"This podcast was so beautiful I almost drove off the road. Equal parts heart, criticism, and music this podcast achieves something that few journalists could manage. The medium only makes it more impactful."

- Keelin Peterson, Mentally? A Magpie

Dolly Parton’s America is a surprisingly tender, sharply intelligent exploration of a pop culture icon who defies categorization. Hosted by Jad Abumrad, the podcast begins as a profile of Dolly Parton but quickly evolves into a meditation on fame, feminism, class, faith, and the fractured American psyche. Abumrad, the son of an immigrant doctor who once treated Parton, uses that unlikely connection as a doorway into something richer: a portrait of an artist whose appeal crosses political, generational, and cultural divides.

The series is both celebratory and critical, never mistaking charm for simplicity. Parton emerges as a master of self-invention, a shrewd businesswoman, and a cultural mirror reflecting the contradictions of the country that adores her. With lush sound design and thoughtful pacing, Dolly Parton’s America doesn’t just tell her story—it asks what her near-universal appeal says about the rest of us.

It’s a podcast with rhinestones and brains.