it's a beautiful... ...day to fly. wooooo! i'm soledad o'brien. welcome to. matter of fact, it's something millions of college students and their families could only dream

of. you're about to finish your first year. how much money do you owe? none. how much money will you owe at the end of four years? zero. i visit marshall university in west virginia to learn about their program to help students graduate debt free. plus, state leaders are trying to work together to address issues facing americans without getting bogged down by political divisions. we can't solve problems if we all hated each other. i talked to governor spencer cox about how his disagree better initiative works, and what we could all learn from it, and discovering a dinosaur launched a career he never knew existed, just really kind of a dream come true. a look at what goes into bringing relics of the past to life. those stories right now on matter of fact. college in the united states is expensive. tuition at a public university averages about $26,000 a year

for a private college, it's $38,000. increasingly, middle class families are finding themselves in a bind. they make too much money to qualify for financial assistance, and recent changes to federal student aid rolls back some of the help they could get, but they don't make enough to afford tuition. well, now some colleges are looking for a way to help students pay for college without taking on crippling debt. i recently traveled to marshall university in west virginia, where they're launching a pilot program that they hope will one day lead to students not needing loans. mike ali spends a lot of time in his car. he's a college freshman and commutes five days a week for 40 minutes each way from his childhood home in winfield, west virginia, to marshall university. i've really enjoyed working with the professors and just like being in a it's a very the classroom setting is much more relaxed. he's studying psychology and has

plans to go to med school, hopefully to work in clinical psychiatry in a hospital, or maybe even open up. you know, a private practice. that's my dream. but it's a dream mike wasn't always sure would become a reality because of the price tag. marshall university estimates that an in-state student living on campus will spend about $28,000. their freshman year. that includes books, meals, housing, and tuition, and marshall is one of the most affordable universities in the country to save money, mike lives at home with his parents and two siblings. i'm the oldest. i've always felt like i've had to be, you know, have everything locked in. i figured out what i wanted to do and then i had to figure out how i was going to get there. and i remember even taking a personal finance class, uh, and there was an assignment regarding, like, looking up your college, your dream colleges, and then, like, how much it would cost to go there. and just seeing those numbers of

even a place like this, i, i was like, oh, i, i had honestly didn't know exactly how i was going to be able to pull it off. are your parents middle class? is that how you describe them? we are middle class is about as middle of the road as you can get. according to the us department of education, roughly 45 million americans have student loan debt and on average, middle class borrowers owe $45,000 a piece. when you interview the families and the students who are considering college, the number one concern they have is affordability. brad smith is the president of marshall university. his goal is to have every student at marshall graduate with zero debt in ten years. what's the number one reason why someone chooses to go to college or not? and we know the college going rate is declining at 12% a year across the nation. so a problem if you're a college president. huge problem. and it's a huge problem for the nation. because if you think about the economy today, in the 21st century, we need people who have

the skills and capabilities and the critical thinking skills to navigate the uncertainty around us. the marshall for all program, launched in the fall of 2023, is based on their financial need. 100 students were randomly selected and given the chance to go to school for free in exchange, they have to complete an internship, attend work, study, or have a job, and most importantly, complete a financial literacy course. college debt, which is causing many young people to put off buying a home and having children, is a focus of several college presidents. i saw what was happening at ohio state university under the former president christina johnson, and she was looking at something which would find a way to have students come in, actively participate in the system, and ultimately graduate with no debt. christine johnson was president of ohio state university from 2020 to 2023. she says that collaboration from all parties is required for a debt avoidance program to work.

it's a coalition outside the university, but it's also a coalition inside the university. so you've got a financial aid working with academic affairs and also working with admissions. they all have to come together and collaborate and then also with the philanthropy piece, if they're all in the same team, you can make this happen at marshall, the pilot program is funded in part by a private. $2 million donation, except it's students must first apply for federal student aid. from there, they work with advisors like jennifer jimison to figure out the rest. hey, hey, mike. what are you doing? jennifer? factors in scholarships, work study grants, and financial aid. if there's a balance, that's if there's a balance due. that's when the gifted funds kick in. being able to just study and not have to worry about, you know, the room, their board, their books, their tuition. you know, it's it's very helpful for mike getting into marshall for all has been life changing.

