As Russia’s war on Ukraine drags on, and the United States continues to spend billions of dollars in aid, a larger geopolitical question looms: What about Taiwan? It faces its own menacing neighbor, China, which considers the democratically ruled island part of its territory.

The question continues: In the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, will Americans be as devoted to the island’s defense as they are to helping Ukraine?

In a word, yes, says Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. In fact, she suggests, the Ukraine war is actually helping to heighten global awareness of Taiwan’s potential peril amid China’s “growing aggressiveness.”

“The Ukraine war has actually generated a lot more attention and interest in understanding Taiwan’s security situation and understanding Taiwan’s defense needs,” says Ms. Hsiao, speaking at a press breakfast Tuesday hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. “And so there has been an increase in questions, in awareness, in actions, in initiatives to find ways to support Taiwan so that that tragedy will not be repeated in our scenario.”

Ms. Hsiao, who does not do many public appearances, cuts an unusual figure in Washington. She is technically not an ambassador, because the U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country, following the “one China” policy of 1979. Her title is “Taipei economic and cultural representative.” But she and her office have close ties with the U.S. government.

The representative’s relationship with the U.S. itself is also deep. She was born to an American mother and Taiwanese father, and when she was a teenager, the family moved from Taiwan to Montclair, New Jersey, where she went to high school. She then attended Oberlin College in Ohio and graduate school at Columbia University in New York.

Ms. Hsiao says the people of Ukraine can be a source of inspiration for the 23 million people of Taiwan.

“We are looking at how the Ukrainians have fortified in the process of resisting the invasion,” she says. “The public will to defend [also sends] a strong message of deterrence.”

But don’t draw too close a comparison, Ms. Hsiao says. Taiwan is not Ukraine.

“We have different histories and a different strategic position in our region, but also in relationship to global security as well,” Ms. Hsiao says. “So I’m not drawing the exact parallels, and ultimately the course that we intend to move is of a relationship of continuing stability in the region. We are doing everything we can to deter and to prevent any possibility of conflict.”

She cites drones as one example of the modern technologies that Taiwan can deploy in its own defense. And, she makes clear, Taiwan is preparing to defend itself, and not just rely on other democracies to save the day.

She ticks off a list of measures Taiwan has taken: increasing its defense budget, building a domestic defense industry, reforming and enhancing its military reserves, and extending the conscript military training program from four months to a full year by next year. In addition, last year Taiwan established the All-Out Defense and Mobilization Agency, which takes “a whole-of-society approach to our defense preparedness,” she says.

Here’s the C-SPAN link to the video of our breakfast session with Ms. Hsiao. Following are more excerpts, lightly edited for clarity.

How does Taiwan strike a balance between strengthening its defenses and potential accusations of provocation?

You know, when you are in a bad neighborhood and you have someone in your neighborhood coming, yelling at us every day saying, “I’m going to eat you up, you are mine, and if you don’t listen, I’m going to destroy you,” I think, you know, it’s hard to say that we are provoking anyone by adding our own defense.

What do you say to the China “hawks” in Congress whose rhetoric can elicit responses from Beijing that may be unhelpful to Taiwan?

Well, across the board, as we engage with both the administration and Congress, I think there is an understanding that the source of threats or instability is generated by the Communist Party of China.

There’s an interest in deterring the potential for threat. I don’t see anyone wanting conflict or advocating the need to provoke a conflict with China. Instead, I see a lot of discussion on the need to strengthen ourselves so that we would be in a position to defend against potential aggression.

Taiwan produces more than 60% of the world’s semiconductors, or chips, and 90% of the most advanced chips. In the U.S., the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 aims to boost the production of semiconductors domestically. What concerns has Taiwan expressed to the U.S. over this new law?

The chip industry is a very important component of Taiwan’s broader economic resilience, and I think Taiwan will continue to be an indispensable and irreplaceable part of global critical supply chains. And Taiwan will remain the most competitive place for making chips in the world, including those advanced chips.

But having said that, I think our government in general supports our industry’s interest in having a global presence as well, not just to production facilities inside Taiwan. And as they consider some additional investments in like-minded democracies, and we want to ensure that those are also successful.

Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, Taiwan was experiencing a multi-billion-dollar backlog in arms deliveries, including F-16 aircraft. Is that affecting Taiwan’s ability to deter an invasion?

The challenges that the United States is experiencing in the defense supply chain have certainly had an impact on Taiwan. We are working actively in partnership with our American counterparts to find ways of addressing that. I'm told that the administration has also formed a “tiger team” to resolve some of these issues down to the factory floor.

There has also been a lot of bipartisan attention from Congress in supporting all the efforts to reform and address some of the glitches in the production and delivery of U.S. systems. And we have seen some good progress, actually, in terms of moving up some of the delivery timelines.

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

A Russian army advertisement stands near an apartment block lightly damaged by a reported drone attack in Moscow, May 30, 2023. Part of the attack flew over the home of Monitor reporter Fred Weir, a few miles outside the city limits.

It’s been frustrating to report from Russia over the past 16 months, when the story has largely been one of prevailing calm, quiet, and outright normalcy, even as an unthinkably destructive conflict rages not too far away in neighboring Ukraine. Most conversations with people around here tend to be about the weather, sports, local politics. Hardly anyone ever talks about the war.

All that changed rather abruptly early this morning.

A sudden series of powerful atmospheric explosions tore away any semblance of sleep, routine, peace – seemingly erupting right above our heads in the small village a few miles from the Moscow city limits where I have lived for over 20 years. They continued sporadically for half an hour, sometimes very close, sometimes a more distant rumbling.

Had this occurred a couple of years ago it might have been difficult to even guess what was happening, but now it was immediately clear that this was the sound of war raging – directly around our village.

Razdory is just a few miles to the west of Moscow, on the path that armed drones fired from Ukraine would follow in an attack on Russia’s capital. It’s also an area where a good deal of Russia’s top elite, including President Vladimir Putin, live. And – I never knew this – it’s apparently very well defended.

The many deafening bangs that rattled us this morning were made by numerous anti-aircraft missiles attempting to intercept at least eight – some reports suggest up to 32 – Ukrainian drones coming in at very low levels and aimed at Moscow. A few of them reportedly got through, causing minor damage and a couple of noncritical casualties in a few parts of the huge city.

But according to our local, very lively Telegram chat group, at least one was shot down nearby, and several fragments of what are probably Russian air defense missiles fell down inside the village itself.

Well, at least now people are talking about the war. The local chat group is alive with questions: Why doesn’t our village have an air alert system? How do we know when it’s safe to go outside? What is best to do when something is happening, go to the basement?

Fred Weir

Twilight falls outside Fred Weir's dacha, following a dramatic day in which Russian defenses shot down a morning drone attack passing overhead, causing loud explosions and falling debris in the normally quiet village of Razdory, Russia.

It’s all quite sudden, extremely jolting, and totally new.

The manager of our village co-op, an unflappable fellow whose name I won’t mention, posted a message of vigilance on the chat channel.

“Dear residents, it is necessary to inspect the surrounding area for damage to buildings, infrastructure, and other property. If some objects are detected, do not approach or touch them with your hands and immediately call the police!!! We are monitoring the territory, but not everything can be seen at once, and we need your help. ...

“The situation is very serious. Maybe now many people will wake up and realize that the fighting is going on, much closer than we thought, and that things will not be the same in the near future. Stay alert and take care of yourself.”

It’s astounding that no one seems to have predicted this. It’s been more than a year, and the nightly news has reported one unpleasant surprise after another to Russian audiences. Earlier this month two Ukrainian drones actually hit the Kremlin, one of them crashing directly onto the dome of the Senate Palace, where Mr. Putin’s office is located.

And, of course, Russian forces have been pounding Ukrainian cities from the air since the beginning of what they still call the “special military operation,” including more than two weeks of ongoing missile and drone barrages against Kyiv. All of that is thoroughly reported in the Russian media, as is all the chatter about Ukraine’s upcoming military counteroffensive. So, it’s not as if people didn’t know.

