The big chill

0:00This summer we marked a milestone anniversary 15 years of the world and everything in it. And now we're closing in on 100 million downloads. That's a lot of mornings together. It sure is, so we made something to mark that occasion, a commemorative the world and everything in it sticker. Yeah, for your laptop, water bottle, notebook, toolbox, we'll leave the placement decisions to you. So whether you've been listening for 15 years or 15 minutes, we would love to send you one free to you. Just go to the world and everything in it.org slash sticker and let us know where to send it. A link's in the show notes. Good morning. Do you need the government's okay to hold a prayer meeting in your own home? They weren't allowed to get together in a group and pray unless they had a permit and that put the caboch on this prayer group. Red tape and religious freedom today on legal docket. Also today the Monday money beat work and human dignity on this Labor Day will talk with economist David Bonson.

1:03And later the world history book. And Salvation I'll never have Elvis on my program. Arsenio Orteza on one of the largest single night TV audiences in history. It's Monday September 7th Labor Day. This is the world and everything in it from listeners supported world radio. I'm Mary Rykard. And I'm Nick Einkert. Good morning. Time now for the news with Kent Covington. A fiery crash just beyond a runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday ended in tragedy. Miami Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cavam. Today is an incredibly difficult day for all of us here. Earlier today we know that the crime air flight 7598 over Ram the runway. And now we know that five people lost their lives and five others were injured. The Amazon cargo jet touched down, but then it was unable to stop the Boeing 767 ran past the end of the runway, striking a road beyond the airport fence and catching fire.

2:12More than 60 fire rescue units responded. Miami Dade Fire Rescue Chief Rageodola. The airplane did strike a couple of vehicles. A couple of victims that were actually trapped in the vehicles. So a complex extrication with our technical rescue teams started to occur. In addition to that, we had a very complex fire engine, the compartments that were on fire. The airport shut down for about three hours. However, two of its four runways reopened by evening. The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to investigate and transportation secretary Sean Duffy is warning of long delays and cancellations today, the last day of the Labor Day weekend. Two of President Trump's envoys went from Moscow to Kiev over the weekend, trying to restart peace talks that stalled months ago. Steve Whitcough and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Saturday and Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday. Kushner says the question is not only how to end the war.

3:13But how does he create the right conditions and rainpins for a long-term, durable peace that allows you to crank to use the amazing bravery, the genuity, the strength that it's used to get through the last years of the war in order to build themselves and to be great nation that they have the fullest potential to achieve? Zelensky said they talked about air defenses and getting Ukraine through the winter. I do not see how many more things will happen. He also made clear that he does want the war to end, but it must be ended justly in a way that leaves Russia no chance to attack again. That last part is the sticking point. Russia wants Ukraine to give up any path to NATO and shrink its army. Putin also wants all of Ukraine's Donetsk region, including ground that his troops have never taken, Ukraine has rejected those demands. The two sides agreed to stop hitting each other's capitals during the talk, though they kept firing everywhere else. Hawaii spent the weekend bracing for its third major storm in three weeks.

4:14Hurricane Lowell is closing in from the south, and a tropical storm warning is up for the two islands at the northwest end of the chain, Kauai and the IHOW. Robbie Berg with the National Hurricane Center says forecasts expect the center to stay 100 to 200 miles off shore. So even though Lowell may not be a direct impact with the eye moving on those islands, we do think that there will still be strong winds or could even be gusts close to Hurricane Force, especially in some of the mountainous areas. When should pick up the safter noon local time and peak tonight on Kauai. Kauai's mountains could get more than a foot of rain. The islands are still cleaning up from Hurricane Lala, which killed one person and damaged more than 100 homes last month. Tropical storm Moke flooded them again a week later. Lindsay Clancy could face a second murder trial for killing her three children. That is the district attorney's call and he has not yet made it. A hearing is set for September 29th. Her trial ended on Friday with a hung jury.

