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.

Good morning.

Hope you're off to a great day.

Wherever you are, welcome to our weekly debrief where we get to take a deep breath and take a look at the news.

Slow down a little bit.

I like to give you quick, concise, nonpartisan information, but every once in a while, you do need that deep breath to really look through some of the headlines.

And I really want to make sure that the news works for you.

And that includes taking some of your questions and going where you would like us to go. So part of the week I focus on, well, what are some of the editorial judgments that we have to make? What stories should we prioritize? That's the sort of stuff that I do during the week. But I always want a space for you, too, where to actually be our producers and say, these are the stories that I'm most interested in. Can we learn more about that? And that's what we're going to do today. So I got a lot of great questions. We are going to cover a lot of ground we always do, but we're going to cover a lot. Just like buckle up. it's going to be fun. Hope you got your coffee, get some water, do what you need to do.

We're going to be here for you. So we're going to go all around the world with some of your questions. And I actually got a great question to start off that just, you guys always ask

the best questions, but this one really got to me because one of you said, what's a new cycle?

Like, what is a new cycle? And I thought,

that's a term that I use all the time. I've never slowed down to explain it. And I don't think

anyone ever really explained it to me. And I have a master's in journalism. You know, like,

what is a new cycle? Why is everyone keep talking about it? And I think the term

news cycle probably made more sense. Well, we weren't in this constant bombardment of news on a

regular basis. So you could actually say a news cycle could be isolated for a particular point

of day or you're trying to look at a particular time frame. And really, the way that information

is moving and news is moving so quickly,

it's, that's tough to make the case for a news cycle. We're kind of constantly in a new cycle,

sort of like we're constantly in a life cycle. So here's how I want you to envision a new cycle.

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