But today’s drone strike has brought the war home to Russians in a fresh and unexpected way. What will be the effect of that? Militarily, the attack was little more than a nuisance, so its intent must have been psychological. It’s never easy to read Russians, and they are famously tough and resilient. There’s certainly no sign of panic around here.

But the war came to Moscow today. And I, for one, felt I understood a bit better what Ukrainians are going through.

Stephen Humphries / The Christian Science Monitor

Brian Shin (front right), a writer for the Freeform series “Good Trouble,” carries a sign reading, "Wrote ChatGPT this,” May 2, 2023, outside Sony Studios in Culver City, California.

Can ChatGPT write the next big summer blockbuster? 

When The Monitor asked the artificial intelligence chatbot to create a science fiction comedy featuring a soccer team and father-and-son relationships, it instantly concocted a plot.

“The year is 3001,” begins the synopsis, “and the intergalactic soccer team of the United Galactic Alliance (UGA) are on the brink of the biggest game in the galaxy – the Intergalactic Cup.”

The team’s star player, Zane, is a handsome astronaut. The inciting incident? Zane discovers he has a half-brother, Max, who is the son of a rival space captain.

“Worse yet, it turns out that Max is the star player of their rivals – the Dark Side, a team of alien miscreants bent on galactic domination,” continues the storyline. Zane must decide whether to help Max win the Cup and make his father proud or ensure UGA wins and safeguard the galaxy from the Dark Side. 

The outline concludes: “Zane and Max struggle to reconcile their newfound relationship as they face off in the most important match in intergalactic history.”

It’s doubtful that this generic storyline would cause the agents for Austin Butler and Timothée Chalamet to scramble to buy the movie rights. But here on Earth, a real-life, high-stakes conflict is playing out between two teams. A major reason why Hollywood screenwriters are striking against studios is because they fear that artificial intelligence will usurp their jobs. 

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) doesn’t want to ban AI as a tool for scriptwriting. But it does want regulations to prevent studios from using AI to partially or completely write scripts. The studios, who are represented at the bargaining table by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), want flexibility to utilize the rapidly evolving technology. The disagreement boils down to economic compensation. But writers on the picket lines view AI as an existential threat. The question about whether humans and their creativity are dispensable is one that reverberates across other sectors of society.

Stephen Humphries / The Christian Science Monitor

Kira Talise, a scriptwriter for the Peacock TV comedy "Killing It," who was on the picket lines outside Sony Studios in Culver City on May 2, worries that writers are viewed as dispensable.

“Is there something fundamentally unique about humans?” asks Mike Wolmetz, program manager for human and machine intelligence in the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “There are things that are unique. Can they be replicated? We will see.”

Outside Hollywood studios, it’s common to see striking writers carrying placards such as “Alexa will not replace us” and “Wrote ChatGPT this.”

“The entire reason why we’re out here, in my opinion, is rooted in corporate greed, but also this idea of introducing AI to replace us,” says Kira Talise, a writer protesting outside Sony Studios in Culver City. “We are the people who write the content that makes these companies billions of dollars. ... It’s really disheartening to be undervalued in this way and for it to be perceived that we could just be replaced by computers.” 

If some writers’ views of artificial intelligence most closely resemble Sarah Connor’s in “The Terminator,” others are embracing the technology. In Berlin, Tristan Wolff used AI to develop a pitch for an episode of a crime series on German television. The production company was looking for fresh ideas for their long-running show. So they fed ChatGPT a general template of the drama and who the characters are. Mr. Wolff says that the producers in the room laughed when the AI tool offered up story ideas, because most of them were similar plotlines as hundreds of other episodes. Yet it also generated two ideas that they were excited to develop into scripts. 

Mr. Wolff publishes articles on Medium about how to interact with AI to write scripts. He starts by feeding ideas into AI so that it will “hallucinate” a story. 

“If you want the AI to plot it out, you would have to have a longer prompt, which gives it more dramaturgical constraints and more information about the characters, their flaws and dreams,” says the writer in a Zoom interview. “Even then, it’s not guaranteed that it creates a good story, but it might create something that’s interesting enough for you to work with.”