5:14Clancy never denied strangling her three children in 2023, ages three, five, and eight months. Prosecutors say she knew exactly what she was doing. Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz. Our priority has always been to fight for Kora, for Dawson and for Kallen. Children were murdered. It's our job to seek justice. Her lawyer argued that postpartum psychosis, a rare illness after childbirth, left her not criminally responsible for what she did. Attorney Kevin Ruddington said Clancy should have been found not guilty and blames a single juror that he says refused to follow the judge's instructions. For Lindsay, my high-brakes for her, she deserved that acquittal that she should have had. Cruz can retry her on three counts of first degree murder, file lesser charges, or drop the case, the legal analysts consider dropping it unlikely. Clancy has been in a state psychiatric hospital without bail for more than three years,

6:15and she will remain there while the case is open. Even an acquittal would not necessarily set her free. The judge could order her confined to a mental hospital instead. At the weekend, box office Spider-Man brand new day continues to put up historic numbers. Spider-Man has now spent six straight weeks atop the box office, earning another $18 million state side. Its global total is now $2.4 billion dollars the third largest ever. That was followed again by the Odyssey, which is now the 14th highest-grossing film ever, at 1.6 billion. I'm Kent Coveington, and coming up, the Monday Money Beat, David Vonson, on when the AI investment might pay out, and later Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show. This is The World and Everything In It.

7:17It's The World and Everything In It for September 7, 2026. In 15 years in, we are still grateful to be part of your mornings. Good morning, I'm Mary Rykard. And I'm Nick Eichert, time now for Legal Docket. A dispute over prayer in a private home raises a crucial question about government power. If a city's cease and desist order stops the prayer, is the homeowner required to go through the entire local zoning process before a federal court can hear his First Amendment claim. At stake is whether bureaucratic delay itself can chill First Amendment rights, and whether the process itself can become the punishment. The case goes back to January 2021 in a Cleveland suburb called University Heights, Ohio. Orthodox Jewish homeowner Daniel Grant invited about a dozen people for prayer gatherings at his

8:17house on the Sabbath. The city ordered him to stop, saying he needed a special use permit. So Grant did cancel the gatherings, and he later applied for the permit, but withdrew his application before the Planning Commission ruled. When he sued, the lower courts never decided whether the city violated his rights, they said he sued too early because zoning officials never reached a final decision. Now the Supreme Court is stepping in to resolve a key procedural clash. At issue, whether a finality rule built for property takings applies to First Amendment claims when land use is involved. The case is Grand V city of University Heights. Here's what Mr. Grant was trying to do. I wanted to have a group of my friends come over to pray in basically my recreation room. His Orthodox Jewish practice requires communal prayer with what is called a minion, a group of 10 adult Jewish men. During the week, Grant could drive to a nearby synagogue,

9:18but on the Sabbath, his religious practice prohibits driving. So when it's 12 degrees outside, and you've got a mile to walk six times back and forth, it becomes a bit of a trek, and sometimes it's hard to actually do. If it's raining, we can't carry umbrellas. So it's like a very difficult thing to accomplish. Nobody wants to show up to an engagement, stopping wet, and then walk back home. So it's more like necessity, I think, than it really is luxury. It's hard to go that far and really inclement weather. So the group made sense. His email invitation found its way to the mayor. Within hours, the city sent Grant an order to stop, warning that hosting the prayer meeting would violate city code. The city declared his private residence and unauthorized place of religious assembly. Alliance defending freedom attorney John Birch represents Grant. They issued a cease and desist letter to Daniel and told him that they weren't allowed to get together in a group and pray unless they had a permit from the city that they were a designated

10:23house of worship. And that put the cabosh on this prayer group. That cabosh came with teeth. The letter warning that violating the order could result in fines or prosecution. So that was the end of the prayer meetings and Grant applied for the permit, thinking it might be like when neighbors hold a garage sale that also requires a permit. So I complied thinking it would be like a cute thing and an administrative permit, you go to the window, you pay your $10 fee and you move on to get your paperwork and then to leave you alone. But that's not really what it was. Here's an important wrinkle. The city later took the position that a small gathering like the one Grant describes did not actually require that house of worship permit. It did contact the mayor's office to discuss this further but was told the city does not comment on ongoing litigation. But five years ago, Grant understood the city order to mean he could not proceed. So he applied for the permit and expected to go through a more involved but still normal administrative process. What he later found is that he needed to hire a lawyer,

