--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hi there, I'm Gideon Resnick. Before we get into today's episode, we have a question for you. Has a traumatic event impacted your relationship with money? Maybe you lost your job during the 2008 financial crisis or the pandemic in 2020. Or maybe you've been evicted or been through a divorce where money was a sticking point. We want to know, how did that experience change the way that you think about and manage your finances? If you do have a story to share, we want to hear about it for an upcoming episode of Apple News In Conversation. You can use your iPhone's voice memos app to record yourself. Tell us your name, where you're from, your story, and how it's affected you. And please try to keep it to about a minute or so. You can send it to us at Apple News Today at Apple.com. Again, that's Apple News Today at Apple.com. And we might include your story on the show. Thanks so much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Friday, March 29th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamit Abassu. This is Apple News Today. Coming up on today's show, the efforts to bring Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich home, schools that want cell phones gone, and Beyoncé goes country. But first, let's take a look at some other stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In a unanimous ruling, the International Court of Justice is ordering Israel to allow full access for humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel has claimed it's not blocking aid for Palestinian civilians. The UN's top court is the same one that's considering a case accusing Israel of genocide. Judges also call for an immediate release of hostages held by Hamas.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: In US legal news, the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried now faces a quarter century in prison. The federal judge also ordered him to repay more than $11 billion. NBC legal analyst Danny Savalos was on CNBC pointing out that Bankman-Fried got a good bit less time than prosecutors had wanted.
--:-- Danny Savalos: Sam Bankman-Fried was definitely not on the high end of the range. I know 25 years is a lot of time, but what he could have gotten was quite a bit more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in the world of sports, there's been a history-making breakthrough in the broadcast booth. Jenny Kavnar is the first woman to be a primary play-by-play announcer in Major League Baseball. She's now the voice of the Oakland A's TV broadcast. She made her debut yesterday.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Oakland A's starter tries to square up a bunt, and right away, defense comes into play for the Oakland A's. How about Ryan Noda with a nice slide?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: League officials preserved the headset Kavnar used on opening day, and it's now headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's been a year since Russian authorities arrested journalist Evan Gershkovich on charges of espionage while he was on a reporting trip for The Wall Street Journal. Both the State Department and the Journal have emphatically rejected the charges as bogus. And the U.S. government classifies Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: From the newsroom of the Journal, assistant editor Paul Beckett has been leading the efforts to bring Evan home. I started by asking Beckett how Evan is doing.
--:-- Paul Beckett: So what comes across from his letters and really the most important ones are to his family is that he's doing okay. He's holding up okay under very tough circumstances. He's in a prison that was designed to disorient and isolate its inmates. He's in a cell for 23 hours a day. He gets one hour out in a courtyard in a space that's about the same size as his cell, so it's about six paces square. So conditions are not great, but he is reading, he's writing, he is exercising.
--:-- Paul Beckett: And his sister Danielle has talked about how sometimes it's easier for them to joke about things they've talked about sharing lines from the hit show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is their hometown, and he and his family in a pretty good loop of maintaining and supporting each other through this, you know, pretty awful one year.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And then for the course of that year, we have heard promises from President Biden that the White House is going to bring Evan home. His family has said they want to see those efforts ramped up. What can you tell us about where things actually stand today?
--:-- Paul Beckett: Well, we just remain very reliant on President Biden's promise to Evan's parents to bring their son home. So that's our guiding light. We saw in early December, the State Department said it had made an offer for Evan, and that was rejected, which I don't think was a huge surprise to the US, but it did show that the two sides were communicating.
--:-- Paul Beckett: Since then, President Putin has talked about Evan twice. So we know that he is being talked about in the Kremlin. He's definitely being talked about in the White House and elsewhere in the US government. And we believe that our conversations going on between the two sides, we're not privy to those, and that's appropriate, but we remain optimistic that they'll be able to find a way to end this outrage as soon as possible.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And on your side of things, what do efforts to bring him home look like from the newsroom of the Journal?
--:-- Paul Beckett: Yeah, we're trying to do everything we can think of to, first of all, be there for Evan and be there for his family. So that's obviously the top priority is to make sure that he's doing as well as possible and whose family feel supported.
--:-- Paul Beckett: We also have a channel that does talk to the US and any other governments that want to engage on what we think might be done, asking them, pushing them to do more to resolve this. We also have a big newsroom of journalists, you know, who first of all want to see us creating as broad awareness of evidence we can, both in the United States and around the world.