it gives me the ability to do the things that i want to do with my life. for the rest of my life. how big of a relief is it to know that you're going to come out of college owing zero? like, like the heaviest weight lifted off of my shoulders? it is absolutely unreal. it is the biggest relief. at least 37 colleges across the country are considering similar programs to help students graduate without debt. next on matter of fact, when scrolling social media, the political fights can seem everywhere. the algorithms of social media are specifically designed for this because cause they know that outrage is addicting. but is the nation really as divided as it reads online? plus, a new survey highlights a knowledge gap. we found something very startling results. it turns out that most americans consistently over the last four years can't name a single famous asian american. we'll explain how that leads to

ignoring serious issues facing asian american communities. aanhpis, anita, designer behind these dinosaur replicas in colorado, we have more on what life is like for this unique artist who even has a dinosaur named after him. you're watching, matter of fact, america's number one nationally syndicated public affairs news magazine. welcome back to matt hi, i'm greg. i live in bloomington, illinois. i'm not an actor. i'm just a regular person. some people say, "why should i take prevagen? i don't have a problem with my memory." memory loss is, is not something that occurs overnight. i started noticing subtle lapses in memory. i want people to know that prevagen has worked for me. it's helped my memory. it's helped my cognitive qualities. give it a try. i want it to help you just like it has helped me. prevagen. at stores everywhere without a prescription. ♪♪ stay ahead of your child's moderate—to—severe eczema, and they can show off clearer skin

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listen to this statement. republic and democrats are more focused on fighting each other than on solving problems. that statement was included in a recent survey by pew research center and an astounding 86% of respondents said it was a good description of american politics. so how do we bridge the divide that has been on utah governor spencer cox's mind? he leads the national governors association, a group of state leaders from all parties. governor cox launched the

disagree better initiative last summer. governor cox, very nice to have you on on the program. i appreciate your time. let's begin with the reason why you decided to launch a disagree better. we were looking at the biggest problems facing our nation. the energy prices, health care, all of these, these, these things that matter to to americans. but it just dawned on us that we we can't solve any of those problems if we all hate each other. we're sadly seeing a congress that is very dysfunctional and and so we we wondered if there was a better way to do this. what is it specifically entail? we certainly didn't want it to just be another civility or niceness initiative. this is something more and it's very influenced by by actual research. we've been working with the depolarization lab at stanford university, dartmouth has has a lab that is working on this as well, duke and others, and experiment that they've run to show how we can help depolarize us as a society. and it's also about

participation. so we had an ad that i filmed with my democratic opponent when i ran in 2020. we are currently in the final days of campaigning against each other about how we could we we disagree on lots of things, but we can we can still we still love our country. we love our state. that was one of the experiments that stanford ran and found that it had a measurable depolarize effect, including a reduction in urges towards violence. and so taking that research, we've asked our fellow governors to do the same thing. so there seemed to be many a lot of problems like immigration, right? one governor drops a bunch of undocumented people into another governor's state at great expense. like i could see governor was now, you know, feeling a certain way about that, that it's it's a fight. sure. politics has always been a fight, but but how we fight and the way we fight. absolutely matters. sometimes we do passionately disagree with each other. i think process is really important. our country wasn't wasn't

founded or set up for hyperpolarization, but it was set up for polarization. it was designed to have a bunch of people who disagree. in fact, our nation was founded in profound disagreement. the, you know, the constitution was was called the great compromise. this this is the way we we come together and we set up these institutions to allow for participation. sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but people have to feel like the game is fair. when we start, when we start cutting corners and not following procedure, when we don't follow the constitution, then that's when people start to think, okay, it's not a fair fight. so i'm willing to do anything i need to to if the other side is willing to undermine the constitution and throw it out, then, well, my side has to do that too. and i think that's where it gets dangerous. it also seems like we're in a time of misinformation, disinformation, deep fakes, just full on lying. how do you navigate realistically? navigate that that environment?

