My takeaway from this is touchgrass. It may be a cliche, but it's also good advice and perhaps

necessary to domestic tranquility. Welcome to the Cato podcast. I'm Gene Healy, Cato's Senior

VP for Policy, along with my co-host and our Evan Scharf chair for the public understanding of economics, Ryan Bourne.

Good to be with you, Jane. We're joined by two colleagues. Emily Eakins is, among other things,

Director of Polling at Cato. She helps us make sense of American public opinion to the extent that it makes any sense at all.

Great to be with you.

And Ian Vasquez, who's got the whole world in his hands as director of Cato's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

Hi, guys.

Later in the program, Ian's going to help us unpack recent developments in Latin America,

including what seems to be a serious setback to somebody we've been rooting for it, Cato, Argentinian President Javier Malay.

But the event that's been on everyone's mind over the last week, for good reason, is the

cold-blooded political murder of Charlie Kirk,

an influential conservative voice, but more importantly, a 31-year-old husband and father of two young

children. One reason Kirk's assassination felt personal, if I can be forgiven a personal note, is that he died doing

something that all four of us and all of our colleagues do as a regular part of our jobs,

going to college campuses, getting in the mix, debating with students, telling the things

that aren't popular and that they're not going to hear from their professors.

And while engaged in that sort of enterprise of persuasion, engaged in civil debate, he was shot in the neck and he bled to death under a sign reading,

Prove Me Wrong. I think it's all too human at moments like this to extrapolate from one shocking

evil act and try to draw larger lessons about where we are as a society right now.

And I think we should try to avoid that temptation.

But, you know, that said, if you're worried about where we are as a society,

...