Today’s Big Story

A Nation of Homebodies

Adults in the United States are staying home more. Is that a problem?

Are you going out tonight? As much fun as it is to pull on a nice outfit, make a plan and hit the town, there’s something to be said for staying in. Many of us are perfectly content sitting at home in our coziest loungewear, watching our favorite show (and, ahem, scrolling through our phones). In fact, it’s more people than ever.

A recent analysis of census data found that Americans are spending more time at home, and a large part of it is alone. The analysis, based on responses to the American Time Use Survey, shows that time spent at home increased by 1 hour 39 minutes a day, or 10 percent, from 2003 through 2022. It’s a trend that rose sharply during the pandemic and had yet to return to more typical levels by 2022—a sign that the pandemic may have hastened a cultural shift already in progress.

Years before the first stay-at-home orders were enacted, Americans were already beginning to spend more time at home. “It’s a dramatic shift in our daily lives,” Patrick Sharkey, a professor of sociology at Princeton, and the author of the study, told the New York Times. “Almost every part of our lives is more likely to take place at home.”

The rise in working at home during the pandemic has been a big chunk of that, taking up nearly 30% of all work activity in 2022. But even before then, from 2003 to 2019, the share of work time at home had crept up to 17% from 13%. As of 2022, time that Americans had once spent outside the home participating in activities like education, eating and drinking, had, to some extent, moved into the home. The largest shift occurred with religious activities: 59% occurred at home in 2022, up from 24% in 2003.

Does this mean people became more socially isolated? Well, yes and no. According to Psychology Today, people who spent more time at home also spent a lot more time alone and a little less time with friends. But they also spent more time with family. Typically, then, they were not socially isolated. And, of course, people who have online access from home can connect virtually with other people anywhere, anytime. But loneliness can be dangerous: Last year, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, released a health advisory on the rise of loneliness and social isolation, describing it as an epidemic with grave health consequences: Loneliness increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and depression, and it raises the chance of premature death.

Milton Is a Storm for the Record Books

Its race to a violent Category 5 hurricane has left many wondering if it could keep ramping up to Category 6

Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast is racing against a surging hurricane as workers sprinted to pick up debris left over from Helene two weeks ago and highways were clogged with people fleeing ahead of the storm. Meteorologists were glued to their computers on Monday morning, watching virtual data as the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter airplane made pass after pass through the eye of Hurricane Milton. Every time it did, it found the pressure had dropped and the eyewall wind speeds had increased, indicating that the storm was becoming more intense by the minute.

According to forecasters, the center of Hurricane Milton could come ashore tomorrow in the Tampa Bay region, which has not endured a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century. Scientists expect the system to weaken slightly before landfall, though it could retain hurricane strength as it churns across central Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean. That would largely spare other states ravaged by Helene, which killed at least 230 people on its path from Florida to the Carolinas.

But Milton’s race from a Category 2 to a Category 5 hurricane in just a few hours has left people wondering if the powerhouse storm could possibly become a Category 6. The rapidly developing hurricane that shows no signs of stopping won’t technically become a Category 6 because the category doesn't exist at the moment. But it could soon reach the level of a hypothetical Category 6 experts have discussed and stir up arguments about whether the National Hurricane Center’s long-used scale for classifying hurricane wind speeds from Category 1 to 5 might need an overhaul.

Harris-Trump Showdown Hits Final Stretch

We’ve now got less than a month to Election Day

It’s been one helluva ride, right? Americans witnessed the sitting Democratic president drop out of the race, the Republican nominee narrowly escape an assassination attempt (twice) and the rise of the first woman of color on a national ticket. And in just a few weeks, it will all be settled.

But right now, the race is one and some are calling it the “tightest race in a quarter century”—it remains a margin-of-error race nationally and in the seven key battleground states likely to determine the winner of the election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. Both national party chairs are confident of their chances. “We’re playing offense right now,” Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley said in a Fox News Digital interview earlier this week. “We feel very, very good about the map.” His counterpart, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison told reporters on Friday that “the enthusiasm is palatable in our party.” But Harrison emphasized that “we know that this election will come down to the margins, and we’re not taking any vote for granted.”

Money isn’t everything in politics, but it’s certainly not nothing. Where the campaigns—and the super PACs that support them—spend money is, if nothing else, a good indicator of where they see opportunity. You can see how each side is placing bets on their best path to 270 electoral votes. In the first week of October, the Harris campaign is spending the most in the critical trio of “Blue Wall” states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump, on the other hand, is looking to the Sun Belt. Voting early and by mail is already underway in much of the country, although early voting is not expected to reach the same level as it did in the Covid-19 pandemic election of 2020.

We will know who won on Election night? Likely not. As The Hill asks, will the election be contested as it was in 2020, when Donald Trump denied losing, calling the vote “rigged?” Will it resemble 2000, when the election dispute over Florida’s vote went all the way to the Supreme Court, to be settled in mid-December? Will it be like the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, which wasn’t settled until March 2, three days before his inauguration, due to disputes over 20 electoral votes from Southern states? Stay tuned.

Have We Reached Peak Human Life Span?

After decades of rising life expectancy, the increases appear to be slowing

Let’s keep it 100—your chances of becoming a centenarian are slim. Medical breakthroughs, public health achievements and better diets led to steep increases in global life expectancy in the 1800s and 1900s. But some surprising new research finds this momentum has slowed and the biggest boosts to longevity may be in the rearview mirror.

“We have to recognize there’s a limit” and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they’ll need to live out their lives, one University of Illinois-Chicago professor who was lead author of the study, told the Associated Press. He predicted maximum life expectancy will end up around 87 years—approximately 84 for men, and 90 for women—an average age that several countries are already close to achieving.

But he said that investing more in preventive health could change that by delaying the onset of diseases, which in turn could result in “less of that damage that was due to the biology of aging.” And while the data from Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain showed that rises in life expectancy had slowed dramatically, in the United States, life expectancy actually fell. So I'm now considering my recent move to Japan a life-extending medical intervention.

10 Amazon Prime Perks You Need to Be Using

Just in time for the coming Prime Days

Can you remember a time before Amazon? What about before you had Prime? Maybe you don’t have a membership yet. But if you have been going without, now’s the time to sign-up, as Prime Days will launch next week with plenty of big discounts and limited-time markdowns.

For many of us, the free shipping perk and access to exclusive shows and movies is enough reason to fork over the $14.99 per month to get Prime. But if those reasons haven't been enough to entice you to join Prime, maybe some of these lesser-known incentives will tempt you to sign up. Brad’s Deals has pulled together their top 10 perks that make the membership a worthy investment.

Make time for you.