5 Things podcast: Death tolls rise in Israel and Gaza, online hate, nomination for Speaker

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Death tolls rise in Israel and Gaza. USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless examines a surge in online hate speech this week. House Republicans make a step toward electing a new speaker. USA TODAY Personal Finance Reporter Daniel de Visé discusses longevity literacy and the fact that many Americans don't have a good sense of how long their retirements might last. NASA says its first asteroid samples likely contain carbon and water.

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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, Thursday the 12th of October 2023.

Today, the American death toll rises in the wake of Hamas attacks. Plus, online hate is surging this week. And NASA has some crucial findings from its asteroid mission.

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The American death toll has risen to 22, while 17 Americans remain unaccounted for in Israel. And US officials continue to say that some are being held hostage by Hamas. Meanwhile, Israel continues firing rockets into neighborhoods and blockaded Gaza. And Palestinian officials say more than 1,100 people have been killed there. The territory, home to more than 2 million Palestinians, fell into almost complete darkness last night after its only power station ran out of fuel and shut down. Residents also face limited supplies of food and water.

Israeli officials say the attacks on Gaza are aimed at stamping out Hamas militants, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Every Hamas member is a dead man." Israel is responding to a brutal wave of Hamas attacks over the weekend in Israel. More than 1,200 Israelis have been killed. Many Americans in Israel have been scrambling to leave in recent days, but major US airlines, including Delta, American, and United, have halted flights in and out of Tel Aviv.

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Online hate has surged in recent days, spiking against both Jewish and Muslim communities. I spoke with USA Today National Correspondent, Will Carless, for more. Will, always good to have you on.

Will Carless:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, groups who study online hate say that it has spiked this week in the wake of the Hamas attacks. What have experts found on this?

Will Carless:

That's right. So, various groups that had already been tracking hate speech against the Jewish population, but also against Palestinians and the Muslim population, both sides basically said that they've seen an extraordinary uptick in the amount of hate and conspiracy theories, just threats, nastiness being speared across social media networks in the past few days.

Taylor Wilson:

And was online hate speech already increasing before this conflict?

Will Carless:

Yes, it very definitely was. And again, on both ends of the spectrum. All sorts of targeted populations have seen hate speech increasing really, really to an extraordinary extent. I mean, antisemitism has been measured to be at its highest level ever recorded by the Anti-Defamation League, which keeps very close tabs on this. I spoke with an organization that tracks hate speech against Palestinians, who were warning back in March before any of this happened, that there was an extraordinary increase in hate speech against the Palestinian community. So, there was already a lot of this, and now it's gone haywire.

Taylor Wilson:

And Will, how exactly are social media platforms falling short here?

Will Carless:

I mean, name your way, basically. I mean, I wish I could give them the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I've written story after story after story. Jessica Guynn and I, our tech reporter, we have to write stories about this every few weeks, about how these platforms just don't do what everybody tells them they need to do. They have rules, they have guidelines, and they need to enforce them, and they just don't.

Meta, for example, that owns Facebook, Google, they have claimed that they are stepping up efforts to combat not just hate speech, but also mis and disinformation. And then you have X, formerly known as Twitter, which really just doesn't seem to care and doesn't seem to be worried about this. Their approach to this is that they have this new community checking system where volunteers are supposed to go on and check tweets for their accuracy.

Everyone I've spoken to says that that's just a joke. It just doesn't work, and that they need to have a proper trust and safety organization, as they used to do, that will properly monitor this stuff and take it down if it needs to be taken down.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned the Anti-Defamation League. They've released a guide for social media platforms to improve on this. What exactly do they recommend there?

Will Carless:

They essentially recommend ramping up what companies say that they're already doing. For example, people who speak Arabic who work for you, who can look at tweets in Arabic or look at not just tweets, but look at posts in Arabic and search for things that are hateful and that violate the terms of service. That's one thing. The ADL talks about what they call break-glass policies that companies can use. So, this is essentially a company saying, "Look, we're in a crisis. We have a huge upsurge in this hate speech and we need to ramp up our efforts to take them down."

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA Today. Thank you, Will.

Will Carless:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

House Republicans made a major step toward electing a new Speaker yesterday. They formally nominated, as a conference, House Majority Leader, Steve Scalise. In an internal secret ballot vote, Scalise beat out his main rival for the position, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, by a vote of 113 to 99. That's according to Congressman Darrell Issa. But the conference vote is just a sign of approval from House Republicans at large. The House still needs to formally elect a new Speaker on the House floor, and lawmakers are free to nominate other candidates. Exiting the vote, several GOP lawmakers also told reporters that they still plan to vote for Jordan. House Republicans control the lower chamber by a thin majority. Scalise needs 217 votes to be elected Speaker, and he can only afford to lose four Republican votes since there are 221 House Republicans.