11:29provide building plans and get approvals from city officials. And then there was a public hearing. People living within close proximity of my house, you could say within a mile or two, brought up certain types of concerns that are typical zoning concerns. And I would even say that are typical reasonable zoning concerns. But the problem was we had stated again and again and again in writing on the record in verbal forum in public. We can't drive. But you might start doing that later. That's what you say now. I'm like, no, we've been pretty consistent with that for the past three and a half thousand years. I don't see how we're going to change that one now. But regardless, the planning commission neither approved nor denied Grant's application. It tabled the matter and asked him for more documentation. But Grant says when he tried to find out exactly what additional information the officials wanted, the mayor told him no further information would be accepted. So anybody who's rational understands, okay, you tabled this event to ask me for more

12:34information. I am now pursuing you because you're not telling me how to provide you any of that asked for information. And now in the process of pursuing you, you told me point blank that you will not accept any other information from me. So if that's not the very essence and definition of futility, then I ask somebody to please explain the word because I might not know what it means. So he withdrew the application. He said he didn't want to operate a house of worship as the zoning rules to find it. And good thing too, because Grant also discovered those rules hold that a property approved as a house of worship could not also be used as a residence. In other words, as his lawyer puts it, he was kind of caught between a rock and a hard place because if he had gotten the permit that said that he had a house of worship under the city's zoning code, his family would no longer be able to live and sleep there. And so to have a permit to pray in your home, you have to give up your home. The city held the second hearing anyway. The mayor said the cease and

13:37desist order was still in place. And he called on neighbors to report potential violations. Police patrolled past his house and a housing inspector came by to search it. No violations noted. Grant decided the only way to resolve this was a federal lawsuit. He sued the city and several officials under the first and 14th amendments alongside a federal law protecting religious land use. He lost at the trial court and appeals court levels. Each court finding his claims were not ripe for judicial review because the city hadn't reached a final decision about his permit. And now we get to the legal doctrine at issue in the Supreme Court case, the land use finality requirement. Now typically when a property owner challenges a zoning restriction, here she must get a definitive answer from local officials before suing because until the zoning authority actually says what it will and won't allow, a court may not know the extent of the alleged injury if there even isn't injury. The city relies on that rule to resolve the

14:41dispute. Its position is that Grant withdrew his application. He merely asked for more information. Nothing was ever enforced. So on that basis, the lower court dismissed the case without prejudice. Meaning Grant could sue later if the city eventually did apply its ordinance in an unlawful way. But that's where the idea of the process is the punishment comes in. His lawyers argue there is a first amendment chilling effect here when a government threatens to deter religious exercise, zoning concerns or not. But when you're talking about a free exercise violation where someone was denied the ability to pray, that injury is immediate and it's already well known. And so that person has the ability to go to court right away. And so it's really about access to the federal courts after religious liberty rights have been violated. In other words, you don't have to wait to be fined or arrested before challenging a credible threat to a first freedom. Without that assurance, some people would give up their rights rather than risk punishment just to create a lawsuit.

15:46Still, the city says nobody should assume how it might have ruled. And Grant is asking for intervention in a local zoning matter that just hasn't completed yet. Now if Grant wins at the Supreme Court, it doesn't mean that every gathering in a private home might not be subject to neutral rules about noise or traffic or big crowds. Nor will it decide whether university heights violated Grant's rights. A win would mean his claims are ripe and the trial court has to open its doors to address the merits. What I want from the Supreme Court is just essentially justice to be served. That, you know, this man is allowed to have a private prayer gathering in his home without governmental interference. And if that can't happen, then he is going to be allowed to have a path forward to redress his issues of injury in a court, which is really what's been prevented. Oral argument is scheduled for December. And that's this week's Legal Docket.

