PBS anchor Christiane Amanpour rewound to 2023 on Friday as she welcomed author Giridharadas to promote his new book on the Daniel Penny case. According to Giridharadas, the case represented a cautionary tale of what happens when people develop a “sense of desertion” that they feel forces them to take matters into their own hands, which is also why some people on the left support Luigi Mangione. The fact that the two cases are wildly different was of no consequence to Amanpour or Giridharadas.
At one point Amanpour read from Giridharads’s work, “So, you basically—you know, this is fleshing out this Rorschach Test that you say, ‘The supporters of Penny and of Neely had disagreed on every dimension of the case, the basic facts, race, class, mental health, homelessness, policing, crime, and more. But if you step back from some of their arguments to hear the deeper stories they were telling, there were certain echoes. They shared the sense of being undefended. They shared the sense that the cavalry was not coming.’”
She then wondered, “So, for me, that last line is—seems to be what is happening right now, whether it's in the United States or elsewhere, that some politicians are reacting to the idea that Americans or British or wherever you go are on their own. So, I first want to ask you, what did you see? You say you spent three years riding that train trying to investigate. What did you find after doing that for three years?”
PBS/CNN International's Christiane Amanpour welcomed Anand Giridharadas to promote his new book and rewind to 2023 and compare Daniel Penny to Luigi Mangione, "And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that… pic.twitter.com/sCeK8ayeR0
— Alex Christy (@alexchristy17) October 3, 2026
Giridharadas claimed that, “I think one of the things we have in common around the world right now is this sense of abandonment. And if you look inside that subway car, just starting in that subway car that day, this was an experience that everybody in that subway car had in common, despite all the differences.”
He further explained, “Jordan Neely, you know, mentally ill homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in. The passengers on that train, when they testified in the trial, eventually spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices.”
Extrapolating the Penny case to society as a whole, Giridharadas continued, “And, Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry is not coming, the sense that we're on our own, the sense that maybe somebody do something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything, I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age. The concern is so many people around the world feeling abandoned, feeling unheard and unseen, unrecognized.”
He also declared, “And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that emotion feels common. It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody's coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.”
Finally getting to his twisted analogy, Giridharadas proclaimed, “As this case was wrapping up, right during the jury deliberations, there was a shooting in midtown Manhattan of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, and a lot of the reporters who I covered this trial with were immediately deployed to cover that next case. That was their next case. The same arguments started to develop on the far-left that had developed on the far-right that supported Daniel Penny. On the far-left, people were saying, Luigi Mangione, the assassin, stepped into the void of the American healthcare system and the cruelty of that system.”
Penny acted to defend his fellow subway passengers from a man who was considered a threat and was eventually acquitted of all charges against him. Mangione admitted in court to stalking a man and then shooting him in cold blood while he was simply out for a walk.
Here is a transcript for the October 2 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
10/2/2026
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, you basically—you know, this is fleshing out this Rorschach Test that you say, “The supporters of Penny and of Neely had disagreed on every dimension of the case, the basic facts, race, class, mental health, homelessness, policing, crime, and more. But if you step back from some of their arguments to hear the deeper stories they were telling, there were certain echoes. They shared the sense of being undefended. They shared the sense that the cavalry was not coming.”
So, for me, that last line is—seems to be what is happening right now, whether it's in the United States or elsewhere, that some politicians are reacting to the idea that Americans or British or wherever you go are on their own. So, I first want to ask you, what did you see? You say you spent three years riding that train trying to investigate. What did you find after doing that for three years?
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS: You know, I did spend a lot of time riding the trains and understanding what happened in that train car. And one of the things that's striking, this is an age of division. This is an international show. You have covered these issues in so many different places, and we're speaking to people in so many different places.
But I think one of the things we have in common around the world right now is this sense of abandonment. And if you look inside that subway car, just starting in that subway car that day, this was an experience that everybody in that subway car had in common, despite all the differences.
Jordan Neely, you know, mentally ill homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in. The passengers on that train, when they testified in the trial, eventually spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices.
And, Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry is not coming, the sense that we're on our own, the sense that maybe somebody do something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything, I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age. The concern is so many people around the world feeling abandoned, feeling unheard and unseen, unrecognized.
And this sense of desertion that has become so commonplace and that I experience when I travel to other countries, that emotion feels common. It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody's coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.
As this case was wrapping up, right during the jury deliberations, there was a shooting in midtown Manhattan of the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, and a lot of the reporters who I covered this trial with were immediately deployed to cover that next case. That was their next case. The same arguments started to develop on the far-left that had developed on the far-right that supported Daniel Penny. On the far-left, people were saying, Luigi Mangione, the assassin, stepped into the void of the American healthcare system and the cruelty of that system.