AI is a language-processing tool that is trained to predict the next word or sentence in a dialogue or a stream of text. You experience AI every time you start typing and a suggestion pops up with possible wording to complete the rest of the sentence. It anticipates how to respond by calculating probabilities of which words are most likely to come next. AI does this by scraping the Internet for data. For all their formidable abilities, AI tools still have limitations – for now, at least. 

“They don’t have an episodic memory like you have,” says Mr. Wolmetz, the scientist from APL. “They don’t have the formal reasoning that we have. They don’t have factual world knowledge.”

Stephen Humphries / The Christian Science Monitor

Chris Keyser, president of the Writers Guild of America West and a showrunner for HBO series "Julia," pickets outside Fox studios in Culver City, May 8. Mr. Keyser worries that studios will be tempted to put a writer in a room alone with a machine.

Phillip Berg, a Danish writer and director who lives in the Canary Islands, believes that AI is no substitute for the human mind when it comes to creating unique stories. He does, however, believe AI can help. Mr. Berg recently launched AI ScreenWriter, a tool that he likens to a sparring partner for writers. AI ScreenWriter can plot a three-act structure that follows a template for beats in a story. It can also generate scenes that incorporate characters’ traits and motivations.When it comes to dialogue, AI may be great at mimicking HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but it’s a long way from replacing Aaron Sorkin. 

“Creating the way a person talks is super nuanced, and AI is not going to completely replace any writers doing that,” says Mr. Berg in an interview via Zoom.

That’s one reason Hollywood producers won’t be able to rely on Google Bard to spit out the next “Shakespeare in Love” anytime soon. Nonetheless, screenwriters were alarmed when the AMPTP refused to discuss the issue of AI during negotiations with the WGA. 

“Their chief negotiator, Carol Lombardini, said as plain as day, ‘I’m not going to restrict the technology I might want to use at some point,’” says WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser during a break from marching outside Fox studios on a recent afternoon. “It’s too simple for them to put a writer in a room with a machine. ... As I often say, ‘The machine making it inhumanly fast and the writer making it humanly good, replace 90% of us.’” 

The AMPTP’s only comment on the issue has been via a May 4 press release.

“We value the work of creatives. The best stories are original, insightful and often come from people’s own experiences,” the AMPTP wrote. “AI raises hard, important creative and legal questions for everyone. ... So, it’s something that requires a lot more discussion, which we’ve committed to doing.”

Some have dubbed AI a “plagiarism machine.” For that reason, studios may be leery to accept AI-reliant pitches and scripts that could leave them open to lawsuits. 

“If AI is filling in the blanks of your story based on all of what’s come before – you know, it has access to every book ever written, every movie ever made, and all of those scripts – then how do we get anything new and original?” says Jessica Sharzer, who wrote the screenplay for the Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively comedy thriller “A Simple Favor,” as well as a sequel that is in pre-production. “Will you ever end up with ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ by clicking a button?”

Then again, many mainstream blockbusters draw from existing and fairly predictable paradigms. Think, for example, the thousands of iterations of the Cinderella story. But if a writer hopes to use AI to create a story that stands out – or is eligible for copyright – the script will still have to modify or arrange AI-generated material in a creative way. The key to avoiding generic outcomes is creating unusual prompts for AI to work with.

The capabilities of artificial intelligence are also likely to grow in leaps and bounds. APL’s Mr. Wolmetz isn’t aware of benchmarks that track growth in AI creativity. However, he observes, until recently, ChatGPT didn’t do well on LSAT exams. Now it scores in the 90th percentile. 

It’s one thing for machines to mimic happiness, sadness, jealousy, anger, shame, or desire. It’s something else altogether to create a script that leaves a lasting impression because it authentically reflects real-life experiences, which can be messy and contradictory. Those kinds of stories require authors to mine their inner recesses. 

“When I write, I always think about the emotional journey first, because the plot points are completely random until they have an emotional weight to them,” says Ms. Sharzer, who believes AI is a useful tool for scriptwriters but is a long way from being able to track a character’s interior evolution. “We are thinking on a plot level because that’s the easiest level to grab on to. But Meg LeFauve, who was one of the writers on ‘Inside Out,’ talks about ‘the hot lava.’ That is the thing that you don’t really want to touch. That’s deep down under the surface of yourself. That is the place where all the good ideas are.”

