Congress is on a holiday break back in their home districts this week, so I thought for just a moment,

let's talk about something other than tariffs, something that impacts us all and our families.

It's a new smarter series on education.

I'm Jenna, and this is smarter news.

First, a little background. The idea for this segment comes from my past experience working in traditional news. When I worked for a cable news network as a national news anchor, we would have

debates. Two people with vastly different opinions on a big topic debating on live television.

And we would have these debates all packaged in about three to four minutes.

And it was really impossible to create something that felt meaningful and productive.

I remember asking one of my producers, you know, what is the point of this?

What do we want our audience to walk away with?

And it was always, you know, this is good TV.

The emotion, the anger, the red meat. The red meat was a term

that was used by producers to talk about a controversial topic. Think about lions and a zoo

tearing apart red meat. This is what they thought these segments produced and this is what they

thought you wanted. You know, I disagreed with that. I didn't love these segments. In fact,

at certain points, I stopped doing them.

And you'll still see them. You'll still see them on live television now. But the media has also

evolved. And we have an alternative. We have these one to three hour podcasts. And that's better.

But I don't always have the time to listen to a one to three hour podcast on a topic and then cross compare

it to other podcasts that have a different opinion.

So I thought, what if we did a series where you get to hear from a really interesting person

for like 20-ish minutes on a topic and then the next day the opposite perspective on the same

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