TN Week: Saint Dolly w/ Jad Abumrad
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Big news! Niki Hemmer is moving to Vanderbilt University to teach and found a center on the presidency. To help her get up to speed, she’s hosting “Tennessee Week” on the show with a few conversations around some key and fascinating moments in TN history.
Today, Niki and Kellie are joined by Jad Abumrad, founder of Radiolab, Nashville native, and host of “Dolly Parton’s America.” They discuss what Dolly Parton has meant to TN, and the country.
Sign up for our newsletter! Find out more at thisdaypod.com
And don’t forget about Oprahdemics, hosted by Kellie, out now from Radiotopia.
This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.
Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.
If you want to support the show directly, you can do so on our website: ThisDayPod.com
Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod
Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Audrey Mardavich is our Executive Producer at Radiotopia
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history. I'm Nicole Hemmer. |
| 0:11.0 | Listeners, I know you were expecting Jody Avergan, who normally opens the show, but he has left the country for a few weeks, and in his absence I have seized control in what I think it is fair to call a soft coup. And like any dictator who sees his power I have |
| 0:25.6 | decided to make the show all about me. I am moving to Nashville Tennessee to |
| 0:30.6 | join Vanderbilt University as a professor of history and director of a new center on the presidency. |
| 0:36.2 | So this week is Tennessee week here on this day where we explore some of the quirky histories of my new adoptive state, |
| 0:44.7 | along with some very special Tennessee natives to help us out. |
| 0:49.2 | So on this day, August 4th, actually August 5th, 2019, the mayor of Nashville, David Briley signed a declaration |
| 0:57.0 | creating Dolly Parton Day. Dolly Parton is of course one of America's most famous country music stars, maybe one of its most |
| 1:04.8 | famous people in general. And in recent years she has emerged as something of an anomaly, |
| 1:09.8 | a figure that almost everyone in the country likes. |
| 1:14.1 | So today we are going to explore the life and legend |
| 1:16.8 | that is St. Dolly and what her career tells us |
| 1:19.6 | about Tennessee and about America. To do that is as always Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley College. |
| 1:26.1 | Kelly hello. Hey I'm so excited and joining, the founder of Radio Lab, host of the hit podcast, Dolly Partons America, an incoming professor at Vanderbilt University, my new colleague, Jad Abumrod. |
| 1:42.0 | What's up, neighbor? |
| 1:44.0 | Hi. |
| 1:45.0 | And you are a Nashville native, |
| 1:48.0 | so I'm gonna want to get the skinny on Nashville |
| 1:52.0 | and on Tennessee in general and I think that the best way to do that is through |
| 1:57.2 | Dolly Parton. |
| 1:58.2 | Well she is the patron saint of all things Tennessee although as we just established before we started recording, |
| 2:05.4 | your knowledge of Nashville is probably as good as mine |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.