Worshippers murmur prayers near a Tijuana beach, hands pressed on rusted slats. The border fence before them continues toward the roar of waves, ending in the ocean.

Everyone is welcome at the outdoor church on the western end of the U.S.-Mexico border. The service and its setting – the binational Friendship Park – have long lured those with stories of separation and of dashed dreams of America. One of the visitors is Veronica Martinez, whose family lives north of the border.

Extending her palms toward the fence one recent Sunday, she mentally travels: “I just kind of transported myself to the other side.” 

In the 1980s, Ms. Martinez’s Mexican mother crossed the border unlawfully with her as a child to reunite with her father in the United States. The child grew into an adult who started her own family in the U.S. and built a life of her own over three decades there. But Ms. Martinez was never able to change her unauthorized status. Since deciding to visit her mom back in Mexico in 2019 before she died, Ms. Martinez has not been able to legally rejoin her American family.

“It was a big decision between my daughters and my mom,” says Ms. Martinez. “I just want to see them and hug them. ... I feel like I’m drained.” Her clothes match the colors of the country that won’t take her back: red-and-white blouse, blue denim vest.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

The interdenominational, bilingual Border Church holds its weekly service at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Mexico, April 30, 2023. Another service is held in solidarity beyond the border, on the California side.

Locals on both sides of the border have long known Parque de la Amistad, or Friendship Park, as an unofficial international meeting space. Family members without permission to cross once touched fingertips – to “pinky kiss” – through mesh. But access has evolved over the years, and the park is officially closed on the U.S. side. Local activists are protesting a federal construction project of two new replacement fences. They want visits to resume as soon as possible on the San Diego County side.

The Mexico side, however, remains public and vibrant, with photo-snapping tourists, a tended garden, and a muraled stretch of this primary border fence that backdrops the weekly Border Church. The place remains a witness to border policy penned a few thousand miles away, and a solace to the lives shaped by that policy. Those who can’t join loved ones on the other side can at least unite in solidarity here.

It’s an ethos of openness that the Rev. Guillermo Navarrete takes to heart in his open-air church, where congregants gather beneath a white lighthouse.

“I have no wall. I have no roof,” says the Border Church pastor. “My limit,” he says, pointing upward, “is the sky.”

A time capsule of border politics

An overcast sky hovers above Playas de Tijuana, but the threat of rain relents. Mic in hand, Mr. Navarrete leads the interdenominational, bilingual service in the afternoon, synced by audio with a service farther north, not far from the border. 

“Gracious God, we thank you. ... Though we are separated by many difficulties, we thank you that you are making us one,” says the Rev. Dr. Seth David Clark, an American pastor. His voice is piped in through speakers from his own Border Church service held outdoors, nearby in San Diego County. He pastors at a Baptist church earlier in the morning.

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Guillermo Navarrete (right) prays at the U.S. border fence while leading the weekly Border Church service, along with Robert Vivar, April 30, 2023, at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Mexico.

The park represents a time capsule of border politics – and not just for its boundary marker, a white obelisk, established after the Mexican-American War. In 1971, first lady Pat Nixon, wife of Republican President Richard Nixon, inaugurated the surrounding area on the U.S. side, today known as California’s Border Field State Park, with visions of an international gathering space.

“I hate to see a fence anywhere,” said the first lady, as quoted by the Associated Press. She crossed through a barbed wire fence to greet a crowd on the Mexican side. “I hope there won’t be a fence here very long.” 

By the 1990s, however, a Democrat – former President Bill Clinton – began to bolster border security in the area to curb illegal crossings. Friends of Friendship Park convened in 2006 to advocate for more public access to the area, including after a second border barrier was built. The group looks to Peace Arch Historical State Park on the U.S.-Canada border as a model – a landscaped day-use park where visitors to the Washington state side don’t need to bring documents (but passports are recommended).

Friendship Park remains a site of protest and politicking. In 2018 on the California side, it’s where former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration’s family separation policy.