we've always had politicians that have used fear and divisiveness and lies and misinformation to try to gain power and to tear the other side down. that is not new. what i'm trying to do is, is to encourage other governors and other politicians in this country to try something different, that it's actually it's not just just the right thing to do, although it is. it's good politics. you can actually get elected by by telling the truth and treating others with dignity and respect. spencer cox is the governor of the state of utah. thank you, sir, for joining me. appreciate it. thanks for having me. coming up restored. a dinosaur is an incredibly labor intensive process and he'd no. we introduce you to the artist behind some massive dinosaur replicas. plus, the covid pandemic spurred an increase in discrimination and racism towards asian americans, but has it gotten better in the years since? what a new survey reveals about the treatment of the aapi community? we.

this next story takes us back. it's a beautiful... ...day to fly. wooooo!

you know that thing your family does? someone made it a thing, back in the day. but where did it come from? and how did it get aaaaall the way to you? see for yourself at ancestry. way back. dinosaurs have been extinct for about 65 million years, and yet we see their life size replicas in museums all over the world, and they're thought to be pretty accurate depictions of what dinosaurs look like. and that's difficult to achieve, since scientists hardly ever find a complete skeleton. designers like robert gaston work with paleontologists to accurately research and redesign

the life size figures, so we now take you to western colorado to an area known as the dinosaur diamond, to find out more about gaston's work. my discovery of gastonia was the the whole launch into what i do today, what was through participating in the excavation that kind of snowballed. my degree was in fine arts, so i was really well suited to all the skills that you need to restore dinosaurs. so it was just kind of something i never could have planned for, but just really kind of a dream come true here. it's very, very badly crushed. this skull is distorted. it's the process basically begins with the prepared material that the museum has excavated. a lot of times, the analogy i like to use is cars and junkyards. you've never seen that type of car. you get one that's been run through the crusher, and you don't really have a good idea of

what it looks like. but maybe you have other sports cars that look similar and so you're trying to, with the help of paleontologists, dig, decipher what that animal's bones look like before they went through that whole process. i'm doctor julie mchugh. i'm the curator of paleontology for the museums of western colorado. so i first started working with robert pretty soon after, i came to the museum of western colorado. so that's the animal's blind spot. blind spot? yeah, it's really difficult for some people to imagine from just a handful of bones what a whole animal would look like. and so these full skeleton mounts provide that missing link to bring these pieces of information together to create a representation of what what these animals would have looked like in their lifetime. to see something we've done in a museum is really a wonderful experience. and the other the other part of that is knowing that we're here for such a short time, especially when we're looking at all this stuff. and on a geologic scale, our

lifetime is poof, it's gone. we're watching climate change take place over decades, which may be to us seems like a little bit of a protracted, um, event. but looking geologically, this is instantaneous, like a meteorite hitting. and so to know that you're doing something that leaves a mark that will be here after you're gone is is is really, really wonderful. kind of cool. cool thing to to know ahead. un matter of fact, stereotypes can become scapegoats and that can lead to violence. the number one answer is education. the effort to combat racism and discrimination against one of the fastest growing ethnic groups, plus, she was one of the most gifted singers of her generation. how venus williams and a group of artists are now working to preserve nina's simone's legacy. to stay up to date with matter of fact, sign up for our newsletter at matteroffacttv.

