In the one year since WPLN’s noontime show This Is Nashville premiered, host Khalil Ekulona has spoken to roughly 1,400 people on air. Guests have included politicians, comedians, Instagram influencers and musicians — even his own parents for an episode about Kwanzaa. He was especially honored to speak with civil rights legends King Hollands, Frankie Henry and Gloria McKissack for an episode about Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins.
“It was like talking to a page from the history book,” says Ekulona, 49, about the activists.
The usual format of the show is a roundtable discussion with up to five people, debating and discussing topics ranging from the proposal for a new Titans stadium to local barbershop culture to the city’s dynamic food scene. But Ekulona treasures the focused, intimate one-on-one interviews he occasionally conducts, like those with country singer Margo Price and Nashville SC star Hany Mukhtar.
“The microphones disappear,” says Ekulona. “The studio disappears, and we’re sitting in someone’s living room or house having a conversation, two people getting to know each other.” He says he also hopes to sit down with Dolly Parton one on one someday, of course.
Ekulona brings a deep voice and professional stage presence to the show, but he’s also bringing his full self — he’s the same guy on air and at the bar and at the grocery store, he says. As such, some episodes have affected him personally, like how a segment on natural burial site Larkspur Conservation helped him address the grief he was feeling for recently lost friends and family.
Ekulona grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore and got into journalism in 2014 while living in Albuquerque, N.M., contributing to a local morning television show. He wasn’t a reporter, but was no stranger to the nuts and bolts of local media — he was an entertainer who founded a hip-hop group called Fresh Air, and his father was an executive producer for Maryland Public Television. He eventually landed occasional work as a morning show anchor.
But he also learned a lot about managing an audience and facilitating discussions from his years as a teacher in Los Angeles and Albuquerque.
“Being a teacher is probably one of the greatest skills you can pick up because you’re onstage,” he says. “You are trying to get a group of 10 to 30 … kindergarteners [or] high school seniors to buy into your program, so you then can take the time to educate them.”
He was even a bartender part time in Albuquerque, getting to know local journalists who talked shop over drinks.
Shortly after he secured a hosting gig with NPR-affiliate KUNM for a podcast about local government, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. It was time for another pivot for Ekulona. He became the co-host of a new KUNM podcast, No More Normal, covering the unprecedented crisis. Ekulona says his experience on that show gave him a crash course in news reporting. He credits that experience with landing him the job at This Is Nashville. Ekulona gushes about the team, steered by executive producer Andrea Tudhope, and the steady work the crew does five days a week.
Ekulona says Nashvillians have welcomed him warmly to town, both on and off air, and that locals have been eager to share different sides of Nashville with him. And he thinks his varied career helps him navigate different perspectives of the most heated debates.
“People want to talk about the things that are important to them,” he says. “And it’s not simply political talking points from one perspective or the other. These are, at the end of the day, human stories that really can affect us all.”
Photographed by Angelina Castillo at WPLN
Profiling some of Nashville’s most interesting people, from drag legend Tina Louise to TSU’s Flutebae and more
