--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, October 20th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Shamita Basu: On today's show, a day in the life of a Palestinian family, the real and dramatic history behind the new film Killers of the Flower Moon, and new research on how prehistoric women were skilled hunters. But first, let's take a quick look at top stories from around the world.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In Gaza, there is an agonizing wait for aid and fear of a potential Israeli ground assault, all while Israeli bombs keep falling. One of the latest strikes damaged a historic church where civilians had taken shelter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Israel's military says it was targeting a nearby command and control center that was firing rockets toward Israel, and it's investigating the incident.
--:-- Shamita Basu: President Biden says American support for Israel's fight against Hamas is vital. He addressed the nation in a televised speech from the Oval Office last night.
--:-- Shamita Basu: He also stressed continued U.S. support for a Palestinian state, drawing a distinction between Hamas and millions of Palestinian civilians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden spoke out against hate crimes targeting Muslim and Jewish people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And he said America should support Israel and Ukraine for similar reasons.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common. They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy, completely annihilate it.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Biden says he's requesting a major aid package from Congress, billions more for Israel and Ukraine's defense, as well as other security funding.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, it's not clear when the House will have a speaker to consider the president's request.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Yesterday, Republican Jim Jordan first said he would temporarily pull out of the race.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was expected to clear a path for a deal to give more power to acting Speaker Patrick McHenry for now, so House business could continue.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But that plan fell apart.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jordan ultimately reversed course, saying he would keep running for Speaker.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But it's not clear he has the votes.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The leadership battle has gotten unusually ugly, with several Republicans who voted against Jordan saying they and their families received threatening messages.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And in legal news, there's an important plea deal from one of former President Trump's co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts. She's getting six years of probation and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case against Trump and others.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Trump has pleaded not guilty.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's go back to the conflict in the Middle East and take a broader look at what life is like for Palestinians.
--:-- Shamita Basu: A new book from Nathan Thrall does exactly that. He's an American Jewish writer living in Jerusalem.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's a true story, one that begins before the current war in Gaza, focusing on a Palestinian community in the West Bank.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's about one man's heartbreaking attempts to find out what happened to his five-year-old son, Milad, after his school bus was in a terrible accident.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: The students who go to the school have all kinds of different statuses. Some come from families with blue IDs. Others come from families with green IDs.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: And you have people with different colored IDs in the same families.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: The color of a person's identification card dictates where they can go.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: Blue ID holders can enter Jerusalem. Green IDs are restricted to the West Bank.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: What that meant for this school and this school trip was that they couldn't go to a nearby play area just on the other side of the wall in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a settlement.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: And instead, they had to take a long and winding path along this imposing 26-foot-tall concrete wall to get to a distant play area that's still on the other side of the wall.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Milad's bus passed through a checkpoint where it was hit by a huge truck, flipped, and caught fire.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Milad's father, Abed, rushed to the site of the crash, but was slowed down by the checkpoints, separation walls, and crowded roads.
--:-- Shamita Basu: By the time he got there, the children were gone.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Bystanders had taken them to hospitals on either side of the wall based on the color of their ID cards.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Abed, he himself has a green ID, so he doesn't have any hope of entering Jerusalem to look for his son.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So he goes to Ramallah and he waits there trying to find information.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The rest of the story is in Thrall's book, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I talked about it with Thrall on this week's episode of Apple News in Conversation, which will play for you at the end of this show.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: I never felt such despair over the future of the place I live in.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: Thrall told me how the story of this one terrible day for this family is inextricably linked to the history of the region that brought Israelis and Palestinians to this point.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: The aim was to explain a very complicated system through the lives of the people who are navigating it, and navigating it on the worst day of their lives.
--:-- Nathan Thrall: Because on that day, it came into a sharp relief what it meant to have a green ID or have a blue ID and not be able to search for your child at the hospital you think he's located at.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Martin Scorsese's new movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, is out now in theaters and will be streaming on Apple TV Plus later on.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's about murder, greed, and exploitation of Native Americans in early 1900s Osage County, Oklahoma.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Much of what you'll see on screen is pretty close to what happened in real life.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But before you watch the Hollywood version, check out a story from National Geographic.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It'll give you critical context that'll help you follow what you see on the screen.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Here are the main points to know.
--:-- [Pause for a moment]
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the late 1800s, in this part of Oklahoma, a massive amount of oil was discovered under the land, which was owned and split by members of the Osage Nation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was enough oil to make them the richest nation on earth at the time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That drew attention from the federal government and settlers in Oklahoma, many of whom held racist attitudes toward Native Americans and believed they shouldn't have rights to the land.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Public pressure pushed Congress to give courts in Oklahoma jurisdiction over land held by Native Americans deemed incompetent by a judge.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They would have a white guardian appointed to take over all of their financial affairs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Hundreds of these white overseers pocketed millions of dollars.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The legal system helped people steal from the Osage people, but some wanted more, turning to murder to gain control of valuable land.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the 1920s, there was a string of suspicious deaths of Osage people: poisonings, explosions, shootings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: At least 60 Osage people were murdered or went missing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: People panicked, and after a long wait for help, the federal government finally stepped in.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This was a time before the FBI, so a group of federal agents started an undercover search that ultimately ended in a handful of convictions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But to this day, many of the murders in Osage County are still unsolved.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And finally, it's time to abandon a famous theory in anthropology.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You've probably heard the idea that men evolved as hunters and women as gatherers, tied to distinct biological differences.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's been repeated in history lessons, in pop culture, in dating culture, for decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But mounting evidence today suggests this is wrong, that women were hunters all along.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Scientific American looks at the growing body of new studies and the flaws with the older research.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That old set of papers was published in 1968.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was literally titled Man the Hunter.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Scientific American explains that the researchers behind it often ignored evidence, sometimes in their own data, that contradicted their hypothesis.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That included evidence about indigenous women in Japan who hunted for their communities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some of the new research comes from exercise science.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Experts have learned women have clear physiological advantages for certain types of physical activity that require endurance.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Today, that could help running a marathon, but in prehistoric times, that allowed women to better chase prey over long distances.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Researchers say there's still much to be learned about the role estrogen plays in athletic performance, but one thing we can say is women were out there hunting with the men in early human communities.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's a whole lot more to learn here, and you can read the whole article in the Apple News app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And if you're already listening in the News app, as I mentioned, the full In Conversation episode with Nathan Thrall about a Palestinian family in the West Bank is queued up to play for you next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Or you can find it by searching for Apple News In Conversation in the Podcasts app.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Enjoy your weekend, and I'll be back with the news on Monday.
