Why We Wrote This

Another U.S. election is behind us. Can civility – deep civility, not just politeness – heal divides? Stephen Humphries, the Monitor’s chief culture writer, joined host Clay Collins in this encore episode to talk about his expansive view of the culture beat and about how he came to write about Alexandra Hudson’s book, “The Soul of Civility.” Ms. Hudson, too, joined the 2023 episode to talk further...

A land war grinds on into another winter in Europe’s east. The Mideast keeps spiraling, old enmity refueled. A U.S. presidential election claims whatever sliver of attention is left. The West tends to forget about the African continent even in less distracting times. But stories from many of its more than 50 countries abound – of wars, yes. Of starvation. But also of human courage and resilience....

Georgia’s voting-rules dispute has been given a lot of attention. So have process changes in other states, along with the standard complexities of mail-in ballot counts and the (now standard, it seems) preelection charges of a “rigged” process. In the second of two parts of a conversation with guest host Gail Russell Chaddock, the Monitor’s Cameron Joseph talks about this presidential election cyc...

The late-game ouster of an incumbent as candidate, state rules in flux, and back-to-back hurricanes in battleground states? Yes, the 2024 U.S. presidential election sits in a category of its own. Beneath those big factors: a set of wedge issues and a pair of candidates with stark differences of approach and appeal. Monitor politics writer Cameron Joseph joins guest host Gail Russell Chaddock to ta...

Amid intensifying strife and humanitarian disaster, how do you report a story like the war in Gaza accurately and compassionately? How do you recognize the complexities of a war in which intense suffering exists alongside a powerful humanity and an effort to cling to hope? Monitor correspondents Ghada Abdulfattah in Gaza and Taylor Luck in Jordan join Managing Editor Amelia Newcomb, our guest host...

Americans’ loss of social connection has long been an issue, and it worsened during the pandemic era to the point where loneliness hit epidemic levels. Today, some 6 Americans in 10 are reluctant to talk politics with those whose views oppose their own, even though it’s well known that such exchanges can be a balm. In this episode – an encore of one recorded in May 2023 – writer Sophie Hills talks...

Western news reports about Taiwan tend to focus on the island’s relationships with global superpowers, notably China and the United States. The people of Taiwan and their history can sometimes get lost in those narratives. Writer Ann Scott Tyson made a return trip to Taiwan to gather more of those important perspectives. Her cover story is a sort of coming of age story for Taiwan, exploring issues...

You wouldn’t want your kid toting a television to class. So why allow a smartphone? That’s one take on a big back-to-school issue this year. Another take: Phones can be lifelines in emergencies. Two Monitor writers reported on the perspectives of parents, students, and educators and found a conversation growing that might finally yield some compromise solutions.

How does the Monitor’s film critic decide what to review – especially in festival settings? For Peter Rainer, it’s about staying moored by his own long experience and curating with a Monitor audience in mind. After the Toronto festival in 2023, Peter spoke on our podcast about how he does that. The films have changed; the work has not. We’ve reprised some of that episode this week.

Hopes, fears, and hard decisions: The stories of would-be immigrants are stories that matter. So, too, are the stories and views of the many other stakeholders in the immigration debate, including U.S. ranchers whose land becomes the first zones of contention. Monitor writer Sarah Matusek is based in Denver, a city that has received thousands of people from South and Central American countries ove...

What’s it like being in a president’s presence at big moments? What about at small ones, as when the commander-in-chief offers to buy you a burger? It’s all part of working in the press pool, where a hand-picked gaggle of reporters chronicles the president’s moves in real time and faithfully feeds detailed missives to the wider media. Linda Feldmann, who has cycled through the work for two decades...

An Americana-infused folk music revival has been a surging in the United States for years now. Georgia’s Jake Xerxes Fussell has emerged as one of the most singular interpreters of that music and all of its tributaries. Writer (and fan) Simon Montlake, a hard-news reporter most of the time, joins host Clay Collins to talk about why the modest Mr. Fussell is worth discovering – and about what folk...

