--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita here. Before we get started today, I have a quick request. On an upcoming episode of In Conversation, we're going to be talking about retirement.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, there's so much focus on the financials of retirement, and of course, that's important, but we want to talk about the spiritual side. You know, how to plan for a big shift in identity, in purpose.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So, we want to hear from retired folks out there. What have been some of the unexpected challenges of retirement? And what are some of the unexpected joys that you found? We want to hear about it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Just use your iPhone's voice memo app to record yourself. Tell us your name, where you're from, and a little bit of your retirement story. And please try to keep it to under a minute or so.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're not retired, but you know someone who is and has a good perspective to share, please help them send a voice memo our way. You can send it to us at AppleNewsToday at Apple.com.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Again, that's AppleNewsToday at Apple.com. We might include your story on the show. Thanks.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Wednesday, December 14th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, how Sandy Hook parents spent the past decade channeling their grief into action. The ways that pandemic-era hygiene changed kids' germ exposure. And we'll explain the holiday travel blob.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But first, imagine a Boeing 757 crashing and killing everyone on board every day. That's the number of people in America dying from fentanyl.
--:-- Scott Hyam: It's the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history. And we have lost more than a half a million people to drug overdoses over the last 10 to 15 years.
--:-- Scott Hyam: And they are increasing exponentially every year. And a lot of that is because of fentanyl.
--:-- Scott Hyam: According to The Post's reporting, years of failures by Democratic and Republican administrations made the problem worse.
--:-- Scott Hyam: The first misstep was the Bush administration's failure to rein in the drug companies that were pouring massive amounts of painkillers onto the streets of America.
--:-- Scott Hyam: During the Obama administration, when they started cracking down on these companies, there were millions and millions of Americans who were addicted to opioids and no place to turn.
--:-- Scott Hyam: Drug dealers figured they could get those millions who were addicted to prescription opioids hooked on the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
--:-- Scott Hyam: And it got worse just as Trump took office. His administration focused on building a border wall but that didn't matter much to smugglers, who brought fentanyl in through official border crossings.
--:-- Scott Hyam: And the problem has ramped up in recent years. Federal officials estimate they only capture 5-10% of the fentanyl coming from Mexico, maybe less.
--:-- Scott Hyam: I met a Homeland Security agent in San Diego who seemed haunted by seeing nearly 500 fatal overdoses.
--:-- Scott Hyam: And there are people who are overdosing every day, every night. Paramedics, the police departments, the federal agents who are down there trying to stop this are completely overwhelmed.
--:-- Scott Hyam: You know, it feels like you're in this horror film where there are people who literally look like zombies kind of stumbling around the streets.
--:-- Scott Hyam: Many communities across the U.S. are feeling this impact of fentanyl overdoses.
--:-- Scott Hyam: Throughout their reporting, Post reporters spoke to people who lost loved ones after this drug flooded the streets.
--:-- Scott Hyam: They wonder why, after so much death and destruction across the country, why this White House is not talking about this every single day.
--:-- Scott Hyam: You have so many Americans dying. I mean, last year we lost more people to drug overdoses than we did to the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined.
--:-- Scott Hyam: The Post has a multi-part series on the fentanyl crisis. This reporting gets into the details of these drug smuggling operations from Mexico and why the federal government here failed to track the scope of the problem for so long.
--:-- Scott Hyam: You can read the whole series in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's been exactly a decade since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
--:-- Shamita Basu: 20 children and six adults were killed.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On grim anniversaries like this, you often see a lot of headlines along the lines of 10 years on and nothing's changed about guns in America.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But families of Sandy Hook victims would disagree. Many of them turned to activism after the shooting.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And on this day, they're counting their victories and working for more.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: I have never lost hope in people. And our ability to do the right thing.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: So I wish now that having been 10 years later. That no more school shootings were happening. And that gun violence was a thing of the past.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: It's probably going to take more than another 10 years to get there but as long as we have the will we just keep moving forward.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: I'm one of the founders of Sandy Hook Promise, one of the group programs train students and teachers to look for signs of violence before it happens.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: The group says it trained more than 14 million people who helped prevent 11 planned school shootings.