16:54Additional support comes from Ambassadors Impact Network, offering growth stage Christian entrepreneurs funding and support for mission aligned investors. AmbassadorsImpact.com and from Ridge Haven Camp and Retreat Centers in North Carolina and Iowa. Fall registration now open at Ridge Haven.org. Coming up next on the world and everything in it, the Monday Money Beat. Time now to talk business markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bonson. David heads up the wealth management firm, the Bonson Group. And he is here now. David, good morning. Well, good morning. Good to be with you. Well, David, let's begin with Friday's Jobs report. The first estimate says that August payrolls grew by 162,000. But the Monday

17:56Money Beat rule is we prefer trends to single data points. And lately, David, you've been especially cautious about that first estimate because the revisions downward have been so substantial. Even still, that 162,000 number did outpace expectations. David, how did you see it? No, I mean, it's better than where things had been. I mean, again, you really want 200,000 a month as a normal monthly jobs number. And so I get a little bit disappointed when I hear people celebrating 162. But on a relative basis, celebrating 162 makes sense if there was a possibility of declining 20,000, you know, the way we've had revisions in things the last couple months. That's the other piece you bring up the trend. I like to get, you know, two or three months of data in a row. And that's more important than it's even historically been because of all the the restatements and revisions we've had over the last several years. Right. Well, David,

18:56let's turn to AI and your dividend cafe writing this week. AI, of course, has been a big political story. It's an economic growth story. It's obviously a huge market story. But your argument is that there's a more basic financial question underneath all of it. So what is the big question you think people are missing? Well, one of the points that I make is that there's a very heavy amount of discussion right now in the political realm about AI, in the macroeconomic realm because our economic growth is so incredibly dependent on the AI story. And then naturally, there are various questions. When you see returns that were this high, this quick, certain things going up 100% going down 50% that sort of heavy volatility naturally provokes people wondering about a bubble and wondering about all the kind of, you know, noise around it. And I think all of those various categories are important and they're all legitimate. And I've addressed all of them and will continue to deal. But the element that I believe from a finance standpoint, from an underlying

20:01investment standpoint needs to best be understood is the totally unknowable answer to the question about future returns on invested capital and the timing of those things when they are so dependent on capital markets funding them. What I mean by this is we are not a situation where, you know, you take your favorite AI application or what they call a LLM and a lot of people use chat GPT or Quad or GROC or whatever it is. And you say, okay, well, I'm really enjoying it and maybe I'm paying 20 bucks a month for it. And there's other companies paying more, but they're revenues are a teeny, teeny, tiny percentage of hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars of commitments. And you say, well, they wouldn't have made those commitments unless they anticipated future revenues out to extend it. You say, okay, maybe. And then you need profits from that. And we don't know what those will be. And I'm not referring to the profits of the people that are making

21:02data centers or making GPUs or even making chat GPT. I'm referring to the profits of the customers of these things, the enterprises that have to use it. So there's all these questions there. And my point, Nick, and what I really hope world listeners will understand is this thing is only possible right now because of hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and equity being issued to pay for it. All right. And so there's a lot of risk takers out there that at some point may say, yeah, no, we need to get paid more to do it. Or we're not going to put more in until we get more returned. And that timing of capital markets cooperation with the most expensive expenditure in human history, more than it was to build the National Railroad Network, adjusted for inflation, more than it was to build telecom fiber optics cable more than it was to build cloud more than it was to build the internet. This is the most expensive endeavor in human history.

22:03We do not know what the future profits will be when they will come. And I think people need to question, is there some risk about how the funding will align? And then you add in all the other things people bringing up about the political environment controversy about data centers, competition from China. I was trying to simplify it to the one big thing, but if I'm being fair, there's six or seven other things that pile on too. Yeah. Well, hey, David, before we let you go, it is Labor Day today. So it seems appropriate to ask, in your book full time, you make the case that work is bound up with why God made us. Why do you say that work itself is a matter of human dignity? Well, you know, that book I wrote full time on a sort of understanding of work from a biblical perspective that I think will always be an evergreen message. It isn't meant to be a sort of current events hot topic. The argument I'm making is by definition perpetual because I'm

23:05arguing for this sort of existential understanding of work that roots why we work to why God actually made us. And to the very fundamental Christian concept of Emigo Day, that if we are made in the image of God, it behooves us as believers to understand what that means. And as an economist, I've long believed that my appreciation for economics, why I long ago transcended this idea of oh, it's a dismal science, it's boring, it's a good thing, I'm a nerd. I've always found it a very exciting and vigorating, fulfilling topic because I view it in the context of Emigo Day, and because I view it in the context of what God made man for. And I think that God made us to work, and in that endeavor whereby we are producing goods and services that meet the needs of others, dignity is found. And it is that way because God made it that way. And we can appreciate this in

