--:-- Gideon Resnick: Hi there, I'm Gideon Resnick. Before we get into today's episode, we have a question for you. Has a traumatic event impacted your relationship with money? Maybe you lost your job during the 2008 financial crisis or the pandemic in 2020. Or maybe you've been evicted or been through a divorce where money was a sticking point. We want to know, how did that experience change the way that you think about and manage your finances?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you do have a story to share, we want to hear about it for an upcoming episode of Apple News In Conversation. You can use your iPhone's voice memos app to record yourself. Tell us your name, where you're from, your story, and how it's affected you. And please try to keep it to about a minute or so. You can send it to us at Apple News Today at Apple.com. Again, that's Apple News Today at Apple.com. And we might include your story on the show. Thanks so much.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Good morning. It's Wednesday, March 27th. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shemitah Basu. This is Apple News Today.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Coming up on today's show, how the deadly fentanyl epidemic could play a big role in the presidential election. Why Turkey is seizing the homes of earthquake survivors. And all the ways our obsession with self-improvement can actually make us miserable. But first, let's take a look at some major stories that are in the news.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The six people who were missing after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore are now presumed dead. They were part of a crew that was doing overnight repair work on the bridge when the cargo ship hit it, causing the collapse.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And we're learning more about what happened in the early hours of yesterday morning. The accident could have been deadlier. A mayday call from the ship came in with enough time to block car access to the bridge. Police radio lit up with orders to set up roadblocks as the giant vessel approached. Port-all traffic on the Key Bridge. There's a ship approaching that just lost their steering.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now investigators are trying to figure out what happened on board the ship. The Wall Street Journal reports on what's in the Coast Guard briefing report. An officer on board said the ship completely lost power, both steering and electronics. It was pitch black in the engine room, with the smell of burned fuel everywhere. The ship wasn't able to drop anchors in time to keep from drifting.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's early, but people familiar with the investigation tell the journal that one focus will be on whether contaminated fuel could have played a role in the catastrophic power loss. Blackouts at sea are not common, and tainted fuel can sometimes play a role, causing problems on ship's generators.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There's also the challenge of rebuilding a bridge that plays a key role in people's daily commute in the Baltimore-Washington area, and in moving goods vital to the U.S. economy. Rebuilding could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says the Biden administration will do what it takes. This is no ordinary bridge. This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure. It has been part of the skyline of this region for longer than many of us have been alive. So the path to normalcy will not be easy. It will not be quick. It will not be inexpensive. But we will rebuild together.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Now to political news, where former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel's short time as an NBC news analyst has come to an end. After she was pushed out of the RNC, the network hired her to analyze the election on air. But many on-air personalities, especially at the left-leaning MSNBC, used their airtime to strongly protest McDaniel's hiring.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: They said it was a bad move to hire someone who'd played a major role in spreading lies about the 2020 election. After days of harsh criticism aired on its own shows, NBC announced yesterday that it would cut ties with McDaniel.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And in an Alabama special election, Democrat Marilyn Lanz won a statehouse seat. She campaigned on the importance of access to IVF and abortion rights. So the race was seen as a potential test of how those issues could play out in red states in the general election.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Lanz pulled off a double-digit win, flipping a district she had lost by about seven points just two years ago. Abortion is going to be a big factor in this year's presidential election. And Bloomberg has a look at how the opioid crisis in the U.S., specifically fentanyl, may have a major impact, too.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Roughly 270,000 Americans died of an overdose from a synthetic opioid in four years of recent CDC data. And the way that President Biden and former President Donald Trump addressed this crisis on the campaign trail could be key in a number of states.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: I think it is a vastly underappreciated issue as the campaign season heats up this year. That's Bloomberg health care reporter Riley Griffin.
--:-- Riley Griffin: And we found in our exclusive polling that this matters, especially in swing states. About 8 in 10 voters in swing states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia, said that fentanyl misuse is either very important or somewhat important when deciding who to vote for in November.
--:-- Riley Griffin: And that was more than the number who cited abortion, who cited climate change, who cited labor and unions or the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. But the question of how to address the crisis has become a partisan issue, not a unifying one.
--:-- Riley Griffin: And Griffin says that divide is reflected in campaign speeches and fundraising emails, in bitter policy debates over immigration and the border, and public health measures aimed at curbing overdoses.
--:-- Riley Griffin: For example, we saw that Democrats in swing states were more likely than their Republican counterparts to want to see the U make overdose antidotes like Narcan Naloxone more available and provide treatment for opioid use disorder.
