Southern Songs and Stories is a documentary series on the artists, music, and culture of the South,

with interviews, songs, a good bit of history, and insights and how all of it fits together.

I'm your host, Joe Kendrick, inviting you to come explore the music of the South

and the artists who make it on Southern Songs and Stories.

I've been there. I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now 2020 coronavirus crisis disaster edition.

Part one of who knows how many, hopefully one.

This week, the last two weeks actually, I have been in the middle of a crisis and it has been,

I think, as you know, most of you, pretty insane.

But my coronavirus trip started with a tornado.

So the coronavirus thing kind of snuck up on me. Honestly, I think it snuck up on all of us,

but I mean, I guess it snuck up on everybody. To be fair, to be fair. None of us saw this coming.

And that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Today's episode, as you may notice from it just being me,

is dedicated to disasters, thinking about disasters. What can we learn from them it's been a solo project Bob has been dealing with what I've

been dealing with except for even more so kids at home shout out to all the

people now suddenly teaching their own kids things hopefully we can do this

and we don't have a generation of people

who are semi-literate because it was left to people like me to teach them. What am I talking about?

I teach college students, but they can already read when they get there. You know, it's a whole

different process. But this episode's a bit different and it just reflects a couple of weeks of

thinking about these things

and some conclusions and a great conversation with my friend Dr. Andy Bruno, which really caps it off.

Andy is a professor at Northern Illinois University. This conversation was so good. I basically

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