

Apple News In Conversation
Apple News
Apple News In Conversation with Shumita Basu brings you interviews with some of the world’s best journalists and experts about the stories that impact our lives. Join us every week as we go behind the headlines.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 5, 2022 • 19min
They survived school shootings. How are they 20 years later?
In 1998, a student opened fire at a middle-school dance, killing one teacher and wounding another teacher and two students. Journalist Marin Cogan was a sixth grader at the time, and she recalls the shock and horror she and her classmates felt. Back then, school shootings were far more rare; kids and educators didn’t have the language or the tools to talk about — much less process — their trauma. For Vox, Cogan recently connected with survivors of other school shootings that took place in the 1990s. She spoke with Apple News Today host Shumita Basu about coming of age in a world wholly unprepared to deal with the aftermath of mass school shootings.

Jan 22, 2022 • 25min
Nikole Hannah-Jones on the 1619 Project and reframing U.S. history
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times Magazine and the creator of the 1619 Project. The project reframes American history around an important date that isn’t mentioned in many history books: 1619, the beginning of American slavery. Hannah-Jones has expanded on the idea and turned it into a book called The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. Hannah-Jones spoke with Apple News Today host Shumita Basu about the project.

Jan 15, 2022 • 28min
How one journalist helped her dad die
If you’re suffering from a terminal illness and have only a few months to live, should you be allowed to choose how and when to end your life? Ten states in the country allow patients to do just that — a practice referred to as medical aid in dying — under highly regulated laws. In April 2020, Bloomberg journalist Esmé Deprez’s father became the second person to end his life under the Maine Death with Dignity Act. Deprez speaks with Apple News Today host Duarte Geraldino about that experience and a California case making its way through the courts now that could expand the scope of the law.

Jan 8, 2022 • 25min
Feeling burned out? Here’s how to rethink work.
How’s your relationship to your job? Does it feel healthy? Sustainable? For a lot of people, it got worse during the pandemic. One survey in 2021 found that more than a third of the men and nearly half of the women feel burned out. So what’s going wrong here? Apple News Today host Shumita Basu speaks with Anne Helen Petersen about her new book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home, coauthored with Charlie Warzel. It’s all about how we can adjust the role our jobs play in our lives and focus more time and energy on the things we care about the most.

Dec 11, 2021 • 25min
Inside the secret prisons where migrants are tortured and beaten
For the New Yorker, journalist Ian Urbina traveled to Libya to report on an EU-funded shadow immigration system that holds migrants in brutal detention centers. While reporting this story, Urbina was kidnapped, beaten, and detained himself. Now safely back home, he spoke with Apple News Today host Shumita Basu about how this shadow system works and the horrific conditions inside the detention centers.

Nov 20, 2021 • 22min
Jelani Cobb on the backlash to critical race theory
The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb says conservatives weaponizing critical race theory aren’t acting in good faith. He speaks with Apple News Today host Shumita Basu about his recent piece for the New Yorker about the founder of the concept, Derrick Bell. Cobb says that Bell could have predicted today’s backlash and that real critical race theory can help us understand today’s debate over false depictions of this term.

Oct 30, 2021 • 27min
Kids were jailed for a crime that doesn’t exist. How could that happen?
Nashville Public Radio’s Meribah Knight speaks with Shumita Basu about her reporting for ProPublica on the juvenile-justice system in Rutherford County, Tennessee. Knight reveals a disturbing pattern in which hundreds of kids — some as young as 7 years old — were being locked up every year. In many of these cases, the adults responsible acted illegally and faced no consequences.

Oct 23, 2021 • 15min
Think the stock market is rigged? You may be right.
Data shows high-level execs often get unusually good returns trading their own companies’ stocks. But regulators say insider trading is hard to prove under current law. For Bloomberg Businessweek, Liam Vaughan explains why insider trading is more widespread than you might think — and why some experts argue the system is fundamentally unfair.

Oct 2, 2021 • 26min
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa on the final months of Trump’s presidency
What was it like inside the White House when Donald Trump lost — then denied losing — the election? Journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, authors of the new book Peril, sat down with Apple News Today host Shumita Basu to discuss the chaotic period, which they consider one of the most dangerous in American history. Peril is available now on Apple Books.

Sep 18, 2021 • 24min
The story of Jane Roe, her baby, and abortion in America
Many people may not know that the woman at the center of Roe v. Wade — whose real name is Norma McCorvey — never got the abortion to which she won the right. Journalist and author Joshua Prager set out to find the daughter whom McCorvey ultimately gave up for adoption. In his new book, The Family Roe: An American Story, Prager details the lives of these women and explores how the issue of abortion became so divisive in the U.S.


