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. It is March 10th, 2022. And on this Thursday, we have a special and unexpected guest.

I woke up this morning to a message from journalist, author, and war reporter, Holly McKay, that she had some bandwidth, literally and figuratively, today to speak to us at Smarter News,

live from Kiev, Ukraine, where she has her home base for her reporting. As you know, Holly has

been very busy over the last several days in Ukraine, traveling to the areas most impacted by Russia's war on Ukraine,

and speaking to the people most impacted, which includes people just like us, people that

are trying to live their lives and do the best that they can in extraordinary circumstances.

So when I woke up this morning to a message that she was available, I quickly switched

gears because this is an

unbelievable opportunity to speak to someone with incredible firsthand insight and also to speak to them live,

which we did through Instagram live. And whenever we have the opportunity to speak to a guest like

Holly live, I want to give you direct access to a primary source, which is a very powerful thing

to do in journalism. So you

often have the best questions to ask Holly. And so you're going to notice on this podcast

to change in audio because we're going to switch over to the Instagram live and the recording

of that. So you can listen along to some of the questions that we had for Holly during this

our conversation, which was just great because we were able

to cover a lot of ground and really get a firm footing about where this worst stands,

nearly two weeks exactly into it. A couple weeks ago, there are those that didn't even

believe a war would happen. And here we are in a completely different reality. So let me just

set the stage for us on this day.

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