海角大神

2025
September
13
Saturday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 13, 2025
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

It is both a functioning democracy鈥檚 bedrock requirement and, seemingly, its most elusive feature: Civil discourse can add social stability. It is the starting point of understanding. It demands mental maturity and patience. This week showed why it needs to be nurtured in the United States.听

A newsroom meeting on Thursday was rich with pitches for constructive takes on where U.S. society might look for rift-healing. One came from Stephen Humphries, who takes a broad approach to his culture portfolio. He spoke with me about that in a podcast on civility a couple of years ago. Also a guest on that show: Alexandra Hudson. She has made civility-building central to her work.

Stephen spoke with her, among others, for one of two stories聽today on healing political divisions, to which Troy Aidan Sambajon and Caitlin Babcock also contributed.听


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Tess Crowley/The Deseret News/AP
Gov. Spencer Cox speaks at a press conference at Utah Valley University after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a debate at the university in Orem, Utah, Sept. 10, 2025. Mr. Cox has for years promoted efforts to bring people together across political differences.

Utah鈥檚 governor has made promoting dialogue between political opponents his signature issue. In the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk聽in Utah, Spencer Cox is continuing to promote civil discourse as an off-ramp to violence.

The U.S. has entered a new age of political violence, evidenced by the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Those who work in conflict resolution say Americans need to engage in the hard work of seeing those we disagree with as fully human and worthy of respect.

Phil Noble/Reuters
A St. George's flag hangs from a window of a block of apartments in Ellesmere Port, England, Sept. 3, 2025.

Seen as both patriotic and prejudiced, the English flag has become a controversial symbol in the United Kingdom. As the country wrestles with its immigration policy, so too is the U.K. debating the public display of St. George鈥檚 flag.

Pavel Bednyakov/AP
People dance to a military band at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, Aug. 16, 2025, ahead of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival.

While Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities are experiencing a hail of Russian drone and missile attacks, it鈥檚 been a summer of festivals in Moscow, where war feels far more than a few hundred miles away.

Essay

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Canoeists paddle out on a New Hampshire lake to enjoy the colorful autumn leaves.

Pitch-perfect weather, crisp mornings, blue skies, and russet-tinged leaves. Those are just a few of the reasons we sing the praises of the harvest month, an enchanting season we cherish all the more because it鈥檚 fleeting.听

In Pictures

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
GREENERY SCENERY: Beth Whitehead and her granddaughter Louisa ramble past the elephant on the grounds of the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, July 17. The venue is home to more than 80 topiaries.

Over the years, the contours of each shrub in this garden have been lovingly maintained. It鈥檚 all part of an effort to preserve a unique animal kingdom, whose roots extend back to the 1870s.


Viewfinder

Toby Melville/Reuters
Bird-watchers view thousands of shorebirds, including knots and godwits, as they flock from mudflats to sandbanks at The Wash estuary near Snettisham, England, Sept. 12, 2025. Migration season boosts the spectacle here, including with pink-footed geese beginning to arrive from Iceland and Greenland to winter in the United Kingdom鈥檚 wetlands. Great numbers of birds are expected near month鈥檚 end.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

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2025
September
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Saturday

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