24:06small and big ways just when we do something that helps serve a customer or serve a coworker, we feel good about that. But also the notion that we have our needs met, but we had to do something, there's an agency where you really don't see a lot, Nick, a people that feel very satisfied, that have fulfilled lives when their needs are met by them being passive. Laying on the couch and having your needs met may sound good for some people, and every now and then maybe it's a little alluring when someone gets tired, but it's no way to live. And so my message about work is rooted to this biblical anthropology. God made man kind in his image, and that means for us to really kind of stoke our own productive, creative, and innovative impulses. And I find a lot of fulfillment in that. Excellent. Well, David Bonson is founder, managing partner and chief investment officer of the Bonson Group. He writes regularly at dividendcafe.com and at

25:11world opinions. Hey, David, I hope you have a terrific week and a productive Labor Day. Thanks so much, Nick. Good morning. This is the world and everything in it from listeners supported world radio. I'm Nick Eiker. And I'm Mary Reichard. Up next, the world history book. Today, Elvis on Ed Sullivan. And as long been said, Elvis Presley was the big bang that set pop culture as we know it in motion, but that bang was really a series of them each bigger than the one before. And there's no doubt that Presley's September 9th, 1956 appearance on one of the nation's most watch television programs was right up there. Here's world's Arseneo Arteza.

26:13Six of the 10 songs that Elvis Presley recorded for his first label, Sun Records, failed to make any billboard chart. And three of the four that did work country hits. One was Mystery Train, which reached number 11. Another was Baby Let's Playhouse, which reached number five. And one was this Stan Kessler Charlie Feathers composition. I forgot to remember to forget, became a country number one in 1955. One year after Presley's first appearance on the pop chart with this song. I don't care if the sun don't shine peaked in an unimpressive number 74. Presley had already been nicknamed the Hillbilly cat because of his seemingly effortless ability to blend the gospel music, country music and blues he'd loved growing up. But as someone who would eventually be called the King of Rock and Roll, he was off to a slow start. Then he signed with RCA, where heartbreak hotel

27:17and I want you, I need you, I love you, were instant smashes. And both sides of this single topped the pop and country charts. Presley in a backing band performed Houndog eight weeks after its release on the Ed Sullivan show. He'd performed on national TV shows before nine times in fact. But the Sullivan show was bigger than any of the others and the 60 million viewers who tuned in to watch him on September nine made that Ed Sullivan episode the most watched US TV broadcast up to that point. But Presley biographer Peter Garonick says the event almost didn't happen. Ed Sullivan said I'll never have Elvis on my program. He then got beaten in the ratings by Steve Allen and he then went to Colonel or to William Morris and said okay, I will have this artist. Interestingly Sullivan wasn't the host that night. He'd been in a car accident and was still recovering. So the man who introduced Presley to Sullivan's audience was the English actor and regular Sullivan guest Charles Lawton. Presley also didn't perform at the show's Broadway theater.

28:22Instead he was beamed in from a CBS soundstage in Hollywood because he was making his first film. Its title became apparent with the second song he performed. Presley performed two more songs that evening including this cover of the then new single by Little Richard. But the number that he opened with was Houndog's flip side which was also riding high at the time. Presley ended up appearing on the Sullivan show three times at eight week intervals and he got paid $50,000. It was a figure negotiated by his manager Colonel Tom Parker and one that translates into a little over $600,000 today. Time magazine called it astronomical and it remains so for a while Sullivan only paid the Beatles $10,000 for their three appearances eight years later. Details from Presley's second and third Sullivan appearances sometimes get mixed up

29:26with those of his first. His gyrations already had people calling him the pelvis for instance but Sullivan's crew had not yet been told to shoot him only from the waist up. Not that such instructions would have made much difference. By September 9, 1956 the Hillbilly cat was out of the bag. As a great philosopher once said, you're in the back. That's this week's World History Book. I'm Arsenio Ortezza. Tomorrow a nationwide EMS staffing problem may mean longer wait times in a medical emergency will have a report and a year after Charlie Kirk's assassination, aologist Frank Turek says something has changed on college campuses. That and more tomorrow I'm Mary Reichard.

30:30And I'm Nick Eichert, 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, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones versus five through eight of Proverbs three. Go now in grace and peace.