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How long does retirement actually last? Many Americans, especially men, don't seem to know, and that can leave people with insufficient savings. I spoke with USA Today Personal Finance Reporter, Daniel de Visé to learn more. Daniel, welcome back to the show.

Daniel de Visé:

Great to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So, starting here, let's just define this. What is longevity literacy?

Daniel de Visé:

That's knowing how long you should expect to live based on how old you are now. Because, I didn't know this, but the older you get, the longer you're going to live. And that's what longevity literacy is.

Taylor Wilson:

And just how bad is longevity literacy among American men? And also, do women seem to understand it better?

Daniel de Visé:

There are organizations like TIAA that survey people on this, and guys are really bad on longevity literacy. This is partly because we all kind of know from school that men don't live quite as long. The number we have in our head is that the average person lives to be, I don't know, 76 or something. But it's older for women, 79. And for men, it's 73. So, guys get in their head that, "Oh, I'm not going to live very long." And they keep this in their head. And so when you survey an older man, somebody who's 50 or 60, they still often think they're only going to live to be 73 or 74.

Where this gets complicated is the older you get, your lifespan goes up because you've already survived to a ripe old age. Once you're basically a healthy 65-year-old guy, you're actually likely to live to be, I don't know, 84 or something. But a lot of guys think, "Oh, I'm going to die at 73.5 because that's what I read in my high school textbook."

Taylor Wilson:

Yeah. Well, so how damaging can this knowledge gap be when it comes to planning for retirement?

Daniel de Visé:

Part of planning for retirement, maybe the biggest part is knowing how long that is. I mean, to put it delicately, how long will your retirement last? Right? Which is the same thing as saying, how long are you going to live? Again, women are better at this. I think, again, they live longer. They tend to be caregivers. If you're listening to this and you're 50 years old or 60 years old, you can go to the Social Security Administration Longevity Calculator and type in your birthdate and it'll tell you a number that's higher than you might think.

Taylor Wilson:

And Daniel, why does budgeting for retirement matter more now than ever?

Daniel de Visé:

It matters for everybody, but it matters a lot more now maybe than in the last few years because the market's been down. Right? The average 401(k), according to Fidelity, lost one fifth of its value last year. So a lot of people, especially older people, and I just wrote about this, their retirement nest egg is depleted. And so you're going off of lower numbers than you would have had a year or two ago. So, it's a better time than ever to really figure out, first, how long am I likely to live? And you need to plan for longer than that, because you might live longer than the average. Right? And then figure out, map out a budget for those years based on the money you have now and how much you're expecting that you might be able to save in the next whatever years you have left before you're going to retire.

Taylor Wilson:

And Daniel, you outlined some tips for retirement planning in this piece. Let's just finish here. What are some general good sense tips for retirement planning?

Daniel de Visé:

And there's some really good lists of these online. Actually, from the federal government has one, and AARP has one. You can work with a retirement planner. You can also do the math yourself on the back of an envelope. But you need to start with how long your lifespan is likely to be, how much money you have, how much you think you can save, what your other assets are. Find ways to cut expenses to maybe pay down some of your debts. Think about whether you can work longer than you were planning to, especially if the job is fulfilling. And then there are other tricks such as taking social security later in life. You get a bigger benefit check every month if you wait until, I think, age 70 to draw from social security. So, those are some basics.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Daniel de Visé covers personal finance for USA Today. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel de Visé:

Thank you.

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Taylor Wilson:

NASA yesterday revealed the nation's first ever asteroid samples, which were delivered last month to a desert in Utah. The 4.5 billion-year-old samples of black dust and rubble traveled some 60 million miles from the asteroid, Bennu. And crucially, researchers say they showed evidence of water and high carbon content. Yesterday's reveal was part of an early assessment from NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission. The spacecraft returned to Earth last month after a years' long mission to the asteroid. A capsule containing samples from Bennu separated from the spacecraft and entered Earth's atmosphere before the capsule parachuted into Utah.

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And today at 4:00 PM Eastern on this feed, look for a special 5 Things episode about the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Latino. With a very diverse community of Latinos, conservative and liberal, having roots in Europe, Central America, South America, and Africa, who controls the future of US Latino history? In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we take a look at the controversy with Maria Elena Salinas, a broadcast journalist and ABC News contributor who has worked in Spanish language television for much of her career. You can find the episode right here on this feed.

And thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us seven mornings a week, wherever you get your podcasts. If you liked the show, please subscribe and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And any comments, you can reach us at [email protected]. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA Today.