The federal government, which has spoken with stakeholders, says it closed access to the area in 2019 due to personnel availability and barrier deterioration. Its construction project, scheduled to be completed this summer, calls for replacing primary and secondary partitions in the area with standard steel bollard fencing. The primary fence will include mesh on the north side to prevent the passing through of contraband, according to Jason Givens, spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection. “Visibility through the fence will remain the same,” he writes in an email. 

But Friends of Friendship Park objects to the plans.

“In our view, that violates President Biden’s campaign pledge when he said no new wall on the U.S.-Mexico border,” says the Rev. John Fanestil, a San Diegan. The minister is a founding member of Friends of Friendship Park, and began passing Communion across the primary border fence in 2008. Border Church began more formal services three years later. Those on the U.S. side assembled between the primary and secondary walls under Border Patrol’s watch.

The U.S. government says it will resume such visits on the U.S. side, allowing for communication “with friends and family located in Mexico on the other side of the primary barrier as in years past,” according to a government statement in March.

Mr. Fanestil and others consider the construction plans a visual and symbolic affront.

“They’re destroying the cross-border views and the cross-border experience of the space,” he says. “Most people visiting will not even recognize that there is a park.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Rocky Hernandez, a deported veteran from the United States, arrives early to help at a Border Church service at Friendship Park in Tijuana, Mexico, April 30, 2023.

Meanwhile, the Sunday tradition continues on the Mexican side. Rocky Hernandez, a deported U.S. veteran, comes early to set up the arrangement of tents and chairs.

“I stopped going to work on Sundays,” says the hairstylist. “Just to come over here and help.”

Others are drawn by a fellowship that welcomes visitors as they are – including asylum-seekers, beachgoers, and people living on the street. 

“This is the truly most inclusive church I’ve ever been at, and I love that,” says Carol Clary, an American who retired in Tijuana. She doles out drops of hand sanitizer and welcomes those in line for a post-service lunch, typically tacos or tostadas.

Yessenia claps along to a song on a guitar. The migrant from Guatemala says she’s grateful to receive donated clothes and toys offered at the gathering.

“I know Brother Guillermo well, and he’s a good person,” she says, her ponytailed daughters by her side. 

Ms. Martinez, here alone, regards the waves where the border fence ends. Desperate for her daughters, she once considered crossing in low tide. Hope held her back. She recently learned that one of her daughters plans to visit soon.

 “You have to be very patient,” she says. Her eyes swell with oceans of their own.

Shoulders aching, Um Hazem holds up in her hands a sample of the day’s labor, a fist-sized nugget of Jordan’s prized “white gold.”

“It may only be yogurt, but it is yogurt that unites us,” says the grandmother.

Sour, salty, filling, and soothing, the yogurt is the key ingredient in mansaf, a UNESCO-recognized dish that is a culinary balm for the souls of Jordanians, enjoying an undisputed status as a national symbol.

While the ancient dish is prized for its taste, it represents an important meeting point for the people of this historic Middle East crossroads. Uniting both nomadic Bedouins and sedentary villagers, it passes on generational lessons in sharing, cooperation, and respect with every serving.

At weddings and funerals, high school graduations and royal receptions, and even on lazy Fridays, the diverse peoples who call Jordan home gather around large platters of mansaf year-round.

A mound of rice or cracked wheat topped with chunks of falling-off-the-bone lamb and drizzled with a hot yogurt sauce, this three-ingredient meal has been a staple in the lands east of the Jordan River and northwest of the Arabian Peninsula for more than 2,000 years.

Ultimate team effort

The dish is a product of cooperation and coexistence between Bedouin shepherds and village farmers: The cracked wheat is from farming villages, the yogurt from the Bedouin herders’ goats and sheep.

Taylor Luck

Hossam Malahmeh holds up dried "jameed" balls ready to be turned into the secret sauce for Jordan’s national dish, "mansaf," at his family home-turned-workshop in Karak, in southern Jordan, on March 18, 2023.

Producing mansaf’s key ingredient is the ultimate team effort in Karak, a southern Jordanian region famous for jameed, the dehydrated sun-dried yogurt used to make the sour and salty sauce Jordanians can’t get enough of.  

