Six Feet From Normal

We speak with community organizers who are working to keep protesters safe, a public health expert who cites missed opportunities by both cities and states to provide health checks and a photojournalist that has had to adapt his reporting style of the protests amid the pandemic.

This week we'll look at how elections might will look in the coming months, protecting voters, and the challenges of democracy during a pandemic. 

On this week's episode we examine the sports world, one of the most visibly impacted industries of the pandemic. We speak with athletes, including Los Angeles Lakers point guard Quinn Cook, about keeping fit and focused while on hiatus because of COVID-19. *NOTE: Tyrone Smith represents Bermuda, not Barbados as mentioned in the podcast.*

As COVID-19 freezes entire populations in place, the travel industry has been especially hard hit. This week, we hear from those who travel for a living and how the pandemic has affected them.

In this episode we speak with two business owners from Georgia and Alabama about the risks and rewards of opening back up. Then we'll hear from a bakery owner in northern Iraq about how starting a new business just before the spread of COVID-19 has impacted him and his community.

Quarantine may prevent the spread of the COVID-19, but it's also great at creating a new symptom: loneliness.        

COVID-19 sent school districts around the country scrambling for online resources and creative ways to engage students. In this episode, we speak with Lindsay Arnold, a kindergarten teacher from West Baltimore who's had to quickly adapt to teaching 5-year-olds online We also talk with Sharon Laidlaw and Kevin Schwartz, two tech officials from the Austin ISD about their unique way of providing high-speed internet to students in need.

In this inaugural episode of Six Feet From Normal, we talk to an expecting mother in Charlottesville, VA discovering and preparing for the challenges of having a child during a pandemic as well as a practicing OBGYN from UCLA Health about the changes she has made in her own practice. We also speak with Silvia Martelli, a Medill student from Italy who's had to deal with her own challenges and difficult decisions to make the most of her education.