--:-- Mark Garrison: Good morning. It's Friday, January 5th. I'm Mark Garrison in for Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Mark Garrison: On today's show, dangerous winter weather coming to the East Coast, overhauling parking in dozens of American cities, and Esther Perel on the real reasons couples fight. But first, President Biden is delivering a campaign speech in Pennsylvania today, just before the three-year mark of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
--:-- Bloomberg White House correspondent, Akilah Gardner: His pitch then, and it's still now, is he talked about the soul of America and the fight for the soul of America and really calling out hate and this rhetoric that he feels that Donald Trump embodies. And he is sort of holding himself as a moral standard.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Of course, voters will also weigh other factors, including economic issues and the various global wars. But Gardner says that the Biden campaign thinks that the health of American democracy is a top concern for Democratic voters.
--:-- Akilah Gardner: They feel that there were certain polls that showed that Americans broadly, especially independents, especially Democrats, felt as though democracy was under threat. And they felt that that helped them keep the Senate as they did in the midterms.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Which is why Biden is using the anniversary of the Capitol attack to speak to voters. But January 6th has had a very different effect for many Republicans.
--:-- Akilah Gardner: Recent polling from The Washington Post finds that Republicans are now less likely to blame Trump for the January 6th attack and more sympathetic to those who stormed the Capitol. And more than a third of Republicans say they believe the false conspiracy theory that the FBI incited the attack.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Gardner says that Trump's criminal charges and the congressional investigation of the insurrection have gotten him more support from his base.
--:-- Akilah Gardner: Really Trump has cast himself as a victim whether it was in that investigation whether it is in the indictments. And that I think more than anyone really expected has really driven support behind him.
--:-- Mark Garrison: In that same post-poll, when Democrats and independents are included, a majority of Americans do think that the attack on the Capitol threatened democracy.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Now let's take a quick look at some other major stories in the news. In Iowa, a sixth-grade student is dead and several other people wounded. A 17-year-old gunman attacked a school before dying by suicide.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Student Ava Augustus talked on NBC about hiding in the classroom until she got the all-clear.
--:-- Ava Augustus: People are calling their parents, friends, and then we hear he's down. You can go out. And I run and you can just see glass everywhere. Blood on the floor.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Police say they found an improvised explosive device in the school, which didn't go off.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The East Coast is in for a major winter storm this weekend. New York and Boston are likely to get snow, and Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia are forecast to at least get frigid rain and dangerous roads.
--:-- Mark Garrison: That Biden speech in Pennsylvania we just talked about was originally tomorrow, but the White House moved it up because of the severe weather forecast.
--:-- Mark Garrison: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on another trip to the Middle East as fears rise of major conflicts spreading beyond Gaza.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Yesterday, the U.S. launched an airstrike against a militia in Baghdad, which had claimed several attacks on U.S. forces. American strikes inside Iraq are rare these days.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Iraq says it was a violation of agreements with the U.S.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Paralympian gold medalist Oscar Pistorius is now out on parole after serving 11 years in a South African prison. He was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Reva Steenkamp.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Before going to prison, he was a celebrated sprinter, nicknamed Blade Runner, for the carbon fiber prosthetics he used.
--:-- Mark Garrison: America has a lot of cars, and that means a lot of debate about parking. Drivers want to park close to their destinations. And for a long time, city planners catered to them.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Many communities have had longstanding parking minimums, strict regulations as to how many spots need to be provided for every retail office or apartment building.
--:-- Mark Garrison: But NPR looks at how that's changing. A lot of places are ditching parking minimums, saying that the land can be put to better use.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Cities like Austin are at the forefront of this movement. The city council there recently eliminated parking minimums, making it the largest U.S. city to do so.
--:-- Mark Garrison: The argument is that eliminating the minimums creates more space for affordable housing and encourages more walking and better public transit options. It could also help the environment.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Asphalt parking lots trap heat and can cause water runoff problems.
--:-- Mark Garrison: It's important to understand that this is not an elimination of parking, just removing the regulation. Now property owners can decide how much parking they want to create.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Still, some residents don't like the move. Malcolm Yates told NPR that Austin needs a lot of parking spots.
--:-- Malcolm Yates: Austin has developed as a low-density city without adequate mass transportation system. Austin citizens cannot give up their cars.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Tony Jordan, president of the Parking Reform Network, told NPR that people should focus on what's lost when land is taken up by parking lots.
--:-- Tony Jordan: The housing that could have gone in that space or the housing that wasn't built because the developer couldn't put enough parking. So we just lose housing in exchange for having convenient places to store cars.
--:-- Mark Garrison: And there's also a lot of support for the change in Austin and elsewhere. More than 50 other cities and towns have gotten rid of parking minimums from Alaska to California to Florida.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Finally, the well-known couples therapist Esther Perel is Shumita's latest guest on our interview show, Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They talked just before my maternity leave about the problems modern couples face. In Esther's view, we're asking too much of our partners these days.
--:-- Esther Perel: We want one person to give us companionship, economic support, co-parenting, intellectual equal, best friend, confidant, passionate lover.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we also hope to find that person on an app.
--:-- Esther Perel: And the unprecedented expectations come also with unprecedented disappointments.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She has tips for how to navigate this and she does have some customized thoughts for me.
--:-- Esther Perel: Well, I would really kick myself if I had this chance to speak with you Esther Perel and not ask you for some advice personally. I've been feeling it the whole conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'm pregnant with my first child. So I wanted to ask you, what advice do you have for me and my partner, for couples like us, right when they become parents for the first time?
--:-- Esther Perel: Having a child is a redistribution of resources. Time, money, attention, touch, sensuality, you name it. And it demands a lot of attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It demands real careful, deliberate attention to not let the couple die on the vine.
--:-- Esther Perel: Especially given that today the survival of the family depends on the happiness of the couple.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yeah. So the couple that gives everything they have to their kids and leaves nothing for themselves puts the family at risk, not just the couple.
--:-- Esther Perel: That's something I tell lots of people because there is an unprecedented child centrality at this moment that really demands for the people to abdicate of themselves at a level that has reached an apex of folly.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now you know what I think. And so to do that, to have the couple maintain itself, the most important thing I can say is find a community.
--:-- Esther Perel: Find a community. Find a community. Don't go at it alone. You get support. You get adult time. And you get a sense that other people care about your kids, that you're not the only ones who have to be there responsible and with your love and your attention.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And that liberates you when you know that they have other people.
--:-- Esther Perel: I don't know what kind of extended family you have around you, but if you do involve them and if you don't create a family of choice.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Oh, that's such great advice. Thank you so much.
--:-- Esther Perel: You're welcome.
--:-- Mark Garrison: If you're listening in the Apple News app, that full episode is queued up to play next. If you're listening in the podcast app, just search for Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Mark Garrison: Enjoy the weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
