Welcome back to the City Journal podcast.

I'm Isabella Redgai.

And I'm Carrie Sherapolis.

But before we dive in, don't forget to hit subscribe or ring the bell so that you don't miss out on future conversations.

First up, we have Charles

Fane Lehman, Senior Editor of City Journal and Expert on Vices. Welcome, Charles. Happy to be here on the

other side of the mic. Also joining us today is Raina Mukherjee and my fellow and expert on

education policy. Thank you for joining us right now. Thanks for having me, guys.

All right, let's get into it. And first up, a really sad and unsettling story on August 22nd in Charlotte, North Carolina, Ukrainian refugee Arena Zarutzka was stabbed to death on the Charlotte Light Rail System by DeCarls, Brown Jr. A homeless vagrant and ex-Con.

Late last week, video footage of the incident was released, circling social media and

creating a really broad-ranging conversation on transit, crime, and mental health.

Charles, maybe can you give us a little bit more background on this story, fill in any of the gaps?

Yeah, you know, I think you did a pretty good job.

The context that I'll add is, A, sort of local to the story.

We know that this individual had a long history of prior criminal acts.

B, that he had some serious mental illness.

The woman who is victimized was a refugee from the war in Ukraine, who, you know, I think

there's something sort of shocking and sad about fleeing a war-turned country for safety in the

United States only to be brutally murdered on a train.

But, you know, I think this comes in the context of, you know, you see these shocking videos

of transit violence.

And I think anyone who saw it connected it to, for example, the train conflict, Daniel Penny's

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