This Is Nashville

This Friday, we're talking chicken wings! What's the restaurant scene like here in Music City? What makes a good wing? And is there a quintessential Nashville-style wing? To get some answers to these questions and more, we're joined by restaurant owners and an expert chicken wing reviewer. Then, we'll talk about how our local wing joints have been impacted by inflation, supply chain issues and the...

According to a 2018 report , only 13% of teachers in the state are people of color, even though 37% of students are. Last month, the Tennessee Education Research Alliance received a four-year, $1.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to address the lack of teacher diversity in Tennessee schools. What will researchers be looking for? What can be don...

In the wake of the  Roe v. Wade  decision, a lot of people were left wondering: What does this mean for access to birth control and emergency contraception? While birth control remains fully available in Tennessee, the process of selecting and obtaining contraception can be difficult to navigate. From the pill, to intrauterine devices, to vasectomies or condoms, understanding and obtaining birth c...

Angela Tucker wants to change the conversation about adoption. She is an adoptee advocate and mentor, host of the podcast The Adoptee Next Door and author of the forthcoming book You Should Be Grateful: Stories or Race, Identity and Transracial Adoption . Born in Chattanooga, Angela grew up in Bellingham, Wash., with white adoptive parents — an experience that was challenging and sometimes isolati...

The Tennessee State Fair has taken place for over a century, with only a couple of interruptions: WWII and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been lots of changes over the years, from a huge fire in the 1960s, to the addition of car shows, to the recent move from the Nashville fairgrounds out to Lebanon. In this show, we’ll dive into the past and present of the fair with a historian...

This episode originally aired on April 25, 2022.   Nashville is known as Music City, but as the cost of living continues to rise in Nashville, it’s putting pressure on those trying to get by. What is it like to make music in Nashville if you aren’t headlining arenas? How are musicians piecing together a life for themselves? We start by talking with WNXP about former artist of the month $avvy, who...

This year marks the 34th anniversary of the  Nashville Summer Shakespeare Festival , which puts on free, outdoor performances of The Bard and other playwrights’ work. This year, the festival includes  Cymbeline  and, starting on the 25th, August Wilson’s  Gem of the Ocean . To learn more about how the festival got its start and how it relates to Nashville’s broader theater community, we’re joined...

Having a meal with family and friends can be an experience of deep connectedness — or a table full of landmines. We’re jugging not only sensitive topics, but sensitive stomachs, palates and dietary choices. Your best friend is gluten-free, your brother’s boyfriend is lactose-intolerant, and your uncle only eats meat. It can make for a tricky menu! Most of us are only one degree of separation from...

Note: This episode originally aired on March 14. Scouring the racks at a secondhand store is a time-honored way to score stylish clothes on the cheap in Middle Tennessee. But the best bargains are getting more difficult to come by as goods are snatched up and sold under a different category: vintage. Sometimes, the markup can be eye-popping, so high-quality clothes or last season’s designer duds a...

Peer support is a term you might hear in mental health, disease, and addiction recovery work. The idea is really what it sounds like: support provided by people who have “been there, done that” and are still walking the walk. So how does it work exactly? What is the process like to become a peer? And what does that support feel like for people in active recovery? Today, we hear from folks who have...

Thousands of revelers crowded East Nashville’s Five Points area over the weekend for the annual Tomato Art Fest. It’s also peak tomato season in Tennessee. Restaurants are dreaming up new treatments, home cooks are concocting everything from simple sandwiches to cabinets full of canned tomatoes to keep the flavor going through the winter. From farms to backyard gardens, everyone’s favorite fruit t...

Baseball is traditionally a male-dominated sport. However, throughout the history of the game there have been women players, coaches, managers and journalists fighting to make space for themselves and others – including here in Tennessee.  Friday marks the debut of Amazon’s new series,  A League of Their Own , which follows the journey of the All-American Professional Girls Baseball League during...

