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Economist Podcasts

Deaths spiral: America’s spike in murders

Economist Podcasts

The Economist

News, News & Politics

4.35K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2021

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Estimates suggest that last year’s rise in murder rates was the greatest in perhaps half a century, reversing a long decline; we ask what is behind it. Amid Europe’s woefully slow vaccine rollouts, Serbia stands out as an unlikely success story. And the pandemic’s natural experiment on the ideal number of working hours.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday,

0:09.9

we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The fraction of Serbia's population

0:19.4

that's fully vaccinated against COVID-19 is the second highest in Europe.

0:23.6

We look into why a relatively poor and corrupt country got so far ahead of the average, and what it may mean in the political long run.

0:31.6

And research has long shown that employment leads to fulfillment. Some amount of working gives people a sense of purpose.

0:39.9

But what is that amount? The pandemic's crimped hours and furlough schemes have provided a natural experiment to find out.

0:56.5

First up, though,

1:04.2

With the attention of the world's media focused on the pandemic last year,

1:07.3

it may have seemed as if there were fewer of the mass shootings for which America has become notorious.

1:10.1

This year, lamentably, there's no mistaking the trend.

1:13.6

On March 16th, a gunman in Atlanta apparently targeted Asian Americans.

1:18.6

Grizzly new details tonight in the Atlanta spa shootings.

1:21.6

The attacks were three massage parlors in the northern suburbs of the city.

1:25.6

Eight people were murdered in roughly one hour,

1:28.7

six of them, Asian women. Days later, ten more deaths at a supermarket in Colorado. A shooting

1:34.9

has claimed multiple lives, as the police put it, in Boulder. We had a very tragic incident today

1:40.9

here at the King Supers. There was loss of life.

1:44.9

Second mass shooting with multiple deaths in just one week in this country.

1:49.9

Three killed at a house party gone wrong in North Carolina,

1:53.3

six members of the same family in Texas.

1:56.0

A mother and her two children shot by a man who then took his own life in New York.

2:00.9

All those murders just in the first week of this month.

...

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