In the Karak village of Zahoum, the Malahmeh family works 16 hours a day, seven days a week while the spring milk season lasts. 

In a rented industrial kitchen, aproned family members flutter from one giant stainless steel vat to another to churn and strain yogurt, a thicker version known as labneh, butter, and finally jameed.

Each step requires precision. One degree off on a burner or a single second without a stir can ruin an entire batch of 60 kilograms of milk, wasting a day’s work.

“Milk season means nonstop work for the whole family until June,” Hossam Malahmeh says as his wife readies a large mixer. “But all of Jordan is counting on us.”

As family members shift vats of milk through various stages of production, shepherds from the desert come knocking on the door with more churns and buckets of minutes-old sheep’s milk.

Taylor Luck

Hossam Malahmeh and his mother Um Hazem pour a vat of heated sheep’s milk into buckets to be processed into yogurt at the Malahmeh "jameed" kitchen in Karak, in southern Jordan, on March 18, 2023.

Fresh off a milk delivery, shepherd Abu Odeh marvels at the kitchen as he sips a glass of tea – a short break before he returns to his 200 sheep.

“The times and technology have developed over the centuries, but the rhythm of our lives is the same,” says Abu Odeh, whose herd’s milk has put two children through university. “Spring is our season, and jameed and mansaf are our livelihoods.”

“No mine and yours”

Abu Odeh and other residents of the region say their jameed’s prized flavor is down to the diverse geography of Karak and much of southern and central Jordan: rolling green hills that suddenly thin out into desert plains.

The fertile hills and arid desert offer a variety of shrubs and grasses throughout the year and different climates for shepherds’ flocks, which are rotated according to grazing arrangements between Bedouins and villagers that date back centuries.

Taylor Luck

Hussein, a shepherd, with his grazing flock near Qatraneh on the side of the Desert Highway in southern Jordan on March 21, 2023. Bedouin shepherds rotate their flocks between Jordan’s arid plains and lush farming villages in agreements with tribes and families, giving a unique flavor to the yogurt sauce that is key to Jordan's national dish "mansaf."

“You need both desert and farms, village dwellers and Bedouins to make proper jameed and proper mansaf,” says Abu Odeh.  

For the final laborious step, Mr. Malahmeh’s mother, Um Hazem, requires all the women of the family to roll up their sleeves and pitch in: daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces, even her husband’s second wife.

Sitting around a giant tray of strained and compressed yogurt, each woman scoops a handful and then starts to clap, slap, shape, and toss the product into fist-size balls to be dried and sold.

Their shoulders and arms ache from the previous night’s session, but they keep going to get the day’s batch of 400 balls done.

“There is no mine and yours, your job, my job,” says Um Hazem. “It’s jameed season and everyone automatically works together.”

Outside, the Malahmeh men grunt in agreement as they crouch down and to scrape off salt crystals from dried jameed ready for sale.

Taylor Luck

"Jameed" yogurt balls at varied stages of drying sit in bags at the factory of Zaal Kawalit in Adir, Karak, in southern Jordan, on March 18, 2023. The dried yogurt, a key ingredient of Jordan’s national dish, is a symbol of Bedouin-villager cooperation in the kingdom.

Two miles north, Zaal Kawalit runs churning machinery he brought to Jordan from Turkey in 1992, revolutionizing the production of an ingredient that was then still being made by grandmothers furiously shaking yogurt in leather bags in the sun.

“We had to modernize jameed production to ensure mansaf’s survival in the 21st century,” he says as he welcomes an impeccably dressed shepherd into his dairy factory. “Otherwise jameed and the important lessons of mansaf would have died out.”

Etiquette and values

Late last year UNESCO inscribed mansaf on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list, highlighting the dish as an “important and well-known symbol that evokes a deep sense of identity and social cohesion” that “is associated with the agro-pastoral lifestyle” in Jordan.

“Mansaf is not just a food. It is a ceremony,” explains Nayef Nawaiseh, a cultural historian in Karak who helped compile mansaf’s UNESCO heritage bid. “The goal is not to fill the stomach, but to honor guests and to gather people around.”