Drug decriminalization is another story that often sets up as a binary debate: It's either a path to societal meltdown or a way to regulate behaviors that appear inevitable, and to stop filling jails. Test cases in three places – Portland, Oregon; British Columbia, Canada; and Portugal – show that solutions require very nuanced thinking. And compassion. Yvonne Zipp, our features editor, introduces...

When a sports-loving writer gets a shot at covering an Olympic Games, the story becomes one of joyful immersion and inspired output. Ira Porter joins host Clay Collins for this episode about reporting from the Paris Games and finding the human stories that matter most in that sea of competition and aspiration, heartbreak and triumph.

Reporting straight news can be an outsider’s game: Get the facts, look for color, file on deadline, repeat. Gathering news that’s meaningful to readers, news that’s human and relatable, often means collaborating with a region’s own reporters. Two Monitor writers who also co-write stories and edit journalists from across Latin America and Africa join guest host Amelia Newcomb, our managing editor,...

Good research can transform public knowledge. It can affect the evolution of public attitudes. But the way in which data and findings are arrayed and framed for consumption matters. A lot. In this episode, Monitor climate writer Stephanie Hanes talks about reporting her story of a climate scientist who had a very public moment of self-reflection – and found himself reflecting on his role as a shap...

Photography does so much to humanize reporting. What does it mean to come at stories quite literally through the “Monitor lens” that this show explores? A longtime staff shooter who has made images in more than 80 countries and on every continent, Melanie Stetson Freeman talks with host Clay Collins about joyful moments and sobering ones, and about how the people and places she encounters still br...

Everyone loves a good counternarrative, especially when the prevailing narrative is a dire one and the counter offers credible reasons for hope – backed by data that bears up to scrutiny. In this episode, writer Troy Aidan Sambajon talks with host Clay Collins about a crime-stat story that became something more. It’s a validation – with some big caveats – of community policing, community agency, a...

What’s happening in women’s sports besides Caitlin Clark? A lot. Two years to the week since this podcast soft-launched with a conversation with writer Kendra Nordin Beato on Title IX’s 50th anniversary, we offer an update. This encore episode adds some discussion of how much has transpired in all three braids of the Title IX story: women in education, women in college sports, and progress in figh...

Urban tree loss is a widespread phenomenon that has been addressed, with different degrees of success, in cities from New York to Nashville. For multimedia reporter Jingnan Peng, a story about a tree-planting initiative in Louisville, Kentucky, became a story about rebuilding community trust. He spoke to host Clay Collins for this episode, which includes encore material from a 2023 show on Jing’s...

Maybe it’s because she came up through the Monitor’s Points of Progress franchise. We like how Erika Page, our Madrid-based writer, frames one big part of her beat. “It’s [about] looking for where creativity and ingenuity and humanity are in operation,” she tells host Clay Collins in this episode. “Because once you start to look for these things, you kind of start to see them everywhere.” A return...

Capturing the nation’s mood in the hours after 9/11. Trading parts of a Soviet Army uniform for some “CIA trinkets.” Keeping that one big foster beagle no one else would have. All are episodes in the writing life of Peter Grier, a 45-year Monitor veteran whose quick mind and economy of language have brought Washington politics down to earth for Monitor readers (and no doubt still will, sometimes,...

To some degree, members of one major political party or the other have historically swung into distrust mode when it comes to elections – typically (and predictably) when their own parties have been down. What’s different now: One side is stuck on denialism. That’s despite a lack of evidence that fraud exists on a scale that could change an election, especially on the national level. Veteran Washi...

What might help give Black women more agency and control around their care when it comes to maternal health? It’s a realm in which positive outcomes have historically (and significantly) lagged behind those for other groups of women. In this episode, writer Cameron Pugh talks about reporting on how birth doulas may be one key to restoring some expectant mothers’ trust in a medical system that has...

What does it take to run a democratic election in a nation of 1.4 billion people? Well, time, for one thing. And as the 40-plus-day process has been elapsing, Monitor correspondent Fahad Shah has confronted his own logistical challenges – including a (literal) landslide. What’s more, he’s worked with his editor, Lindsey McGinnis, to frame coverage as a Monitor story, not just a play-by-play from t...