For our premiere episode, we broke from our usual one-on-one format to bring you an abbreviated — but nonetheless colorful and complicated — history of the Nashville Banner: a look at the days of a two-newspaper city, from people who lived it, day in and day out, in the storied newsroom at 1100 Broadway. This episode was first broadcast in April 2024. Guests Parker Toler, paperboy Mary Hance, reporter aka Ms. Cheap Kay West, writer aka Betty Banner Robert Churchwell Jr., son of Robert Churchwell...
Dec 01, 2024•33 min•Ep. 35
From a young age, Hal Cato knew he wanted to help others — from a chance encounter with a senior in an assisted living center to recruiting friends to help him deliver Meals on Wheels. That drive has brought him into leadership at some of Nashville's most prominent nonprofits — including Hands On Nashville, Oasis Center and Thistle Farms. And it brought him very close to a run for mayor. "I'm still attracted to the underdog today, those who are marginalized and just sort of on the outskirts," Ha...
Nov 24, 2024•36 min•Ep. 34
President-elect Donald Trump has promised mass deportations, raising questions about the feasibility of such an operation and, at the same time, causing fear in immigrant communities across the country. Here in Nashville, local authorities have stayed away from strident rhetoric, but this week Tennessee lawmakers introduced two bills aimed at undocumented immigrants — one that would require law enforcement to transport them to "sanctuary cities" and another that would require state IDs to distin...
Nov 17, 2024•33 min•Ep. 33
The 2024 election in the books. At the city level, Mayor Freddie O'Connell's transit measure won big. What was different this time, as opposed to the failed 2018 plan? As expected, Republicans dominated statewide elections, but what comes next for Democrats, who eked out a must-win seat in the state legislature but made no significant gains? And with a second Trump administration on the horizon, what could that mean for Tennessee politicians. Demetria sits down with three members of the Banner t...
Nov 10, 2024•40 min•Ep. 32
As of November 2024, the account A Girl Has No President has more than 820,000 followers on Instagram. That following includes scores of celebrities. But the creator of the account chooses to stay anonymous, in part because of threats against her and her family, and in part because she is not interested in notoriety. She also rarely grants interviews, but made an exception for this episode of Banner & Company. She talks about why she created the account in 2016 out of "unadulterated anger," ...
Nov 03, 2024•34 min•Ep. 31
On a cold night in 1985, the Rev. Charles Strobel, then pastor at Holy Name Catholic Church in East Nashville, invited the people who were trying to sleep in the parking lot to come inside. This gesture, which he already knew might alter the course of his life, eventually grew into a citywide program known as Room In The Inn, now comprising 200 congregations, offering shelter and warm meals to those in need. It has become a national model, and the city's first permanent supportive housing facili...
Oct 27, 2024•34 min•Ep. 30
In some ways, his upbringing helped prepare Tyler Mahan Coe for creating the breakout country music history podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones. After all, his father is David Allan Coe, and Tyler spent more than a decade touring with him as a member of his band. He also has childhood memories of stars like George Jones, thanks to a connection with producer Billy Sherrill. But even that kind of proximity to country music doesn't guarantee a gift for storytelling, or Tyler's maximalist approach to ...
Oct 20, 2024•36 min•Ep. 29
A few days before Christmas in 2008, a six-story tall, 84-acre mound of coal ash — a byproduct of burning coal — collapsed at the Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tenn. The toxic sludge burst through a retaining embankment, knocked houses of their foundations and tossed cars around like toys. All in all, a billion gallons of toxic sludge filled the Emory River and 300 acres of the surrounding community of Kingston. In his new book Valley So Low, writer Jared Sullivan examines the spill, th...
Oct 13, 2024•37 min•Ep. 28
For Nashville native Anne Byrn, baking is an art, and everyone who mixes, measures and bakes is an artist in their own right — whether that means following a beloved recipe to the letter, or improvising to get the taste just right. Her own mother was an excellent home cook who only had to read a recipe to know what it would taste like. And she was an early influence on Anne, who is now a bestselling cookbook author. Her latest book, Baking in the American South, is much more than a cookbook; it'...
Oct 06, 2024•39 min•Ep. 27
With no budget and no blueprint, Hazel Joyner-Smith programmed her first film festival in just two weeks. It was a whirlwind experience, but she got it done. And she hasn't looked back since. The International Black Film Festival has been going strong here in Nashville for two decades, and this year's edition, which begins this week, showcases a range of films from features to shorts to documentaries — many of them produced in Tennessee. Hazel grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, and cre...
