WNYC Studios will release the Dolly Parton’s America podcast sometime in Fall of 2019. It is a nine-part series that is not hosted by Dolly Parton, but it sounds like she will appear in the podcast. The podcast is about something bigger that the American music icon has unintentionally been connected with.

In this intensely divided moment, one of the few things everyone still seems to agree on is Dolly Parton – but why? The simple question leads to a deeply personal, historical, and musical rethinking of one of America’s great icons. Join us for a 9-part journey into the Dollyverse.

Dolly Parton’s America is hosted by Jad Abumrad, who is the Executive Producer and creator of Radiolab’s More Perfect, a podcast that explores how cases deliberated inside the rarified world of the Supreme Court affect our lives far away from the bench. Jad Abumrad “did most of his growing up in Tennessee, the state where Dollywood is located.

Shima Oliaee is a consulting producer at Radiolab, and the producer on the 9-part series Dolly Parton’s America. She is a first generation American born and raised in Nevada. She worked four seasons on the golden globe-winning Brooklyn Nine-Nine before joining the Radiolab team in 2017. Last year, she co-reported Radiolab’s sexual consent three-part series In the No, and co-produced the mini-series Unerased: A History of Conversion Therapy in America.

A trailer for Dolly Parton’s America was released on October 3, 2019. It is short, yet gives a really good glimpse into what the podcast is like. Fans of Dolly Parton will very likely be interested in this podcast. So will those who wonder why Dolly Parton has become a connection between Americans who have diverse and contradicting cultural values.