Meribah Knight takes us behind the scenes of her new podcast ‘The Kids of Rutherford County’

In 2016, WPLN’s senior reporter and special projects producer Meribah Knight heard a disturbing story from Rutherford County, a suburban Tennessee community southeast of Nashville. A group of elementary schoolers were arrested for something that didn’t seem like a crime: watching a fight between other kids and not intervening.

Meribah dug in further and discovered a pattern of young kids in Rutherford County being jailed for minor offenses.

More: Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge.

The result of over seven years of reporting is a new podcast, “The Kids of Rutherford County.” It’s produced by Serial and The New York Times in partnership with ProPublica and, of course, Nashville Public Radio.

The first two episodes are out today. Find them wherever you get your podcasts or bookmark wpln.org/kids.

On this special hour of This is Nashville, Meribah Knight takes us behind the scenes of her reporting and shares the first episode.

This episode was produced by Char Daston.