Sep 29, 2024•36 min•Ep. 26
With his brightly colored designs — everything from ears of corn to New York City skyscrapers — painter Myles Maillie has made a name for himself in Nashville's art scene. There's a good chance you've seen someone wearing one of his hand-painted shirts or aprons. The bold, pop-art style is hard to miss, as is Myles himself, whose flair for color extends to his wardrobe. For decades, Myles kept at it, using inexpensive materials to create bold, joyful pieces — some wearable, some not. Though he's...
Sep 22, 2024•31 min•Ep. 25
Sept. 9, 1957 was MaryAnne MacKenzie's first day teaching sixth grade at Hattie Cotton School in East Nashville. It was also the first day of Nashville's desegregation of public schools. One Black girl showed up for class at Hattie Cotton that day, and for the anti-integration crowd, one Black student was one too many. In the dead of night, 99 someone detonated 99 sticks of dynamite, blowing apart the east end of the building and knocking it off its foundation. No one was hurt, but the culprits ...
Sep 15, 2024•38 min•Ep. 24
North Nashville is an important, historic area and home to some of the city's most significant institutions. But it's also a place that has seen disruption, unrest and neglect. Decades ago, the interstate cut the community in half — literally — displacing residents and shuttering businesses. But for those who have chosen to stay, North Nashville has always been a place that is more than the sum of its parts. That's why one resident has dedicated herself to lifting up the stories of people who li...
Sep 08, 2024•34 min•Ep. 23
When Smyrna native Gerold Oliver takes the stage, he has a way of winning over audiences. He's currently playing the role of Orlando in the Nashville Shakespeare Festival's production of As You Like It — which features plenty of music and Gerold on guitar. And soon, he'll also be starring in The Best School Year Ever at the Nashville Children's Theater, where he's artist in residence. Gerold keeps busy, both because he loves acting and because he has a young son at home to support. (Yes, he and ...
Sep 01, 2024•37 min•Ep. 22
Five-star recruit Morgan Price made headlines in 2022 when she decided to de-commit from an SEC program in order to join Fisk University's brand-new gymnastics team — a first for a historically Black university or college. It was a fortuitous decision for the Lebanon, Tenn., native, who not only moved closer to her hometown after years pursuing the sport in Texas, but also fulfilled a lifelong wish to attend an HBCU. In her second year, Morgan became the first gymnast from an HBCU to win a natio...
Aug 25, 2024•34 min•Ep. 21
As a journalist and author, Amanda Little has written about the environment, energy, technology and the future of food production — traveling to far-flung locations, meeting people around the world and eating lab-created meat out of a bioreactor. As a professor, she's worked to pass along the skills she's learned along the way, by trial and error, of reporting and storytelling. Her newest endeavor, a multi-media engagement platform called Kidizenship, began with a question from her daughter: "Wh...
Aug 18, 2024•41 min•Ep. 20
Henry Martin thought he might spend a few years as federal public defender, then return to private practice as a slightly older and much wiser attorney. That was almost 40 years ago. Today, he's the longest serving federal defender in the entire country, and over his long career, he's worked alongside some of Nashville's finest legal minds. Henry has also had some fascinating clients — a list that almost included Timothy McVeigh — and has always worked to protect the rights of the accused. He's ...
Aug 11, 2024•40 min•Ep. 19
In the 1990s Jeff Holmes, and his college buddy Scot Evans started a band called The Floating Men, which quickly became one of Nashville’s most consistent live acts — blending rock, pop and jazzy interludes. As the crowds that came to see them grew, they garnered lots of of attention from big-time record labels, even if executives didn’t really know what to do with them. As they watched talented peers get sucked into the industry machine only lose control of their own music, The Floating Men mad...
Aug 04, 2024•36 min•Ep. 18
María Magdalena Campos-Pons was born in Cuba, and spent her formative years in Matanzas, known as the "Athens of Cuba." It is perhaps fitting that her journey has brought her to Nashville, the "Athens of the South," where she teaches at Vanderbilt and makes art that is known around the world for its vivid storytelling around identity. Her work appears around the world, and is part of more than 30 collections including the Smithsonian Institution, The Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago and the...
Jul 28, 2024•40 min•Ep. 17
With neo-Nazis demonstrating around Nashville, including at a Metro Council meeting from which they were eventually expelled, the city has been on edge. It's the second such group in as many weeks to bring their racist messaging to the streets of downtown and beyond, and some Nashvillians have shown up to oppose them publicly. Dr. Sophie Bjork-James is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University and a cultural anthropologist who studies racism and white nationalist movements. In this episode...
