海角大神

2025
August
02
Saturday

Monitor Daily Podcast

August 02, 2025
Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

After three and a half years of war, Ukrainians keep reaching deeper. Music has been a balm 鈥 a preserver of culture and provider of spiritual relief. In a Monitor video in late 2022, Jingnan Peng profiled a Ukrainian minstrel whose mission was to buttress Ukrainian resolve, sometimes by singing in bomb shelters. As Russia鈥檚 aerial assaults have persisted, reliable safety can be subterranean. (Dominique Soguel joined our podcast in 2023 to talk about schools there that had gone underground.)听

Today, Howard LaFranchi reports from Kharkiv.听There, a theater鈥檚 makeshift, bunkered performance space has become 鈥渁 holy place,鈥 its stage director says. 鈥淏eing here allows us to shut the door 鈥,鈥 she tells him, 鈥渁nd to enter a space where we can breathe and renew our faith in love and hope.鈥


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Elite institutions shaped the pandemic response in a way they said would best protect society. Critics say they sidelined dissenting views, deepening distrust and contributing to Donald Trump鈥檚 reelection. Second of two parts; the first ran on July 26.

One of the major obstacles to a Palestinian state has been the lack of trust between Israel鈥檚 European supporters and the Palestinians鈥 backers in the Middle East. But now both are making the hard choices that could reopen a path to peace.

Amy Sherald鈥檚 decision to pull her show from the National Portrait Gallery comes as the Trump administration has criticized DEI and 鈥渋mproper ideology鈥 in museums. She is among artists who say their vision cannot be compromised without undermining the purpose of their art.

Kharkiv, Ukraine, one of Europe鈥檚 great cultural centers, is pummeled almost nightly by Russian strikes. Yet its bomb-shelter national opera house serves as a cathedral, a beacon of stubborn faith and undimmed human spirit.

Q&A

Alaska persists in the imagination as one of the last untamed places on Earth. But for one Gen Z writer, that romantic ideal was replaced by awe, respect, and concern for one of the fastest-warming corners of the planet.听 聽


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( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

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2025
August
02
Saturday

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