Hello from the Heartland. My name is Jenna, and this is Smarter News, news when it matters and why it

matters. Our Smarter series features unique people who help us think and live smarter.

Hey, everybody, great to see you. Welcome to this week's debrief, one of our favorite times of the

week where we get to take a deep breath when it comes to the news and dig a little deeper on

some of these topics that are coming at you really rapid fire throughout the week. As you know,

Smarter News is all about quick, concise, nonpartisan information, but this is our chance to

slow down a little bit, which I love to do with

you, and I really appreciate. So this week's news certainly has been heavy. We've had a lot of

really heavy stories. I think it's not going too far to describe some of these stories as

extraordinarily dark. You know, these have been heavy stories. We're really talking about good

and evil. We started this week's news cycle with the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York. We're going to spend a little time on that topic. So just a word to the wise, you know, we're going to go for it today. We're going to actually go deep into some of these topics that are not only on the front pages, but something that we're likely talking about in our households on a

regular basis.

And so I was trying to figure out how to frame our conversation this week because of the content

of the news.

And I started to look at the different stories that are out there.

And I like to do that just every once in a while, almost like a collage.

I think about the stories all in front of us and think, well, how do they work together? You know, not necessarily directly connected. We don't want to directly connect something as a cause and effect. But how can we look at these stories together in a way that helps our brain hold them at the same time so that we could kind of think about, well, how can we look at these

stories a little bit different, a little bit smarter, if you will? See how that works? And I started to look at these different stories that we were covering. And I always like to pick, well, what are the most important things if you only have 30 seconds to three minutes every day? Like, what are the stories that you should just be aware of that are happening? And that's sort of how we're choosing our quick quotes or the different topics that we're diving deep on. And as I looked at this

collage in front of me, I thought, you know what? What are we doing with all of our news stories?

We're doing regular threat assessments. Like, why is the news so heavy? Why does it feel difficult to trudge through some of these

topics on a regular basis? It's not just the topics themselves. Is that over the last several

years, one of the things we've been required to do when we're confronting news stories are threat

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