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.

Hi everybody. Welcome to this week's debrief. This is our weekly deep breath when it comes to the news.

And it's a little bit of a gasp, actually, this week, if I'm completely honest, because usually

Thursday is a great day. You have a couple days of the week of stories developing, and then you can

sort of sit with some of the headlines. They're a little

bit more mature than they were at the beginning of the week. I don't know what happened, but over

the last 24 hours, we got a bunch of different updates on stories that we've been covering.

And many of them could really impact you in a very real way in your day-to-day life.

So I'm going to go through a couple of these stories. We're going to hopscotch around the world, in fact, to space as well, which I'll get

to in just a moment, because we have a massive discovery that we should put in context of the

new cycle as well. But I hope you're doing well.

It has been a bumpy ride. I can't believe that we're in the middle of May already.

You know, pretty soon the year is going to be half over and look at some of the big stories

that we've really taken a closer look at together. I appreciate being able to do this with you

because it really gives

meaning to a lot of my work and a great sense of purpose and I really appreciate that. I don't take a

bunch of notes. I like to just be able to talk to you very directly about the stories that we're

going to be covering on our debrief. But one of the things I wrote down last night, I was actually

making the

kids lunches, peanut butter and jelly, you know, I'm at the point of the school year where I have

no new creative ideas. And as I'm doing this, as any mother will know, I'm sort of my brain

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