Tim Cook is making the point that some people need to be more moderate with smartphone use

It turns out that pop singer Dua Lipa also runs a podcast (these days, who doesn’t?) and has a guest none other than Apple CEO Tim Cook.

You might think that he has more important things on his agenda – like, you know, releasing the Vision Pro on time as promised, not with a delay, as the rumor has it now. Of course, appearing on a podcast is not just fun, that’s a PR opportunity as well.

The two talked for 45 minutes, during which the executive talked about his personal life, his career at Apple, philanthropy, the environment, and more (via 9to5Mac).

Tim shared some details about his private life and childhood – Cook said that he had always wanted to have a good job, as he came from a modest family. He revealed that, as a teenager, he delivered newspapers in his neighborhood in the middle of the night and worked flipping burgers to save money for college.

After graduating from Auburn University, he spent 12 years working at IBM and then joined Apple in 1998. When asked about Steve Jobs, Cook said that “Steve was original” and that only he could have created Apple. The executive also said that “if Steve were alive, he would still be the CEO”.

At one point, the singer asked Tim Cook about the excessive use of smartphones, especially among younger people. Tim Cook agreed that some people need to be more moderate with smartphone use, which is why Apple created the Screen Time feature. “The aha moment for me was how many notifications I was getting in a day,” he said.

What about child labor?

Also, he assured Dua Lipa that children are not mining cobalt in Congo when she asked “I was wondering is, my new iPhone 15… can you guarantee that the cobalt in that phone has not been mined using child labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo?”

He first went on to explain that Apple is more and more involved in the practice of using recycled materials for their devices, so new mining is needed less and less. Then he added: “But for those products that we still do mine, for some of our other products, we have an intense level of tracing in our supply chain all the way back to the mine and the smelter to make sure that the labor used is not child labor”.