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2025
September
13
Saturday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 13, 2025
Clayton Collins
Director of Editorial Innovation

It is both a functioning democracy’s 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.Ìý

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 today on healing political divisions, to which Troy Aidan Sambajon and Caitlin Babcock also contributed.Ìý

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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Utah’s governor has made promoting dialogue between political opponents his signature issue. In the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk 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.

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’s flag.

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

Essay

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’s fleeting.Ìý

In Pictures

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


Viewfinder

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

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2025
September
13
Saturday

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