Have you ever looked closely at your Tennessee driver’s license? There might be something surprising in the fine print. Curious Nashville listener Sam Barocas used his microscope to find it. And then he asked:

In some instances — likely on millions of licenses — a thin ribbon of text reads “The VolunDeer State.” With a ‘d.’

Among the theories:

WPLN’s Justin Barney helps Curious Nashville get to the bottom of this mystery. 

Kudzu is a woody, hairy vine with distinct three-pronged leaves. During the blooming season in late summer, the plant produces grape-smelling purple flowers. And, always, it has a way of crowding out other plants.

"Kudzu is like a glamorous villain ... ‘the vine that ate the South,' " says Ben Nanny, the conservation director at Ijams Nature Center.

This ubiquitous vine prompted this question:

The answer ties back to the late 1800s, reports Jacqui Sieber with WUOT in Knoxville. You can learn more in our "signal species" series.

J.T. Moore Middle School in Nashville is named after John Trotwood Moore, an author and prominent landowner. He was also openly racist, a proponent of lynching, and an apologist for the "Old South". This sparked a question to Curious Nashville:

The answer, in part, has ties to the state's Tennessee Heritage Protection Act. (You may recall this prior episode: Why is it so hard to alter Confederate monuments in Tennessee?)

Today, WPLN Education Reporter Camellia Burris hears from Larry Woods, a parent of former J.T. Moore students (he's also a civil rights attorney and professor of criminal justice at Tennessee State University) and fellow TSU professor and Davidson County Historian Learotha Williams.

There’s a piece of infrastructure in downtown Nashville that is about to go away. When it does, there may not be any clues left from a fascinating — and brief — chapter in the city’s transportation history.

Do you remember when WeGo had a fleet of super-quiet all-electric buses running for free throughout downtown? Bus commuter Joe Pagetta does. He wrote to Curious Nashville with this question:

The question reached the right place, as WPLN has covered the rise and fall of those buses since 2015.

It all starts with a question:

We’ve learned this is not an isolated experience. You folks are obsessed with what you find in the dirt. So, why do we dig what we dig?

We’re unearthing some answers with metal detectorist Whit Hill, landscaper Matt Pilcher, and Ben Nance with the Tennessee Division of Archaeology.

This episode was reported and produced by Tasha A.F. Lemley.

There's a hot topic after the ice storm response this winter, and guest Wade Sexton has 30 years of experience working in the utility industry. He's here to answer a question that’s been on our minds:

This segment was produced by WPLN's Cynthia Abrams and hosted by Blake Farmer.

Much of Middle Tennessee’s important Native American history has been disturbed by development.

This has prompted listeners like Kelly Cannon to wonder what’s been lost. She asked Curious Nashville about something she’d heard about the Brentwood Library:

WPLN’s Cynthia Abrams went to find the history of that site and shares the story — and its connections to other local sites, and the national movement for repatriation.

We also learn from ProPublica reporter Mary Hudetz about her reporting for "The Repatriation Project" and Tom Kunesh, who is working to protect Native American sites as president of the Tennessee Ancient Sites Conservancy.

We got a question about a grass-covered mound — or building? — at the corner of Thompson Lane and Vultee Boulevard, near Nashville's airport and the iconic gold box of a building known as International Plaza.

Educator and sixth-generation Nashvillian Sonia Fernandez LeBlanc is a big Curious Nashville fan — such a fan that she knew we had slowed down on answering questions in the last few years. But she said to herself that if we ever revived the project, she was asking about this mysterious mound she just began to notice.

WPLN's Blake Farmer met her out there and invited a Metro agency to pinpoint the answer.

What are the pictures on the front of the Metro Courthouse that appear to be outlined in gold? Are they ever going to be restored?

This question came to Curious Nashville way back — in 2016 — during the first year of the project. As the series is now marking 10 years of answering your questions, it's finally time to tackle this answer. And we're getting research help from Harpeth Hall "Winterim" intern Allyson Mao.

Learn more, and see photos, at Curious.WPLN.org.

It’s the 10-year anniversary of Curious Nashville and we’re revisiting some of the weirdest and most surprising questions you’ve asked. This means we're going underground to a fallout shelter, to the top of a skyscraper, and in between we’ll visit beehives, talk about dump trucks, and revisit some infamous pranksters.

And you get to go behind the scenes of the reporting with WPLN Metro Reporter Cynthia Abrams and host Tony Gonzalez.

This episode highlights these seven stories: