Iger
This particular encyclical tackles a subject shaping nearly every part of modern life, artificial intelligence. Here is world commentator Daniel Sir.
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Daniel Sir
This week, the Pope used his first encyclical to address one of the defining moral questions of our artificial intelligence.
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Kent Covington
Artificial intelligence can be a construction site of history. Let each builder choose with care how to build, warned St Paul. He does not fear the work site. Rather, he warns against building without solid foundations.
- [32:11]
Daniel Sir
That is the challenge before us, not whether artificial intelligence will become more deeply woven into our lives, communities and economies. No, that ship has sailed. The question now is whether we build AI on a solid foundation of law and ethics, so it serves humanity rather than replacing or diminishing it. The Pope frames the question through two Old Testament stories. First, the Tower of Babel in Genesis, humanity pushing ahead in pride and building without a proper foundation. Then Nehemiah, who led the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls. The Pope notes that everyone had a role in that story. Political leaders, religious leaders, laborers, soldiers, ordinary citizens. Pope Leo's vision for the age of AI seems to follow that pattern, not slowing innovation out of fear, but ensuring that development does not happen inside a silicon valley silo separated from the large society. Practically, that could mean allowing AI to flourish while still setting boundaries, especially for children, or for AI's use in darker corners of the Internet, like pornography or gambling. Leo's sharpest challenge comes over military applications of AI.
- [33:29]
Kent Covington
Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death.
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Daniel Sir
Leo compares AI to the splitting of the atom. Nuclear power brought tremendous benefits, but nuclear weapons also brought enormous danger. I appreciate the analogy, though I'm not convinced the comparison fully fits. AI's military uses, at least today, look less like autonomous science fiction machines and more like faster research, improved intelligence gathering, and better decision making. I find myself sympathetic then to the balance recently described by Vice President J.D. vance.
- [34:15]
Kent Covington
We want to be pro innovation. We recognize. I mean, artificial intelligence could be great. It also does have some downsides, and we're trying to balance that safety against innovation.
- [34:26]
Daniel Sir
That sounds close to the balance. Pope Leo is seeking as well, welcoming AI's potential to advance knowledge, cure disease, expand prosperity, and unlock learning, while remaining mindful of effects on the vulnerable, the environment and the common good. For World, I'm Daniel. Sir.
- [34:49]
Nick Iger
Tomorrow, a new Missouri law requires drunk drivers to pay child support if they kill a parent. We'll have a report. And minister and author John Bevere joins us to discuss the return of Christ in his new book, the King Is Coming. That and more tomorrow. I'm Nick Iger.
- [35:07]
Lindsay Mast
And I'm Lindsay Mast. 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 it is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud. Whoever gives thought to the Word will discover good and and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord. Verses 19 through 20 of Proverbs 16. Go now in grace and peace.