Nearly 520K Florida power customers still in the dark, Yom Kippur begins: 5 Things podcast

On today’s episode of the 5 Things podcast: Almost 520,000 Florida power customers still in the dark

The state continues to recover from Hurricane Ian. Plus, environmental reporter Kyle Bagenstose looks at Elon Musk’s comments on ‘population collapse,’ former President Donald Trump sues CNN, education reporter Alia Wong discusses how much time kids spend in school and Yom Kippur begins.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I’m Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Tuesday, the 4th of October, 2022. Today, half a million still without power in Florida. Plus, a look at fears about population collapse and more.

Here are some of the top headlines:

♦

The death toll from Hurricane Ian has reached 78 and the vast majority of confirmed fatalities, 71, were in Florida. Meanwhile, more than 1,900 people have been rescued around the state. Power has been restored to more than two million Floridians, but more than half a million are still in the dark. Florida Power & Light CEO Eric Silagy said almost the entire state should get power back by the end of the week.

Eric Silagy:

Those who can take power, what I just announced is that we expect to have them restored by the end of Friday, which is days ahead of schedule of where we were going to be.

Yeah, so look, it’s a combination of a lot of things to be able to get this done. First off, the investments have been made in storm hardening, the concrete poles, the steel poles, the undergrounding, the smart grid technology, all that’s coming to bear and it’s paying off and we’re seeing that occur. It’s given us the opportunity to do a lot more repair work than rebuilding. Relatively speaking, it’s minor because we’re not rebuilding the system. What you don’t do is you’re not driving down major thoroughfares and seeing two miles of every pole knocked down.

Taylor Wilson:

The full picture of Ian’s destruction on Florida’s West Coast is still coming into focus, but many residents have lost their entire homes. Displaced people like Barbara Wasco have had to adapt. She told the AP about moving into Southwest Baptist Church, a congregation in one of the most devastated neighborhoods of Fort Myers. She was cleaning her jewelry.

Barbara Wasco:

It’s just the mud and dirty water off of them so they don’t spoil. And we each have a pillow. There’s medications. My friend sleeps there on that lounge. Mine’s up on the altar because when the water started coming in. Now my children think they have to come get me, and I need to come up there.

Taylor Wilson:

Schools in 13 counties are still closed, but all counties in southwest Florida are expected to be fully back by the end of the week. For the latest from Ian, stay with USATODAY.com.

♦

Elon Musk says that population collapse is a bigger threat than climate change. Is he right? Producer PJ Elliott spoke with environmental reporter Kyle Bagenstose to find out what the experts have to say.

Kyle Bagenstose:

Yeah, he’s been posting about this a number of times. I think the most prominent one was from August when he said something to the effect of that global population decline is a worse threat than climate change. And he punctuated by saying mark my words, I believe it was. So yeah, he’s essentially saying, and this is a true demographic trend, it is predicted the world population will peak around 2080 and decline after that and in developed countries even sooner. Places like Japan, Eastern Europe already facing this. The United States, I think more like 2050, 2060.

So I don’t know. I did reach out to Tesla to see if I could interview with him. I did not hear back. I believe his concerns are mostly tied to the fact that a lot of our society and our world has been built on growth, productivity increases, all these sorts of things. And there’s big question marks about what happens to societies when that trend declines. And of course, there’s always just the human ingenuity factor. The more people you have, the more people coming up with ideas and getting work done. And so I think there’s a line of thinking out there that population decline, and not just from Elon, but as I said from a lot of experts in the field, is for a number of reasons going to be a pretty big challenge for humanity.

PJ Elliott:

Well, Kyle, let’s ask the obvious question here, is Elon Musk right about population collapse being a bigger threat to the world than climate change?

