Hello everyone Kirk here with an off week extra for you all something very cool

that I think a lot of you will really like so a little while back I got an email from the folks

making a new podcast about Stevie Wonder. It's called The Wonder of Stevie

and they were curious if I would be interested in doing some sort of a promo swap

where I maybe run an episode of their show in my feed and then they run a promo for

Strong Songs in their feed that kind of thing. I've done that in the past a few times. I don't usually

say yes to those sorts of offers but sort of depends on which show is asking and I

looked at who was making the show in question and I could not say yes fast enough.

So the Wonder of Stevia is co-produced by Pineapple Street Studios.

They make a lot of cool podcasts and it's also co-produced by Higher Ground, which is Barak and Michelle Obama's

production company. That's cool, but what got me really excited is that the show is

hosted by Wesley Morris. Wesley Morris is a Pulitzer Prize- critic at the New York Times, who among other things has written

some of my favorite music profiles ever covering artists that I've talked about on the show,

like Michelle and Digi Acello, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and Aretha Franklin.

He's also just an amazing writer. He wrote a piece about Black American Music back in 2019.

It's one of the best things I've ever read about that subject and about American

music more broadly. I think I've referenced it on the show multiple times. I'm always telling people to read it.

And on top of that, Wesley Morris is just, he's a great podcast host, he has a great energy as you're about to hear.

Every time he talks about music on one of his shows, I can just feel his love of the music coming through.

I've always just felt a kinship with him and I've always

wanted to have him on Strong Songs to talk about music. So I said, sure I'm happy to do a

promo swap and actually what if Wesley came on strong songs to talk with me about the

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