Hello and welcome back to the City Journal podcast.

I'm your host for today, Carrie Seropoulos, and joining me are three of Manhattan Institute's Sharpest Minds.

Today we have with us, Jesse Arm, our vice president of external affairs, Josh Appel, a policy

analyst on our city's team, and Stu Smith, our new investigative analyst. Gentlemen, thank you for

joining me. Thank you for having us. Having us. Happy to be here. We've got a lot to talk about,

but before we dive in, everyone, please remember to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode

and we can keep growing the conversation. Now, starting off, it's been a long and kind of tough week. It's a story

sweeping the nation. I'm sure all of our viewers that have been tuned into this. Last week,

in the middle of a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University, conservative activist

Charlie Kirk was shot and killed. Charlie was a proud advocate

for free speech, open debate, and American values. Our condolences go out to his family and his many

friends and to the millions of people whose lives were positively impacted by him. Charlie's work

touched the lives of millions, including some of us here today.

Jesse, you wrote a piece last week for City Journal talking a little bit about the impact

that Charlie Kirk played in your life. Tell us a little bit about how he led to you to get

to where you are today. Yeah, well, I think in broad strokes, Charlie Kirk's assassination

is differentiated from many of the other

kind of political tragedies that we've seen because it's a break with precedent in so many ways.

This wasn't, you know, shooting at a president. That's something we've seen before in this country.

And Kirk himself was not

a polarizing agitator who was far out on the political fringe. This was somebody who, rather than

pushing the envelope, was kind of, you know, a 31-year-old father who really made it his mission

...