Apple News In Conversation

In the span of a month, Christa Pike survived a botched lethal-injection execution in Tennessee and the Pentagon announced plans to livestream the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. President Trump later walked back the livestream, although the execution is still scheduled; it will be the first military firing-squad execution in the country since World War II. Maurice Chammah, a staff writer at the Marshall Project, joins Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to unpack this moment in America, how politicians and the public are responding, and what these two stories reveal about the death penalty’s future.

With the 2026 midterms just two weeks away, many Americans are paying close attention not only to races and candidates but to the election process itself. Cook Political Report editor in chief Amy Walter and veteran GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini join Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to answer questions from our listeners — including why polling has become so hard to trust, how redistricting fights are reshaping races, and what guardrails are in place after results start coming in.

A lawsuit filed by a former Cornell student that alleges she was sexually assaulted by seven fraternity members in 2024 has sparked an outpouring of women sharing their own stories of campus assault. While the case reflects dynamics that researchers have tracked since the 1980s, it also reveals something distinctly modern: how fraternity culture and online misogyny now collide in unchecked digital spaces. Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to talk about why reports of campus assault keep rising, what we know about the role of fraternities, and what meaningful change could look like.

Fewer people around the world are having kids — the global birth rate has been falling steadily since the 1970s — but, for many, it’s not because they don’t want to become parents. A deep sense of uncertainty about money, relationships, and the future has made starting a family feel harder than ever. Anna Louie Sussman, author of the new book Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, joins Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to discuss what’s really standing in the way and what it would take to close that gap.

Americans spend billions of hours a year navigating government bureaucracy, whether filling out forms, waiting on hold, or standing in endless lines. Researchers call this hidden burden the “time tax.” In her new book, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time — and How to Fix It, Atlantic staff writer Annie Lowrey argues all of this red tape is more than just annoying — it has real, lasting consequences for the country. Lowrey joins Apple News In Conversation host Shumita Basu to talk about who pays a disproportionate share of the time tax, why the system was designed to wear us down, and her ideas for how to fix it.