海角大神

2025
August
23
Saturday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 23, 2025
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Welcome to the weekend.

Journalism calls for maintaining a dispassionate mindset. That doesn鈥檛 mean journalists can鈥檛 have heart. The Monitor鈥檚 Patrik Jonsson and Melanie Stetson Freeman went to New Orleans 20 years ago to report on what Hurricane Katrina had wrought. Between long outings they would collect themselves at a Waffle House, then wade back in. For a long time, Patrik couldn鈥檛 cross any span like the steel-truss bridge he took into the city without reflecting on that storm.

He and Mel recently returned, Patrik in his trademark battered van, to assess two decades of recovery efforts. 鈥淭here鈥檚 still desperation here,鈥 one man told Patrik. Nearly 1,400 people were killed and the city saw a third of its residents displaced. But Patrik and Mel also found music, healing, and community.聽


You can read Mel鈥檚 brief account of their teamwork here.聽She joined me on our podcast in 2023 to talk about how she sees Monitor photojournalism. Patrik, too, has been a guest. Our chat about the nuances of gun culture, also from 2023, displays his clear-eyed approach to challenging news 鈥 and, yes, his heart.

Find our latest stories and updated news briefs, including on Gaza and on U.S. economic developments, at CSMonitor.com.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
One Man Swamp Band street musician Brian Belknap performs on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, April 17, 2025.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina threatened to snuff out the spirit of New Orleans. Two decades later, our reporter and photographer chronicle the city鈥檚 long journey toward shoring it up.

President Donald Trump is ending policies to promote electric cars. But carmakers like Ford are focused more on Chinese competition than on Washington politics. The company鈥檚 stunning goal: a small electric pickup priced below $30,000.

Dominique Soguel
Ameera al-Hammouri displays her aghabani embroidery and textile designs in her home in Douma, near Damascus.

Syria's civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people, but traditional embroidery survived in the care of a handful of women. Now, they hope to make a living from it again.

Commentary

Vasha Hunt/AP/File
The Equal Justice Initiative's Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, is part of its three sites looking at the legacy of slavery and racial injustice in the U.S. 108 Death Masks, by Nikesha Breeze, ceramic cast in bronze, 2018, is shown here.

On a visit to the Equal Justice Initiative鈥檚 sculpture park, our columnist鈥檚 7-year-old asked, 鈥淒ad, why do those Black people have chains on them?鈥 Ken Makin thought about that trip after reading President Trump鈥檚 order of a review of America鈥檚 museums, most notably the Smithsonian.

Film

Netflix
From left to right, Celia Imrie, Helen Mirren, Naomi Ackie, Pierce Brosnan, and Ben Kingsley star in "The Thursday Murder Club," debuting on Netflix Aug. 28.

The film version of bestseller 鈥淭he Thursday Murder Club鈥 has arrived with a stellar cast and a backdrop that plays like Hogwarts for older adults. But how does all the sleuthing and skullduggery stack up to the book?

Points of Progress

What's going right
Staff

In our progress roundup, national focus on a crisis in one community 鈥 Flint, Michigan 鈥 helped the rest of the country think about resources that can be taken for granted and whom a problem affects. And in one state in India, a first-ever emissions-trading scheme worked where other solutions haven鈥檛.


Viewfinder

Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
Egyptian divers retrieve submerged artifacts at Abu Qir naval port in the coastal city of Alexandria, Egypt, Aug. 21, 2025, the day of a visit by officials from Egypt鈥檚 Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and its Supreme Council of Antiquities. The artifacts at the Mediterranean site include pillars, statues, an ancient ship, and a quartz sphinx bearing the sigil of Ramses II. There are not yet plans to exhibit them.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

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2025
August
23
Saturday

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