This Is Nashville

Nashville is developing a new master plan for Fort Negley, one of the city’s most significant and unique historical landmarks. The fort was built during the Civil War by conscripted free Black men and women for the Union Army. The U.S. Colored Troops who defended Fort Negley during the war remained and settled Nashville’s first post-Emancipation Black neighborhood at the base of the hill. The Bass...

Thursday marked the anniversary of the day the Nashville Predators sold enough season tickets to qualify for a National Hockey League franchise in 1998. It was a pretty formative moment for our city. Fast forward to today, and the Preds are in the hunt for a playoff spot. We’ll kick off today’s show with a local hockey reporter who's going to fill us in on how this season has gone, and what we hav...

Author and New York Times columnist Margaret Renkl joins the show to share her joy of spring and talk over the polarization that she sees hindering our progress. She tells host Khalil Ekulona "when the macrocosm is hard to bear, focusing in on the microcosm usually helps." "I do still take an immense amount of pleasure and hope in the bluebirds building a nest in the nest box in my yard, or for th...

After more than a decade in operation,  The Little Pantry That Could  had its last shopping day on Saturday – leaving a hole in the city. It was more than a free grocery store. Founder/Director Stacy Downey built a family and provided outreach for housing, identification and medical care, in addition to groceries. Where will that leave folks in North Nashville who depended on the community? We tal...

The deadline to register for upcoming local elections is fast approaching — Monday, April 4 to be exact. Today’s episode is all about exercising the franchise, which a large number of Nashvillians choose not to do. Two years ago, 90,342 ballots were cast in the general election for mayor. That’s only about 21 percent of registered voters. Put another way, Mayor John Cooper was elected in 2019 with...

Nashville is best known for music, and rightly so, but below the surface there is a rich visual arts scene. Wedgwood-Houston and Buchanan have emerged as arts districts unto themselves, while exhibits also continue in storied spaces like the Van Vechten Gallery at Fisk University. Nashville's rapid growth over the past few years has attracted a wave of new homebuyers from cities with established a...

It's been a crazy two years. We all know that. But, think about this: high schoolers who are about to graduate have been in the pandemic since their sophomore year. As students head back to school after spring break, we check in on how they’re holding up this far into the pandemic. First, WPLN's Damon Mitchell talks new tech jobs, and how to get ready for them. Guests : Damon Mitchell, WPLN Enterp...

Everyone wants to live in a safe community. The big question is, what is the best way to prevent violence? The 2020 murder of George Floyd created new urgency across the country to find alternatives to policing. Nashville was no exception. Over the past few years, one local anti-violence group, Gideon’s Army, has been trying out one approach called violence interruption. The approach treats violen...

Newroz (also spelled Nowruz) is the start of the Persian New Year and a celebration of spring that is held throughout the Middle East. It's also celebrated in Middle Tennessee because Nashville is home to the largest Kurdish population in the United States. Today's guests share what Newroz means to them and their cultural identity as either Kurds or Afghans living in the U.S. Also in this episode,...

Nashville has changed a lot over the past handful of decades – and our city’s LGBTQ+ scene is no exception. The first gay bars popped up after World War II, and the number of LGBTQ+ establishments grew from there, peaking in the 1980s and 1990s with more than 20. None of them are still around today. In recent years, increasing social acceptance has lead to the creation of new queer spaces in Nashv...

After a brief intermission, Curious Nashville  returns to the airwaves to answer listener questions about Middle Tennessee. The show reexamines history, explains what is — and isn’t — working in local government, and finds the story behind the oddball landmarks on the side of the road. WPLN Special Projects Editor Tony Gonzalez joins This Is Nashville host Khalil Ekulona to share some of his favor...

Nashville is  locked in a contract dispute  with Red River Waste Solutions, the private company the city hired for  trash and recycling pickup . Things got so bad that the city  stopped picking up recyclables altogether  late last year. Recycling collection has started up again, but Red River is still in bankruptcy and the city’s garbage is piling up. All this refuse raises questions. Where does o...

In February, the Metro Nashville Council passed a controversial piece of legislation that would allow law enforcement to use license plate readers as part of a six month pilot program . Some believe that this new technology will help address crime in our city. But others have serious concerns that it poses a threat to privacy and could disproportionately target people of color. To learn more about...

Scouring the racks at a secondhand store is a time-honored way to score stylish clothes on the cheap in Middle Tennessee. But if you’re searching for these kinds of bargains, at a thrift store, good luck — pretty much anything that’s worth anything is getting snapped up and sold under a different category: vintage. Sometimes the markup can be eye-popping so high-quality clothes or last season's de...

Middle Tennessee experienced a handful of sunny days this week, but this weekend, there's the possibility of snow. The temperature drop is a mild inconvenience for most residents, but it can be deadly for those who are unhoused. In this episode, you'll hear from people who have experienced harsh weather when they didn't have stable housing and take a trip to one of Nashville's cold weather shelter...

In January Tennessee made national news when the Pulitzer Prize winning Holocaust memoir Maus was banned by the McMinn County school board . This was just the beginning of a much larger debate about books, obscenity and "age-appropriateness" that has been raging across the state.  In this episode, host Khalil Ekulona sits down with WPLN News political reporter Blaise Gainey to learn more about thr...

Sixty years ago, North Nashville was a thriving cultural oasis. There were taverns and gambling joints, restaurants and ice cream parlors, boarding houses and nightclubs that drew the likes of Etta James and Jimi Hendrix. Construction of Interstate 40 through North Nashville in the 1970s split the historically Black neighborhood in two, severed community ties and brought noise and pollution. Much...

As Nashville continues its rapid growth, residents with disabilities say they're being left behind. While new buildings are popping up all around Middle Tennessee, residents who rely on wheelchairs, canes, guide dogs and other mobility aids are still fighting for reliable public transportation and safe sidewalks in their neighborhoods. In this episode, we hear what it's like to navigate Nashville...

After the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in Tennessee in March 2020, nurses were often lauded as healthcare heroes. Two years later, nurses are not only feeling the weight of the pandemic, they are also dealing with staffing shortages, patients who refuse to get vaccinated, and the ongoing loss of human life. An increasing number of nurses are considering becoming travel nurses to make more...

The honky-tonks on Lower Broadway contribute to Nashville's economy and its reputation as a destination party city. While "NashVegas" has become a playground for bachelorette parties, locals have pushed back — complaining about unruly tourists and under-regulated party vehicles . Things got so out of hand that the word "transportainment" made its first appearance in The New York Times last year. I...

It has been two years since tornadoes touched down in Middle Tennessee on March 3, 2020. The tornadoes killed 25 people , destroyed more than 1,600 buildings — including more than 400 homes — and damaged some 2,700 others stretching from Benton County, through downtown and East Nashville, and into Cookeville. This episode examines what has changed since the deadly storms. Host Khalil Ekulona speak...

Tennessee’s school funding formula hasn’t been meaningfully changed in the last 30 years, but in late February Governor Bill Lee and Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn released a proposal that will focus funding on students. The new Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement promises more dollars to every district. In the first part of the show, WPLN education reporter Juliana Kim explains the...

Welcome to the first episode of This Is Nashville . Today the show explores how the region's explosive growth has led to a sense of disconnect, between the old Nashville and the new. Host Khalil Ekulona talks with guests who are shaping the new Nashville and asks them what Music City is gaining and losing with all of these rapid changes. Before we dive into the conversation, Executive Producer And...

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