In every part of the world, across cultures and throughout history, textiles have been used to make and share art. It’s flexible and able to take the form of quilting, weaving, printmaking or sewing. The art form has been passed down through generations, and its purpose ranges from decorative to utilitarian to revolutionary.  In this episode, we’ll hear from local artists and researchers to learn...

Since the reversal of Roe v. Wade , there’s been a major uptick in public discussion about sexual assault and how the Supreme Court decision will impact survivors. In this episode, we’re talking about what sexual assault prevention looks like in Nashville and what resources are available to survivors. We’ll start by speaking with two survivors about their experiences, including how they processed...

A “second sanctuary” — that’s how one of our guests describes her barbershop because these places are about much more than cutting hair. They’re about community. Barbers can take the role of a counselor, even a parent, to their customers. The shop is a place were conversations flow and don’t shy away from religion and politics. At the same time, another guest says barbershops are “the segregated p...

Director Robert Altman’s  Nashville  premiered in Nashville on August 8, 1975. The film was already doing well in New York and elsewhere, but even before then, before it even hit theaters, legendary  New Yorker  film critic Pauline Kael dubbed it “the funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen.” Nashville  would go on to gross about $10 million in the U.S. and was nominated for five...

It’s back-to-school season! Big box stores have put out special school supplies displays, and the airwaves are full of commercials for backpacks, clothes and markers. It’s a pretty familiar phenomenon, but it’s also impossible to deny that a lot has changed about education over the past few years, from the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic to new laws that impact what can be taught in the classroo...

From getting lucky at first bid to being priced out over and over again … well, first-time homebuyers are in for an adventure in Middle Tennessee. In this episode, we meet Nashville residents who’ve had vastly different experiences buying homes over the last year. We’ll talk house-flipping, gentrification and interest rates. We’ll also hear from a real estate agent who can tell us what we’ve seen...

Nashville is a party city, full of honky-tonks, cherished bars and good old Tennessee whiskey. Pedal taverns and party buses fill the streets, while music venues are stocked with drinks. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to go out in this city when you can’t, or choose not to, drink. But that’s the reality for many Nashville residents.  In this episode, we’ll be joined by people who have made th...

Huntington’s disease is a rare genetic neurological disorder that can impact everything from a person’s ability to move to their memory and can cause psychiatric disorders, like depression.  For many, it’s fatal, and there’s a 50% chance that the biological child of a parent with Huntington’s will inherit the disease. Yet, there is still hope.  Vanderbilt University Medical Center is home  to one...

Bookstores are exactly what their name implies, but they’re so much more than that. They are vital spaces where people go not only to find and buy books, but to encounter new ideas, meet fellow readers and build community. Even so, a decade ago, with the rise of online retail and e-books, the local independent bookstore was widely considered a dying breed. And many of them did die off, including t...

What makes Nashville laugh? Where are the best places in town to catch a comedy show? What is it like to be a comedian in Music City?  To answer these questions and more, we’re joined by a panel of local comedians, producers, and booking managers. They’ll share their experiences on stage, and give us some insight into what it takes to put together a show.  The start the show, we’ll be joined by jo...

We’ve all been hearing significant chatter about the landmark restaurants we’ve lost in the last few years. What exactly makes a “landmark” restaurant, and are we experiencing more loss than normal? Or, are we just cycling through some nostalgic sensitivity as storefronts reach their inevitable finish line? To chew on some of these questions, we’re bringing long-time restaurateurs to the table. We...

A healthy ecosystem is a diverse one, and plants are critical to maintaining that diversity. For rare and endangered plants in Middle Tennessee, conservation can be challenging to manage. Native species often struggle to keep pace with invasive plants, and continuing development threatens to reduce green space. This hour we go on a hike in search of wild ginseng , meet some of the people working t...

It is just a reality of living in this country, that not a day goes by without a shooting. Recently mass shootings have dominated the news: a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, then an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. However, what’s more common, and receives less media coverage, is the daily incidents of gun violence in our communities....