The Economist.
Hi, it's John Prow and this is Checks and Balance from The Economist.
We had planned something else for this week's show,
but on Wednesday, Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah, and so we're going to talk about that instead.
There won't be a quiz or a historical diversion.
We hope to return to something more like normal service next week.
We're going to hear about Charlie Kirk, his influence in the conservative movement in the United States,
and we're going to talk more broadly about the rise in political violence in the United States.
As ever, we have both Charlotte Howard and James Bennett here.
Hi, John. We're recording this on Friday morning,
so it's worth noting that there's a lot we still don't know about the shooting.
The president has said now that they have someone in custody, but at this point, we don't know too much beyond that.
John, I was with you in Washington this week as this horrible news broke,
and I think it's accurate to say that that city and the whole country is still reeling from this assassination.
That's right, and it's partly because what happened is so awful,
and because Americans and people looking at the country from outside are wondering
if the country's now in a new era of political assassinations like in the 1960s.
And it's also, I think, because Charlie Kirk had such a large impact on those who listened or or watched his podcast.
He was somebody who reached millions of young conservatives
and brought them into politics and sort of translated political debates for them.