SPEAKER_1: Hi there, Gideon here.
SPEAKER_1: Before we get into today's episode, we have a question for you.
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SPEAKER_1: Good morning, it's Friday, March 29th.
SPEAKER_1: I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shumita Basu,
SPEAKER_1: this is Apple News Today.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: But first, let's take a look at some other stories that are in the news.
SPEAKER_1: In a unanimous ruling, the International Court of Justice is ordering Israel to allow full access for humanitarian aid into Gaza.
SPEAKER_1: Israel has claimed it's not blocking aid for Palestinian civilians.
SPEAKER_1: The UN's top court is the same one that's considering a case accusing Israel of genocide.
SPEAKER_1: Judges also called for an immediate release of hostages held by Hamas.
SPEAKER_1: In US legal news, the disgraced cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman Fried now faces a quarter century in prison.
SPEAKER_1: The federal judge also ordered him to repay more than $11 billion.
SPEAKER_1: NBC legal analyst Danny Savalos was on CNBC pointing out that Bankman Fried got a good bit less time than prosecutors had wanted.
SPEAKER_2: Sam Bankman Fried was definitely not on the high end of the range.
SPEAKER_2: I know 25 years is a lot of time, but what he could have gotten was quite a bit more.
SPEAKER_1: And in the world of sports, there's been a history-making breakthrough in the broadcast booth.
SPEAKER_1: Jenny Kavnar is the first woman to be a primary play-by-play announcer in Major League Baseball.
SPEAKER_1: She's now the voice of the Oakland A's TV broadcast.
SPEAKER_1: She made her debut yesterday.
SPEAKER_1: League officials preserved the headset Kavnar used on opening day and is now headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: Both the State Department and the Journal have emphatically rejected the charges as bogus.
SPEAKER_1: And the US government classifies Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained.
SPEAKER_1: From the newsroom of the Journal, assistant editor Paul Beckett has been leading the efforts to bring Evan home.
SPEAKER_1: I started by asking Beckett how Evan is doing.
SPEAKER_3: So what comes across from his letters and really the most important ones are to his family is that he's doing okay.
SPEAKER_3: He's holding up okay under very tough circumstances.
SPEAKER_3: He's in a prison that was designed to disorient and isolate its inmates.
SPEAKER_3: He's in a cell for 23 hours a day.
SPEAKER_3: He gets one hour out in a courtyard in a space.
SPEAKER_3: It's about the same size as his cell, so it's about six paces square.
SPEAKER_3: So conditions are not great, but he is reading, he's writing, he is exercising, and his sister Danielle has talked about how sometimes it's easier for them to joke about things.
SPEAKER_3: They've talked about sharing lines from the hit show, It's Always Sunny, in Philadelphia, which is their hometown.
SPEAKER_3: And he and his family are in a pretty good loop of maintaining and supporting each other through this pretty awful one year.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: His family has said they want to see those efforts ramped up.
SPEAKER_1: What can you tell us about where things actually stand today?
SPEAKER_3: Well, we just remained very reliant on President Biden's promise to Evan's parents to bring their son home.
SPEAKER_3: So that's our guiding light.
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_3: Since then, President Putin has talked about Evan twice.
SPEAKER_3: So we know that he is being talked about in the Kremlin.
SPEAKER_3: He's definitely being talked about in the White House and elsewhere in the US government.
SPEAKER_3: And we believe that there are conversations going on between the two sides.
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_1: And on your side of things, what do efforts to bring him home look like from the newsroom of the journal?
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_3: So that's obviously the top priorities to make sure that he's doing as well as possible and his family feels supported.
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_3: We also have a big newsroom of journalists, you know, who first of all want to see us creating as broad awareness of Evan as we can both in the United States and around the world.
SPEAKER_3: We have a 24-hour read-a-thon 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.
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_3: About Evan and his story, he is the son of Soviet-era immigrants to America who went back because he was fascinated by Russia.
SPEAKER_3: 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.
SPEAKER_3: So I think he appeals on that level.
SPEAKER_3: 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 Griner, you look at Trevor Reed, you look at Alsuk Kurumashvili.
SPEAKER_3: I mean, he is really just a massing hostages to trade, and that's a pretty despicable business.
SPEAKER_1: Yeah, and given all of this, how is it that you and your colleagues keep yourselves from losing hope in this really, you know, dark situation?