Kyle Bagenstose:

It’s complicated. To jump to the shortest answer. Most experts I spoke with say no in terms of the balance with climate change. Climate change is here right now. It’s a crisis. Humanity has gotten itself into a lot of trouble and it’s going to be really difficult to climb out. So is it bigger? I think most experts I spoke with said no, climate change is a bigger concern. But the same time, concerns about population decline are nothing to sniff at. And as I said, this isn’t necessarily even just some challenge for 2080, 2100. Developed nations are going to be reaching this sooner. The United States population more or less would already be declining or near it, if not for immigration numbers. On balancing out, I think our fertility rate, which is the average number of children per woman is 1.6. You need 2.1 to maintain a steady population. So we’re already at this stage, and I think these challenges are going to be quite large what happens once population decline does occur.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find a link to Kyle’s full story in today’s episode description.

♦

Former President Donald Trump sued CNN yesterday. He says the network defamed him in a push to prevent his future political campaigns and is seeking $475 million in damages. The suit, filed in Florida, focuses mostly on the term, “the big lie,” about Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud that he says cost him the 2020 election. The term, a phrase with Nazi connotations, has been used in reference to Trump nearly 8,000 times on CNN since January of 2021, according to the lawsuit. There was no immediate comment from CNN.

As president, Trump routinely attacked CNN, a popular move with many of his conservative followers. He’s also similarly filed suits against big tech companies with little success. His case against Twitter for knocking him off the platform after January 6th, 2021 was thrown out by a California judge earlier this year. A number of federal and local election officials in both parties, a list of courts and top former campaign staffers have all said there’s no evidence of the election fraud that Trump alleges.

♦

How much time do kids spend in school? It depends on where they live. Education reporter Alia Wong tells PJ Elliott that despite the importance of making up for lost time, many districts are actually cutting down their school weeks.

Alia Wong:

More instructional time has become somewhat of a talking point among policymakers. They’re saying that more instructional time is key to academic recovery to catching kids up. Very few districts have actually decided to use their COVID relief money to increase the time kids spend on learning. In fact, what we’re seeing is more districts moving toward less instructional time with four day school weeks.

But all these developments and conversations are happening without a really clear understanding or grasp of just how much kids’ allotted instructional time varies based on where they live and this has been the case pre pandemic. I got my hands on a study and the researchers, who are at Brown and Stanford, they found that students’ allotted learning time can vary by nearly 200 hours a year depending on which state and district they live in.

When you look at the average, the typical K-12 public school in the US spends a little less than seven hours a day learning, for a total of about 179 days per school year. But those averages really mask huge disparities. Kids in areas with the greatest amount of allocated instructional time spend 189 hours more on learning than do kids in areas with the least amount of allotted instructional time. And that difference is the equivalent of roughly five and a half weeks.

One takeaway that really stuck out to me is that by the time they graduate, students in Maryland will have spent in theory almost an entire school year longer on learning than their peers in Florida, Connecticut, and Alaska.

PJ Elliott:

Well, Alia, what would be a reason for someone in a state like Maryland to get more instructional time versus a student in another state like Florida or Alaska?

Alia Wong:

Again, when you look at the averages, kids in the US appear to spend roughly the same amount of time, if not a little longer actually, on instruction than their peers in other wealthy nations. But again, when you dig past those averages, a really messy picture emerges, and that’s largely because of how decentralized this country’s education system is. It’s not a united national education system. It’s an education system comprised of 50 different approaches to education. And then beyond that, thousands upon thousands of different approaches when you get down to the district and even school level.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

The holiest day of the year in Judaism begins tonight, Yom Kippur. the holidays name translates from Hebrew to English as the Day of Atonement. And Jewish people may spend the day fasting, attending synagogue, or observing in other ways. It follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which was last week. Many Jews spend the day reflecting on sins or wrongdoing over the past year. There’s also the traditional blowing of the shofar, a curved ram’s horn. It’s sounded to end the holiday. Mike Zion from Temple Shalom shows off some specific shofar responses, the Tekiah, Shevarim, and Teruah.

Mike Zion:

Shevarim, which is three. And Teruah, which is nine.

Taylor Wilson:

Another common tradition is to fast for 25 hours. The holiday is not typically considered a happy one though, so saying Happy Yom Kippur is not usually considered appropriate. Yom Kippur begins at sundown and lasts until tomorrow evening.

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every morning on your podcast app of choice. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I’m back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nearly 520K Florida power customers still in the dark, Yom Kippur begins: 5 Things podcast