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helping dogs dog healthy. asian american foundation has been surveying asian american, native hawaiian and pacific islanders, or aanhpi aanhpis in the united states. there's some of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the u.s., with a total population of more than 20 million. the foundation says it's tracking the community's experience, since it plays such an important role in shaping the future of american society. this past week, they released their latest survey. here are some of the key findings. more than 30% of asian americans say they were called a racial slur in the last 12 months. more than half think they are at least somewhat likely to be the victim of discrimination in the next five years, only 18% say they feel accepted in the u.s. for their racial identity. at the same time, most americans of non asian descent say they don't think hate towards asian americans has increased and more

than half said nothing came to mind when they were asked to name an event or a policy related to the history or the lives of asian americans. norman chen is the ceo of the asian american foundation. our survey actually asked the community, what do you think are some ways to best address these? the racism and discrimination and the number one answer is education. so we've embarked on, along with partners, on a massive national campaign to increase the teaching of asian american history around the country, to also develop a novel asian american curriculum. um, and so that's been very important and effective. the report's release is, of course, timed with the beginning of asian american and pacific islander heritage month, recognizing their contributions to us culture. still ahead on matter of fact, nina simone's childhood shaped the singer and activist. all of the things that touched and impacted her life that are being preserved, how a group of

artists is breathing new life into the high priestess of soul's legacy. if you're living with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis or active psoriatic arthritis, symptoms can sometimes take you out of the moment. now there's skyrizi, so you can show up with clearer skin... ...and show it off. ♪ nothing is everything ♪ with skyrizi, you could take each step with 90% clearer skin. and if you have psoriatic arthritis, skyrizi can help you get moving with less joint pain, stiffness, swelling, and fatigue. and skyrizi is just 4 doses a year, after 2 starter doses. serious allergic reactions and an increased risk of infections or a lower ability to fight them may occur. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms, had a vaccine, or plan to. thanks to skyrizi, there's nothing like clearer skin and less joint pain, and that means everything. ♪ nothing is everything ♪

ask your doctor about how skyrizi could help with your skin or joint symptoms. learn how abbvie could help you save. my late father-in-law lit up a room, but his vision dimmed with age. he had amd. i didn't know it then, but it can progress to ga, an advanced form of the disease. his struggle with vision loss from amd made me want to help you see warning signs of ga, like: hazy or blurred vision, so it's hard to see fine details, colors that appear dull or washed out, or trouble with low light that makes driving at night a real challenge. if you think you have ga, don't wait. treatments are available. ask a retina specialist about fda-approved treatments for ga and go to gawontwait.com ♪ ♪ whether someone is across the neighborhood, across the street, or across the room, you have the power to make them feel right at home.

♪ ♪ ritz. a taste of welcome. underway to save a piece of american history in 1933, nina simone was born. her name was eunice waymon. she grew up in this three room clapboard house in tryon, north carolina. it's where the singer songwriter learned to play the piano. the house was in the jim crow, segregated south, driving simone's future activism in the civil rights era. but in recent years, simone's childhood home sat empty and was in danger of demolition until adam pendleton and three other artists stepped in and bought it. nina simone is and was for me, a powerful example of the best of american culture, and it became very obvious that if there was a tangible way that i could impact and support her legacy, that i

should seize it. tennis star venus williams and the national trust's action fund have partnered with the artist to preserve the house. pendleton hopes to offer a residency program at the home for a new generation of musicians. a truly inspirational way to honor one of america's great artists. that's it for this edition of matter of fact, i'm soledad o'brien. i'll see you back here next week to watch more stories like this any time, head to matteroffacttv wptv.

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this is 50. don't miss it. nbc bay area. respond. telemundo respond. we help you get your money back. también como consumidor y la ayudamos a encontrar recursos necesita. contact us anytime. it's easier than ever. just scan one of these qr codes with your phone's camera and fill out the form online in english or en espanol, and check out my how to videos so you can learn from other people's questions. nbc bay area responds. telemundo respond. we find solutions that move you forward. jeff daniels i like it, i like it. today on asian pacific america, it's asian american, native hawaiian and pacific islander heritage month. first, we welcome new york times food reporter and host priya krishna, who will talk about her new book coming out april 30th. priya's kitchen adventures. then the always interesting doctor jenny