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.

Let's just jump into our conversation today because it's a really important one.

And I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Here's where we are.

We're recording this interview about 10 days after the shooting in Yuvaldi, Texas.

And that followed an active shooter situation incident in Buffalo, New York.

There's been others.

There may be others by the time that you hear or watch this interview.

And as is typical in the aftermath of these events, a lot of the news coverage rushes immediately to very

familiar postures, talking about politics and policy, mental health. We all know the familiar

debates. While that is taking place, we know that legislation,

any sort of idea between the idea phase and action takes time. Something else that takes a lot

of time is the investigation itself. And we're in the middle of many investigations on these

high profile active shooter incidents right now. And I just want to remind us on that because

we could learn something over the next several days or several weeks or several months that

could completely change the way that we're even framing this story. And we have to leave some

room for that. So as a journalist, what I'm trying to do always with our interviews on smarter

news is figure out how to become smarter on a

certain topic and not go to those familiar places that most in the media may go. And how do we

actually report high quality information that no matter your point of view, your politics on this

topic, however you're feeling in this moment, it could help inform us in the future

...