--:-- Paul Beckett: We have a 24-hour readathon going on of his work, and that's really designed to show that one day is a long time, and 365 is really an eternity. And we've been greatly aided in that by other news organizations, yourselves, governments around the world. And that's been a bit of a silver lining of all this is how many people have shown that they care.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: About Evan and his story. He is the son of Soviet-era immigrants to America. He went back because he was fascinated by Russia. He went back to explore the land of his heritage. And he really enjoyed it, got a lot from it, and in many ways was a perfect correspondent for that job.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: So I think he appeals on that level. And then I think people look at this and think, you know, Vladimir Putin, if you look at Paul Whelan, you look at Evan, you look at Brittany Greiner, you look at Trevor Reed, you look at Alsu Khrumasheva. I mean, he is really just amassing hostages to trade, and that's a pretty despicable business.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Yeah. And given all of this, how is it that you and your colleagues keep yourselves from losing hope in this really dark situation?
--:-- Paul Beckett: We will remain relentlessly optimistic because we have to. We need to be there for Evan. We need to have confidence that he will come out. And the way he's handled himself has been really inspiring.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Paul Beckett is the associate editor for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it. Appreciate your support. Thank you.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The Wall Street Journal has extensive coverage of Evan Gershkovich, which you can read on the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Most schools in the U.S. have some kind of rules in place limiting cell phone use in class. But teachers say those rules are hard to enforce and that students are definitely breaking them.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: As warnings grow about distracted students and the potential mental health risks associated with spending more time on our phones, more school districts are experimenting with ways to limit use during the day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: One of them is the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, one of the largest school systems in the country with about 300,000 students. It has a pilot program requiring phones to be stored in pouches that block cell signals during class time.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, a teacher in the Clark County District expressed frustration over having to tell students to put their phones away every few minutes. She said there was no learning going on because of the phones.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And the parent of a 10th-grade student there, Emmy Monreal, told a local NBC station that she was on board with the idea.
--:-- Emmy Monreal: I think that's great. You know, go to class, you learn, and let the teachers instruct, and they don't have to be distracted by the cell phones.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some data shows academic improvement at schools with phone bans. And some principals say they've seen reduced fighting, since social media use can fuel bullying.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But not everyone supports banning phones in schools. A national poll commissioned by a parents group showed that only a third of parents were for it. Many say they want to be able to stay in touch with their kids throughout the day.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And Riley Myriad, a Clark County high school senior, brought up the issue of safety.
--:-- Riley Myriad: In a school shooting, students can use phones to call for help. It's hard to get out of the pouch. The pouches are a pain. And if something were to happen, what, you expect everyone to run to the front of the class, scramble for your phone. You can't tell which is yours.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Thousands of schools in the U.S. have decided to disable or lock up phones during the day. A company that sells these pouches that the phones are kept in has seen a tenfold increase in sales since 2021.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Policymakers and educators say they're concerned that chronic cell phone usage throughout the day has become widespread in schools.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Some mental health advocates point to increased phone use and social media as partially responsible for the surge in psychological distress that's been reported by teens. They argue that constant distractions associated with smartphones are changing childhood for the worse.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And finally, the long-awaited new album from Beyoncé was released overnight. And as we talked about before, it's a country album called Act Two Cowboy Carter.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It features a sprawling track list, including a cover of Jolene that's already getting a lot of attention just hours after it came out.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Since the first singles came out, there has been a lot of excitement and speculation as to what the megastar artist would do with a full album exploring this genre.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Beyoncé, a Texas native, has long infused her southern roots into her music, from references to the chopped and screwed stylings of Houston hip-hop, to the sounds of Alabama and the Louisiana bayous, where her family tree extends.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And music journalist Taylor Crumpton, a fellow Texan, told us that Beyoncé continues that theme in her latest work.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: So when Beyoncé is using country music, she is using the music of her family, of her family lineage, something that she has been toying at for years with Black is King and Lemonade and Self-Title, this returning to home, this using home as an exploration of self.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: And when we think about the lineage of country music, that is one of the main themes is talking about your relationship, a journey that you went on, a journey that you went on in nature.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: So inherently, all that she has been doing has been country coded. But I think this album, Cowboy Carter, is her saying it very plainly that I am country and country is me because I am a byproduct not only of country folks, but of this country.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: Crumpton said that Beyoncé's work is directly confronting a preconceived notion about the genre itself.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: The greatest lie country music ever told was convincing the world it is white speaks to the reality right now. It's that because of intentional marketing and the powers that be in Nashville, most of the world thinks that country music is America's last great white genre.
--:-- Taylor Crumpton: When in fact, it's never been white, neither in its origins and neither today. It has always been a genre that is multiracial, multigenerational, and significantly has been brought into prominence by the contributions of Black artists, Mexican artists, Indigenous artists, and their descendants are still alive making this great country music today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find more Beyoncé coverage and deeper dives into the Star-Setted album in the Apple News app.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And if you're already listening in the News app, a narrated article is coming up next. New York Magazine has a much-discussed cover story about Andrew Huberman. He's the Stanford neuroscientist behind the popular podcast Huberman Lab. The story looks at his many controversies, from his secret carousel of romantic relationships to his endorsement of questionable nutritional supplements.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story. Enjoy the weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday. Thank you.
