You do have this circumstance in Karachi that because people know things are changing, the stakes are higher. Everyone is thinking, "My home is threatened, my job is threatened, my identity is threatened, my world is threatened." And that creates a very particular sort of climate, that is linked.
Steve InskeepSo many awful things have happened in Karachi, it's true. It has its own crazy rhythm. Even as crazy as other news is in Pakistan, the city manages to beat that in the frequency of catastrophes.
Steve InskeepYou do have this circumstance in Karachi that because people know things are changing, the stakes are higher. Everyone is thinking, "My home is threatened, my job is threatened, my identity is threatened, my world is threatened." And that creates a very particular sort of climate, that is linked.
Steve Inskeep[Mark] Lilla is a professor at Columbia University in New York, and he has waded into the debate about what Democrats and liberals should do now. Some Democrats answer nothing.
Steve InskeepI see parallels between Karachi and the cities that I was familiar with: a very different place, but in terms of its human stories not really very different at all. That was what excited me about the place - that it was so complex, as difficult to me as an outsider and yet so human in a way that was ultimately very familiar.
Steve InskeepI would say that the one incredible thing that Karachi has going for it is the unabated supply of new migrants that pour into it day after day. It could be a poor factory worker who simply wants a job, it could be an ambitious guy coming for an education - they all add hope and vibrancy to the city. Now, this is not something that is generally taken as positive in Karachi. But the hope is that the migration that comes into the city replenishes its stores of resilience and energy.
Steve Inskeep