Hello, welcome to this week's debrief. I hope you're having a great day wherever you are. I am so

glad that you are here today. It's actually a special edition of the Smarter News debrief. Every week,

we do a debrief, which is our weekly deep breath when it comes to the news. Smarter news is about

quick and concise, unpartisan information,

seamlessly throughout your very busy week in this very busy news cycle.

But once a week, we take a deep breath and we look at some of the stories that are really rising to the surface

that demand a little bit more attention.

And I love this time of the week because it allows me to talk to you directly

about some of the nuances of these news

stories that really are the stories of our lives. And that's why news is important. Good

journalism is important because we're actually telling our history as we're living it.

But today we're going to do something very special. It's a special edition of the debrief because

I'm actually going to be focusing on one event,

one historic event.

A historic event you're going to hear about in this new cycle.

And so I figured it was worth the time just to pause and focus on the origin of Memorial Day.

I'm recording this a couple days before Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a significant holiday in the United

States. It's also a really special holiday in our household as well for a few personal

reasons, which I'll share a little bit later on. But Memorial Day is that moment in America

where we also pause and we also remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation and for the

freedoms that we enjoy. But how did we arrive here? How did we arrive at Memorial Day? One of the

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