--:-- Shemitah Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, June 29th. I'm Shemitah Basu. Duarte Geraldino is off. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: More weather records have been broken as the Pacific Northwest roasts in a heat wave. Portland and Seattle both saw record highs as heat swept through a region that's usually known for much milder weather. As summers get hotter and heat waves stretch for days, we enter a special danger zone where the human body literally can't take the heat.
--:-- Bill McKibben: I'm Bill McKibben from The New Yorker, and in a recent article, I talk about the human body's limits when it comes to extreme heat.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: He talks with Dr. Rupa Basu, the chief of air and climate epidemiology at California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. She says that humans are very adaptable, but once the temperature gets to 120 degrees, that's too hot for the body to handle.
--:-- Dr. Rupa Basu: She recently published research linking intense heat and pregnancy complications. She also found higher rates of injuries and homicides in hotter weather. Our brains just don't function well when it's hot.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: And to go back to adaptability, yes, our bodies can get acclimated to extreme heat, but it takes some time. There's a detailed explainer on heat stroke in Outside magazine. When your body is acclimated to the heat, your sweat changes so you don't lose as many electrolytes. Your heartbeat slows down to help maintain blood pressure.
--:-- Dr. Rupa Basu: But training your body to respond the right way in hotter climates, that can take anywhere from 7 to 14 days. When heat waves hit typically cooler places like the Pacific Northwest, there simply isn't enough time for your body to adjust.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Melanie Ergiles wasn't planning to apply to Johns Hopkins University. The high schooler from New York knew that Hopkins rejects the majority of its applicants. She figured it was a reach. But when the school announced it wouldn't require SAT or ACT scores, Ergiles decided to give it a shot.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: As USA Today reports, she's part of an explosion in college applications. Numbers are up at all kinds of colleges. At selective schools, applications increased by more than 20%. There are a number of factors at play. The fact that many schools dropped requirements for standardized tests is a big one.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: A lot of high schoolers saw a golden opportunity to apply based only on grades, achievements, essays, and their diverse backgrounds. USA Today talked to the CEO of Common App, which provides a standard application process for hundreds of schools. She said the growth in numbers means selective schools have some of their most diverse applicant pools in history.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: There's a particular jump in the number of people applying to historically Black institutions. Hampton University saw a bump of nearly 40 percent. The school's admissions dean says big donations and a vice president in the White House who graduated from a Black college have created new buzz.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: USA Today talks to a student who chose Howard University over UCLA, and he said that was in part because he felt Black universities play an important role in America's racial reckoning right now.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: As for Ergiles, the New York high schooler, she got into Johns Hopkins, along with seven other schools. She says people shouldn't be defined by standardized test scores.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: Every year, when the World Happiness Report comes out, Americans get some disappointing news. The United States has never been one of the top 10 happiest countries on that list. The Nordics dominate. Finland alone has taken the number one spot for four years running.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: This has a lot of Americans looking to these happier nations for guidance, ways to make our own lives better. But Joe Pinsker in The Atlantic says, we are taking away the wrong lessons from the happiness rankings.
--:-- Joe Pinsker: Cold showers, berry picking, walks in the forest, baking cinnamon buns. These are the kinds of cultural practices that get credited with making people in northern European countries some of the happiest on Earth.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The most famous concept is probably hygge, the Danish word that roughly translates to coziness. In the U.S., books have been sold and merchandise has been marketed all based on this idea that by adopting these kinds of rituals, you too can be happy.
--:-- Joe Pinsker: But Pinsker argues that these lifestyle trends distract from the real key message of the happiness rankings, that people are happier when they live in equitable societies with comfortable standards of living, strong social ties, good health and trust in government.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: It's not because they're lighting candles or sweating in saunas or taking those berry picking walks. And it's unlikely that those things alone will dramatically improve your self-fulfillment.
--:-- Joe Pinsker: So if hygge won't really make you all that happy and you can't move to Helsinki or Oslo, Pinsker has another suggestion. There's a Scandinavian concept called lagom. It's a Swedish and Norwegian word that means just the right amount.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The idea is that if you have middle-of-the-road expectations, the usual setbacks of life don't hurt your happiness. In that sense, one step toward a happier life may be finding joy in moderation.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: The ninth installment in the Fast and Furious franchise is out now. It's racked up over $400 million in worldwide ticket sales. It's a sign that moviegoers are eager to get back into theaters. And the enthusiasm for this particular movie also proves the enduring appeal for one of cinema's oldest and most reliable tropes: the car chase.
--:-- Spiro Rosados: I'm Spiro Rosados, the stunt coordinator for the Fast and Furious franchise. And while the premise of one car driving after another car at high speeds sounds like a pretty simple formula, Spiro says not every chase scene is guaranteed to entertain.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: He reveals some of his secrets on how to make a car chase really pop. Spiro says he likes to keep the camera low, close to the action. He's talking inches off the ground low. The result is an exaggerated sense of speed.
--:-- Spiro Rosados: Spiro says he got the job because the director loved how close to the action he put the cameras. Spiro also says one thing he always makes sure to do is include a few scenes from the points of view of regular people on the street suddenly caught up in the action.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: It forces the audience to really think, what would it be like if I was just sitting in a coffee shop or out to lunch and this crazy car chase happened right outside the window?
--:-- Spiro Rosados: Spiro's final and most important tip is to keep it real. He says 90% of what you see in a Fast and Furious movie is not CGI. No matter how far-fetched those car chase scenes might be, if it feels real, the audience goes home satisfied.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: That could be a scene where dozens of cars are falling from the sky. The motorcade just turned on seven. Perfect. Make it rain.
--:-- Shemitah Basu: If you're not willing to literally make it rain cars, what's the point of doing a franchise film with a nine-figure budget?
--:-- [Music continues to play]
--:-- Shemitah Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And while you're there, check out some of our audio stories. We'll talk with you again tomorrow. Thank you.