SPEAKER_3: We will remain relentlessly optimistic because we have to.
SPEAKER_3: We need to be there for Evan.
SPEAKER_3: We need to have confidence that he will come out.
SPEAKER_3: And the way he's handled himself has been really inspiring.
SPEAKER_1: Paul Beckett is the associate editor for the Wall Street Journal.
SPEAKER_1: Thank you so much for your time.
SPEAKER_1: We really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_3: Appreciate your support.
SPEAKER_3: Thank you.
SPEAKER_1: The Wall Street Journal has extensive coverage of Evan Gershkovich, which you can read on the Apple News app.
SPEAKER_1: Most schools in the US have some kind of rules in place limiting cell phone use in class.
SPEAKER_1: But teachers say those rules are hard to enforce and that students are definitely breaking them.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: It has a pilot program requiring phones to be stored in pouches that block cell signals during class time.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: She said there was no learning going on because of the phones.
SPEAKER_1: And the parent of a 10th grade student there, Emy Monreal, told a local NBC station that she was on board with the idea.
SPEAKER_4: I think that's great.
SPEAKER_4: You know, go to class, you learn, and let the teachers instruct, and they don't have to be distracted by the cell phones.
SPEAKER_1: Some data shows academic improvement at schools with phone bans.
SPEAKER_1: And some principals say they've seen reduced fighting, since social media use can fuel bullying.
SPEAKER_1: But not everyone supports banning phones in schools.
SPEAKER_1: A national poll commissioned by a parents group showed that only a third of parents were for it.
SPEAKER_1: Many say they want to be able to stay in touch with their kids throughout the day.
SPEAKER_1: And Riley Myriad, a Clark County high school senior, brought up the issue of safety.
SPEAKER_1: In a school shooting, students can use phones to call for help.
SPEAKER_5: It's hard to get out of the pouch.
SPEAKER_5: The pouches are a pain.
SPEAKER_5: And if something were to happen, what?
SPEAKER_5: You expect everyone to run to the front of the class, scramble for your phone.
SPEAKER_2: You can't tell which is yours.
SPEAKER_1: Thousands of schools in the US have decided to disable or lock up phones during the day.
SPEAKER_1: A company that sells these pouches that the phones are kept in has seen a tenfold increase in sales since 2021.
SPEAKER_1: Policymakers and educators say they're concerned that chronic cell phone usage throughout the day has become widespread in schools.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: They argue that constant distractions associated with smartphones are changing childhood for the worse.
SPEAKER_1: And finally, the long-awaited new album from Beyoncé was released overnight.
SPEAKER_1: And as we talked about before, it's a country album called Act Two Cowboy Carter.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: Since the first singles came out, there has been a lot of excitement and speculation as to what the megastar artists would do with a full album exploring this genre.
SPEAKER_1: Beyoncé, a Texas native, has long infused her southern roots into her music.
SPEAKER_1: 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.
SPEAKER_1: And music journalist Taylor Crumpton, a fellow Texan, told us that Beyoncé continues that theme in her latest work.
SPEAKER_5: 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-Titled, this returning to home, this using home as an exploration of self.
SPEAKER_5: 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.
SPEAKER_5: So inherently all that she has been doing has been country coded.
SPEAKER_5: 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.
SPEAKER_1: Crumpton said that Beyoncé's work is directly confronting a preconceived notion about the genre itself.
SPEAKER_5: The greatest lie country music ever told was convincing the world it is white speaks to the reality right now is 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, when in fact, it's never been white, neither in its origins and neither today.
SPEAKER_5: It has always been a genre that is multiracial, multi-generational 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.
SPEAKER_1: You can find more Beyoncé coverage and deeper dives into the star-studded album in the Apple News app, and if you're already listening in the news app, a narrated article is coming up next.
SPEAKER_1: New York Magazine has a much-discussed cover story about Andrew Huberman.
SPEAKER_1: He's the Stanford neuroscientist behind the popular podcast Huberman Lab.
SPEAKER_1: The story looks at his many controversies from his secret carousel of romantic relationships to his endorsement of questionable nutritional supplements.
SPEAKER_1: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find that story.
SPEAKER_1: Enjoy the weekend, and we'll be back with the news on Monday.