海角大神

2025
December
06
Saturday

Monitor Daily Podcast

December 06, 2025
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Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

Welcome to your Saturday Daily. Head to our homepage for news, including on the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision to take up birthright citizenship and on Netflix鈥檚 bid to buy a major Hollywood studio.聽

Where do you stand on real versus artificial? If you鈥檙e in that鈥檚 still Team Evergreen when it comes to Christmas trees, let Kendra Nordin Beato 鈥 fresh off her cranberry reporting blitz 鈥 pull back a bough on a new documentary about the families who make sacrifices (think sleeping cold in cots on city lots) to supply those aromatic icons of seasonal joy. It can get feisty down there.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 get into this in my Q&A with the director too much,鈥 Kendra tells me, 鈥渂ut there is a real brass-knuckles approach to selling trees in New York.鈥澛

鈥淎rtificial鈥 hits another way in our piece by Sophie Hills, which explores how some seniors now reach for an AI tool to help them find purpose keyed to faith. A useful aid, or the further erosion of privacy?


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

J. Scott Applewhite/AP
U.S. Navy Adm. Frank M. Bradley, center, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, and Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, right, are escorted to a classified briefing at the Capitol in Washington, Dec. 4, 2025.

With military leaders in the spotlight over drug boat attacks, how do troops know when to follow orders and when to push back?

The Yomiuri Shimbun/AP
Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae attends a plenary session of the House of Councillors at the National Diet building in Tokyo, Dec. 3, 2025.

An industrious leader is typically considered a positive. But in Japan 鈥 a country that has its own word for 鈥渄eath from overworking鈥 鈥 the new prime minister鈥檚 habits are reigniting a debate: How much work is too much?

Some retirees are turning to AI chatbots, including those tailored to their specific faith tradition, for big questions such as the meaning of their life and finding purpose in retirement. There is the potential for bots to serve as a mirror or sounding board, those studying the technology say, but there are also risks.

Book review

漏 Cathy Bistour
Herv茅 Le Tellier

Political extremism can feel like a long-ago problem, even as incidents of violence make the headlines. History reminds us of how easily democracies can slip into fascism 鈥 and how they might resist the pull today.

Q&A

Courtesy of Prime
"The Merchants of Joy," a new documentary on Amazon Prime, features George Smith of NYC Tree Shop.

Director Celia Aniskovich鈥檚 new documentary, 鈥淭he Merchants of Joy,鈥 explores the tree-selling families that turn New York鈥檚 streets into forests of firs at the holidays 鈥 and highlights the competition and compassion that accompany them.


Viewfinder

Borja Suarez/Reuters
A family uses a telescope to observe the last full moon of 2025, known as the Cold Moon, in Aguimes, on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain, Dec. 4, 2025. It was also a supermoon. Those occur when the moon hits its closest point to Earth in its monthly orbit 鈥 and can appear up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than the smallest moon of the year, according to Space.com.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

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2025
December
06
Saturday

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