I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now.

Friends, The Road has brought me back to Nashville, Tennessee, where the regular beats of life are going steady.

And for Bob and I, August always means lining up a bunch of new episodes.

And we have so many lined up right now.

Next week will be our new episode on Lafayette's return to the United States and his tour,

which is going to be brilliant. We're looking at the 200th anniversary. So look forward to that next week.

Then later this month, we have an episode scheduled with my former graduate advisor, Louis Siegelbaum,

who has co-edited a collection with Jay Archgetty, who is my wife's former graduate advisor, Louis Siegelbaum, who has co-edited a collection with

Jay Archgetty, who is my wife's former graduate advisor, and they've brought together these

senior scholars who wrote on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and their reflections on what

that was like. It was crazy. If you said anything but kind of the American line about Stalin or the Soviet

Union or anything, you get branded a traitor or a communist and people would doubt you.

I know that some of you might not quite get this, but, you know, being afraid to say something

that you've backed up with evidence might get you in trouble politically. You know, good thing

it's not the Cold War anymore. Anyway. And then we have Lindsay Schrov lined up to talk about her new book, and those are just three new episodes coming out.

This week, though, we have one more classic episode to share with you on our summertime run.

After last week's conversation with Nick Koreseniti about the Stone Pony, I was thinking more and more about music,

and it just

reminded me when Bob brought up David Mnconi and his work on North Carolina music, that we

have this fantastic episode that we recorded four years ago. It coincided with the release of David's

book, Step It Up and Go, the story of North Carolina popular music from Blind Boy Fuller and

Doc Watson to Nina

...