--:-- Nicole Hockley: Sandy Hook parents have also been strong voices on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This summer, President Biden signed the first major gun safety law in nearly 30 years.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It tightens background checks and encourages states to implement red flag laws, which help keep guns away from potentially dangerous people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On the state level, a new report by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence says 525 significant gun safety laws were adopted in the decades since Sandy Hook.
--:-- Shamita Basu: As Hockley said, the work isn't done.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sandy Hook families grieved along with Uvalde parents this year, who've launched gun reform campaigns of their own.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But 10 years on, they're remembering the children they lost and marking the progress they've made in their names.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Kids are germ magnets. Whether it's at the playground, school, or daycare, they come into contact with all sorts of germs and bacteria that help them build up their immunity to fight disease, digest food, and strengthen cognitive function.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That combination of invisible stuff is called the microbiome, and it's different for each of us.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But during the early days of the pandemic, things changed.
--:-- Catherine Wu: It's possible that some of the different behaviors we adopted during the pandemic might have slightly changed the composition of certain kids' microbiomes.
--:-- Catherine Wu: The huge, huge, huge asterisk on this is we don't know that different is necessarily bad, right? Like, that doesn't necessarily mean we've doomed a generation of kids, just that this is worthy of further study.
--:-- Catherine Wu: Wu talked to a number of researchers for this piece. Some said they're worried that the changes to kids' microbiomes during the pandemic could mean they are more susceptible to long-term health conditions like asthma and diabetes.
--:-- Catherine Wu: Some were more hopeful. There are other researchers that think that there are changes that people made during the pandemic that could have actually helped things and made kids' microbiomes more diverse.
--:-- Catherine Wu: If families got outside more if they adopted a pandemic puppy Science hasn't fully figured out what the impact of lockdowns is on kids microbiomes.
--:-- Catherine Wu: Wu says parents shouldn't worry too much about how they handled an unusual time in history.
--:-- Catherine Wu: I don't think anybody should regret trying to protect their family during this pandemic.
--:-- Catherine Wu: And, you know, if there were changes that worry parents to some extent, I don't want anyone to think they have doomed their kids.
--:-- Catherine Wu: There's always time to introduce some good microbes into kids' bodies.
--:-- Catherine Wu: If anything, scientists are standing by to see the results of this accidental experiment in hyperhygiene.
--:-- Catherine Wu: It may lead us to learn some interesting new things about how our microbiomes develop in unusual circumstances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Okay, I promised that I would tell you what the holiday travel blob is. So let's do that before we go.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This comes from Wired Reporting, looking at data and talking with travel industry experts.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It shows that as people are traveling more, a new pattern is emerging.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The traditional American holiday travel spike has expanded out into a sort of holiday travel blob.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, maybe this is easier to explain with an example.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Take Thanksgiving. Usually the big travel days are the day before and the Sunday after, right?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Well, this year, the Friday before Turkey Day was nearly as busy as the day before the holiday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's almost a week out. It's pretty surprising.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Airlines and industry experts say this is becoming more of a thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People are now choosing different dates either to save money, avoid crowds, or just have more time at their destination.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A Deloitte survey found that Americans are adding an average of six days to seasonal trips, largely because they can work remotely.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And forecasters are predicting similar blobby travel patterns through the December holidays.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, not everyone is glomming on to the blob.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Families with kids are, of course, still tied to school schedules.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And many jobs don't offer remote work.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But with more people choosing to travel at different times, that might lead to broader options for flights, less congestion at airports, and possibly, maybe, slightly smoother holiday travel overall.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including coverage of today's World Cup match.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the news app right now, stick around.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've got another angle on Sandy Hook from People. It's a first-person story from a survivor who was in second grade at the time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: These days, she's an outspoken advocate for gun safety laws. That'll start in just a moment.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll be back with the news tomorrow. Thank you.