Jul 21, 2024•38 min•Ep. 16
Attorney Rose Palermo still keeps an office on Music Row, where she got her start in the ’70s representing musicians. When some of those musicians started getting divorced, she took on that work, too. It helps to know the business, after all. Eventually there was so much divorce work she had to choose, and she chose divorce — though not for herself. (She and fellow attorney Denty Cheatham remain happily married, as they have been for 50-plus years.) In the intervening decades, Rose has built a r...
Jul 14, 2024•38 min•Ep. 15
For the better part of a decade, historian Betsy Phillips has been trying to get the truth about three Civil Rights-era bombings in Nashville: Hattie Cotton school in September 1957; the Jewish Community Center in March 1958; and the home of attorney and councilmember Z. Alexander Looby in April 1960. It has been painstaking work involving archival searches, Freedom of Information Act requests for FBI files, and even a road trip to Alabama. The result is her new book, Dynamite Nashville, and in ...
Jul 07, 2024•37 min•Ep. 14
In the early 1970s, the Metro Nashville Police Department had no women working patrol. Valerie Meece was one of the first two women to step into that work — even if there were no women's police uniforms available at the time. And while there were plenty of men on the force who didn't think women had any business doing police work, she was undeterred. And she found allies, working her way up and retiring as an assistant chief after a decades-long career. This being Music City, maybe it's not too ...
Jun 30, 2024•38 min•Ep. 13
A historical marker commemorating the storied dance club Warehouse 28 was unveiled this month. The Warehouse began as a gay disco but was an inclusive environment that served as a refuge and hangout for Nashville's LGBTQ community starting in 1978 until its doors closed for good in 1995. It was also the place where Nashville CARES got its start, working to fight the AIDS epidemic. Macon Kimbrough started hanging out at Warehouse 28, and with owners Steve Smith and Mike Wilson, he took a trip to ...
Jun 23, 2024•36 min•Ep. 12
In 2023, Phil Williams became the first Nashville reporter to receive the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism from Columbia University. It was yet another piece of hardware to add to his already crowded shelf of accolades, full of numerous Peabody Awards, including one for his coverage of Franklin mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson. Investigative reporting is hard work, and it can rub people the wrong way, especially if they have something to hide. But if that's what it takes to g...
Jun 16, 2024•42 min•Ep. 11
Acclaimed music critic Ann Powers wasn't always sure this was the career path for her. In fact, she wasn't sure there was a path to making a living as a music writer. But after falling in with the right crowd — first at Tower Records in San Francisco and later at the Village Voice in New York — she found her calling and her voice. These days, Ann works for National Public Radio, but she calls Nashville home. Her new book, Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, is a multifaceted look at a compl...
Jun 09, 2024•39 min•Ep. 10
When Richard Courtney was growing up in Columbia, Tenn., he went to visit a friend whose sister put "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by The Beatles on the record player — a moment that changed his life. So much so, that all these years later he has a Beatles museum in the basement of his house in Nashville that houses more than 3,800 items, including obscure vinyl, autographs, rare artwork and even locks of the Fab Four members' hair. He's gotten to meet his favorite Beatle, and also struck up an unli...
Jun 02, 2024•35 min•Ep. 9
Long before Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter album re-ignited the conversation, Frankie Staton was booking showcases aimed at highlighting Nashville's Black country music talent, which remained hidden in the mix. "I knew that I was not the only Black person that was being treated the way I was being treated," she says. A North Carolina native inspired to move to Music City by the likes of Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, Frankie has toiled in the shadows for decades, but not long ago she finally made it on...
May 25, 2024•47 min•Ep. 8
Dr. Jon Roebuck comes from a family of preachers, and for 17 years he was the pastor at Woodmont Christian Church. That experience laid the groundwork for what has become a staple on Nashville television: "A Moment That Matters." The one-minute bursts of inspiration air every Sunday and, while they're much shorter than the sermons he used to prepare every week, they've found a devoted audience. In this episode, Jon talks about his background, his faith, and the challenges of keeping that faith —...
May 19, 2024•41 min•Ep. 7
When Eden Wilkinson was less than two years old, she had a different name, and lived in an orphanage in Romania. At the time, the country, like many former Soviet satellite states, was struggling economically and, thanks to government policies mandating that women have at least 5 children, was filled with children whose families could not afford to raise them properly. It was estimated that 100,000 children were in need of homes. In 1994, Demetria Kalodimos accompanied Tennessee Congressman Bart...
May 12, 2024•40 min•Ep. 6