“The etiquette, preparation, and rules are what make the dish mansaf. These accepted rules are passed on from generation to generation; they embody the social values that make up our identity as Jordanians,” says Mr. Nawaiseh.

Taylor Luck

Hazem Malahmeh (right) and other members of his family scrape salt off of dried "jameed" yogurt balls, the key ingredient to Jordan’s national dish "mansaf," at their family home-turned-workshop in Karak, in southern Jordan, on March 18, 2023.

The cooperation required to make mansaf extends from communities to within the household, encouraging a gender parity, of sorts, in the kitchen.

Traditionally, in a practice still carried out in some Bedouin villages today, men prepare the meat and yogurt over an open fire while in a separate tent women cook the cracked wheat and shrak bread – the final dish becoming equal part the efforts of husband and wife.

One of the first lessons of mansaf is how to share: The dish is served on a large circular communal platter around which up to 13 guests sit or stand.  

With one hand, each person scoops cracked wheat or rice, meat, and yogurt into a neat line in front of them – never straying right or left, taking food from their neighbor’s portion, nor reaching across to the other side of the dish.

After the 13 guests get a taste of mansaf, another 13 diners – often from the host family – then come and eat from the same platter, while the host distributes more meat and pours out splashes of piping hot yogurt for each guest. 

In Jordan’s tribal culture, mansaf gathers the entire clan and neighbors, no matter any personal disagreements – the meal often acting as a forum to mediate disputes, a culinary approach to conflict resolution. 

“The ceremony of mansaf teaches each generation the importance of community, solidarity, how to sit and converse and listen to others with respect and in a calm and dignified manner,” says Mr. Nawaiseh. “It is not just food to gulp down. It is community.”

AP

Brescia University social work graduate Dashia Shanklin from Bowling Green, Kentucky, has a laugh with her aunt, Frances Graham, while joining other graduates for the university's commencement ceremony, May 13, in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Scores of studies have cited concerns over COVID-19’s impact on young people’s mental health and academic development. Yet in their own voice, those graduating from American colleges and universities across this spring tell a different story. It is one of resilience, tempered optimism, and enterprising creativity.

“There’s a Gen Z mentality of: OK, throw it our way and we’ll make it work,” Ben Telerski, who received a degree from Georgetown University last week, told CNBC.

This year’s graduating class is a unique marker of an emerging generation. Some members are among the first to be born after 9/11. They arrived on campus before “social distancing” and “Zoom dating,” yet within six months became pioneers of remote learning. Their values have been molded by constant change and crisis. Almost nothing about them is predictable. Perhaps because of this, their concerns and aspirations are already changing workplace norms.

The unemployment rate for young workers is the lowest in 70 years, according to the Economic Policy Institute, yet nearly 40% of Generation Z workers already in or entering the workforce cultivate a side hustle. That partly reflects the cost of living: Most young people worry they won’t make enough in one job to make ends meet. But that’s not the only reason. Many prioritize values-based factors over salary – like diversity in the workplace, mental health benefits, and flexibility to develop creative projects they see as important to their quality of life and future well-being.

“Work is a source of identity for many,” Meredith Meyer Grelli, a business professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told the BBC. Gen Z workers resist that. “Passion projects,” she said, “serve as a way for young people to find value.”

That desire for creativity and spontaneity, according to a recent Wunderman Thompson Intelligence survey of young workers in the United States, Britain, and China, is driving many to give up a technology that was perhaps the single most defining influence of their early lives. It found that 67% of Gen Z members believe technology – the tool that has made their generation the most globally connected in human history – makes them feel more detached.

“When I think of joy, wonder, magic, I think the physical world still has an advantage over the digital world,” Momo Estrella, head of design at Ikea China Digital Hub, told the study’s authors. “The digital work suffers a lot from distractions.”

Gen Z is recharting other social pathways, too. A survey by the Walton Family Foundation last October, for example, found that while Gen Z students showed declining interest in careers in government, more than 70% participate in volunteer and other local civic activity. “They feel the people and communities who are closest to the problems can drive more equitable civic engagement and impact,” the study found.

An emerging generation is starting to reveal itself. Through an emphasis on inclusivity, collaboration, and independence, it is turning disruption into durable purpose.