License plate readers (LPRs) have been on the front lines of debate this summer.
And now lawmakers say they will take the reins on writing legislation to potentially place regulations on the policing technology when session starts in January.
For now, activists and police don’t see eye-to-eye on licence plate reader usage.
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Reporter: Emily West
Photo: Emily West
A race toward a century-old dream of near-infinite energy from fusion is heating up across the U.S. And Tennessee just took one step forward.
The state issued the nation’s first license for a nuclear fusion power plant this week to Type One Energy. The company envisions bringing a fusion power plant online by 2034 near Knoxville.
But the project will start with building a prototype — as fusion and the infrastructure required to produce a lot of energy from it still require more research.
As Caroline Eggers reports, Type One Energy began its story in Madison, Wisconsin in 2019 and opened an office in Oak Ridge several years later. The startup has a number of investors, including the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy.
In 2024, the company announced plans to build a prototype machine at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s closed Bull Run Fossil Plant in Clinton. At the time, it said that construction could begin as early as the following year. The company submitted formal plans to Tennessee regulators in January, and it now plans to break ground on the prototype this year.
The project will also entail setting up a research site through a partnership with TVA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee.
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Notable quotables for the week looked into the disconnect between public pushback on surveillance technology and its growing popularity among law enforcement agencies in Tennessee.
They also looked into an underexplored risk of data centers: noise pollution. In Memphis, Elon Musk’s X-AI data centers and the gas turbines that power them are creating inescapable walls of sound for their neighbors.
A new state report detailed moment-by-moment how workers at Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown accidentally filled epidural syringes with potassium phosphate instead of anesthesia drugs. That medication can wreak havoc on the cardiovascular and nervous systems. Several patients of the four surgical patients went into cardiac arrest, and all of them were paralyzed for an unknown amount of time.
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Don’t you hate it when you go to buy a concert ticket and the price suddenly jumps because of mysterious additional fees?
New research from Vanderbilt shows price mark-ups from online scalpers and those fees cost ticket buyers $11 billion per year.
Most tickets are bought online, and scalpers create algorithms and bots that can buy thousands of tickets in an instant and resell them all at a higher price. Primary ticket platforms often try to restrict this activity by having volume caps, but those are easy to get around with proxy IP addresses.
A new estimate from the Vanderbilt research estimates net resale price inflation costs ticket buyers $4.5 billion dollars a year alone.
The paper calculates that $20.4 billion in processing fees are collected each year, of which $6.8 billion of that is excessive.
Follow for more from Justin Barney and tap link in bio for the full story.
Photo: Phelan M. Ebenhack / AP (File), Illustration Getty Images, Paul Sakuma AP
Tributes to the legendary Dolly Parton have continued pouring in since her death last week at the age of 80.
Since then, state lawmakers have announced their intention to fully fund Parton’s Imagination Library program for children in Tennessee through the Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation. Currently, the GELF funds 50% of the costs of purchasing and mailing books every month to children under the age of five. The plan to increase funding to 100% is subject to state budget approval in 2027.
Plus, a historic bench in Centennial Park has been dedicated to Parton, who posed for an iconic photo there in 1975. And the Tennessee Vols will be adding a Dolly Parton butterfly patch to their helmets every game this season.
Photo credits:
Slide 1: The Grand Ole Opry
Slide 2: Governor’s Early Literacy Foundation
Slide 3: Metro Parks & Centennial Park Conservancy
Slide 4: University of Tennessee Football
Slide 5: Marianna Bacallao
Welcome to Backstory: let’s take a look at surprising and scandalous chapters in Tennessee history.
From literal monkey business to a full-blown, decades-long hoax, we’re looking back at some of Tennessee’s most eyebrow-raising moments.
These stories are compiled from the catalog of the NashVillager podcast, where host Nina Cardona breaks down the day’s news, with a healthy dose of history and context.
This project is funded under an agreement with the State of Tennessee administered by the Tennessee Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial.
Tap link in bio to see our collective Tennessee Backstory.
Photo credits:
Slide 3: Tennessee State Library & Archives
Slide 4: Courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee
Slide 6: The Tennessean via Newspapers.com
Jason Isbell and several other musicians have filed a class action lawsuit against Suno, accusing the AI music maker of training its models on musicians identities without their consent.
Suno is an AI company that can generate a fully-fleshed song with as little as a one-word prompt.
The suit notes that Suno says that users are blocked from using specific names in their prompts, but that when Jason Isbell`s name was typed into the prompt box, it created an Americana song with clean male vocals and a country twang.
The lawsuit states that Suno encoded the identities of countless artists into it’s AI model without permission and now exploits them for its own profit.
The suit comes amidst an avalanche of suits against Suno in the past week. Canadian music rights organization announced a suit for copyright infringement, a Mexican music label and publisher is suing, and major labels Universal and Sony are in the middle of a blockbuster lawsuit right now.
Photo: Amy Harris / Invision/ AP
Tennessee is about to experience another oven-like heatwave, reflecting a dangerous trend of oppressive heat and humidity, reports Environmental Reporter Caroline Eggers
The state likely has five times more heat-related deaths than counted in official tallies, according to a new investigation from NPR and Boston University.
The model estimated about 125 heat-related deaths per year in Tennessee each year between 2018 and 2025.
Nationally, the model estimated 9,000 annual deaths, with a third happening in Texas and Florida alone, also five times higher than official counts.
Heatwaves have already become hotter, happened more often and lasted longer in recent decades, and further climate change will further intensify heat.
Tap link in bio for more from environmental reporter Caroline Eggers.
Images: George Walker IV / AP, Climate Central, Pawel Janiak / Unsplash
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‘They’re putting kids’ lives at risk’: How abuse in a Tennessee businessman’s juvenile prisons remained under wraps
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons are operated by a single private company. Former staff say they felt pressure to hide abuse and other serious incidents from the state and to handle medical emergencies without calling 911.
Curious Nashville Returns!
Back by popular demand, the WPLN fan favorite series Curious Nashville is here to investigate oddities, share local history, tell stories of interesting people, and explain how local institutions operate.
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