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. Welcome to your weekly debrief. This is our weekly deep breath when it comes to the news.

And I don't know about you, but I could really use a deep breath this week for a few different

reasons. Just as we were starting this, what usually is a live broadcast, we realized that

that platform on Instagram wasn't working. And it took about 30 minutes to realize that's

never going to work for us. And so this is a great opportunity for us to double down on making

sure that this podcast and this video is available elsewhere. It's a great reminder that you have

to have backups upon backups upon backups. And so I'm going to try to take that as a blessing

instead of being frustrated because this is really the only time in the

week Thursday morning that I have a quiet household. And I love sharing that quiet household with you.

It actually makes me super happy. I love putting together this weekly debrief. And as you know,

Smarter News is always dedicated to quick,

concise, nonpartisan information. But we do need these moments where we can take a deep breath

and we can look at the news with a little bit more of a critical eye. And one of the things I've

seen this week with the news that's been frustrating to me as a journalist is that news cycles

like this give us an incredible opportunity

to really fill in some missing pieces of news stories, to take a deep breath and do that

so that we can all learn together. We're really experiencing in so many different ways on so

many different topics living history that's changing the course

of the country or how we're seeing not only policies in place but law.

I don't want to get too far ahead.

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