--:-- Riley Griffin: Republicans meanwhile wanted in greater numbers to increase security at the U border and even limit migration. And again, that piece of data was really interesting to me because we know from U.S. law enforcement that 90%, the vast majority of fentanyl that's intercepted or seized by the U.S. is actually being trafficked across the border by American citizens.
--:-- Riley Griffin: Griffin says many voters she spoke with, people personally affected by the opioid crisis, were disillusioned with both Trump and Biden. She said they feel like neither has a good track record from their time in the White House on addressing the fentanyl crisis.
--:-- Riley Griffin: Some lawmakers are taking notice. In Congress, there are more and more bills mentioning fentanyl as of late. Meanwhile, opioid deaths have slowed in the U.S. in the last year, but they still remain near all-time highs.
--:-- Riley Griffin: Until we see the numbers start to come down, I think this is going to remain front of mind for voters, especially in these communities that are being hardest hit.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: It's been more than a year since earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria. In Turkey, hundreds of thousands of survivors are still living in temporary homes. Some are shipping containers. A few are in tents.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Turkey's government hasn't delivered on promises to rebuild permanent housing. Now Reuters is reporting on a new problem. Thousands of people whose homes survived the quakes are being forced out of them.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The government is seizing properties, saying that will enable it to speed up building, including demolishing old homes to make way for new housing. And these homeowners are being asked to pay part of the cost of new construction in order to secure a new property.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Berzhu Karakash is a senior correspondent for Reuters in Turkey. And she says residents are outraged and they feel blindsided by the government.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: Everyone is really in shock. There are no details and people are like, this process is not transparent and it's so vague. And no one actually is coming here to inform us.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: So the reason that people are shocked is because there is like a huge lack of information. People I spoke to say the government has not said how much homeowners will be expected to pay or what happens if they cannot.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: It's also not clear how long their titles will be in the government's possession or if they will be entitled to any type of compensation. And some people are now homeless as a result of the seizures.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: This is just the latest in a series of frustrations for people in Turkey since the quakes. The large amount of people living in temporary shipping containers aren't sure when they'll be able to move to something more permanent.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: All while many are still dealing with grief and trauma from the deadly disaster. They want to live like an ordinary life and a routine, of course, which is not possible when you live in a container city.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: So that's why people are also looking forward to getting their homes back, you know, to be rebuilt. Some see politics behind the slow rebuilding. A hard-hit area is controlled by a political rival to Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: Some residents feel they're getting left out as political punishment, which the government denies. As for those property owners being displaced by the government seizures, they're fighting back in court.
--:-- Berzhu Karakash: But it's not clear how far they'll be able to get in a country where there are few checks on Erdogan's power.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The human race over our long history has developed a unique characteristic that's not seen in many other species. And frankly, it's one that drives most of us nuts. It's the urge to improve and constantly get better.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: There is a functional purpose to this in a society where things may be scarce. But for many, this drive for adaptation has turned into a kind of obsessive self-improvement.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Trust me, your algorithms are acutely aware of this nagging human trait. Vox reports on how we psychologically don't just want to survive, we want to thrive.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: But how we quantify success is totally subjective. Which means you get stuck in a doom loop of constantly chasing self-improvement without ever knowing when we've actually just done enough.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A psychologist told Vox there are two main factors driving humans to constantly adapt and improve. One is our ability to respond to life events, both positive and negative.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: That can make something really exciting lose its sparkle quickly, like buying a new car. It feels amazing for a few weeks, then gradually gets less fulfilling. On a smaller scale, think of how many shampoos and such are marketed as things that will dramatically change our lives.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: The other factor that fuels self-improvement is comparison. We compare ourselves to others about pretty much everything from success to happiness and more.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: And these factors taken together can put humans in a tough spot. Our goalposts are constantly shifting.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: Fox talked to an academic expert on happiness about how to break that cycle. And he says to find a balance between goals and appreciation. That good enough really is good enough.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, we have a narrated article coming up next that sticks with this self-improvement theme.
--:-- Gideon Resnick: A reporter from Esquire takes you on her journey to become as productive as possible. She tried out all the tips and hacks she could find. And along the way struggled with a lot of hard questions. Like what exactly does it mean to produce enough work? And how do you know when you've achieved it?
--:-- Gideon Resnick: If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News Plus Narrated to find her story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
