There's no escaping Dolly Parton, as if you'd want to. At the first of the month, she was celebrated at the Grand Ole Opry for her 50-year membership in that country music institution.
In August, Billboard magazine reported, she freaked out those attending the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island by joining the Highwomen, a supergroup made up of Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and Amanda Shires, on the stage.
The Billboard report also said Parton has a forthcoming Hallmark movie, Christmas at Dollywood, and will appear in some episodes of the Netflix series Heartstrings, which is based on her songs.
Now, the 73-year-old icon is the subject of a podcast, Dolly Parton's America, and it's available to download starting today.
The podcast was created by Jad Abumrad, who once lived in Nashville, Tenn., and is now co-host of the Radiolab podcast. Earlier this month on Twitter, Abumrad wrote about the podcast:
"She's been called the 'Great Unifier' for her rare ability to bring people together across divides. What does @DollyParton's story tell us about America? I've been going back home to Nashville to figure it out. Dolly Parton's America, [a] 9-part pod series, [premiered] this fall. The term 'Great Unifier' comes from writer Sarah Smarsh's series on Dolly Parton in the journal No Depression ..."
Here's the teaser from podcast producer WNYC Studios: "In this intensely divided moment, one of the few things everyone still seems to agree on is Dolly Parton — but why? That simple question leads to a deeply personal, historical, and musical rethinking of one of America's great icons. Join us for a 9-episode journey into the Dollyverse ..."
MCBRIDE IS BUSY
Since the early 1990s, Martina McBride, the artist with perhaps the bluest eyes in country music, has released 14 studio albums and racked up 14 Grammy nominations. Last year, she started a cooking show on Food Network called Martina's Table. She still tours regularly and does charity work, and now she's taking on a new project — a podcast.
Vocal Point is the title, and McBride told onecountry.com recently that her brother and sister-in-law came up with the name and she thought it was catchy.
"I really just wanted to do a podcast that's more of a conversation and less of an interview because you know, I've been in a lot of interviews over the years," McBride told the website. "I want people to be inspired. I want them to feel entertained. I want them to feel like they see something different."
The guest on the Sept. 27 premiere was none other than Garth Brooks. There will be 26 episodes this season, and guests will include the women of country group Runaway June, Brenda Lee, Loretta Lynn, Rosanne Cash and Howie Mandel. No, the comedian is not a country artist and that's fine by McBride. She wants to include a range of stars.
Vocal Point will air a new episode every Friday through luminarypodcasts.com. Luminary is a podcast network with a rare paywall. You can listen to the trailer and the first episode for free, then you have to sign up and pay $7.99 a month for the premium service.
BAD BATCH ON WAY
One of my favorite podcasts, Dr. Death, just happened to be reported by an old friend and co-worker from the Shreveport Journal, the last afternoon daily newspaper in Louisiana, which ceased publication in 1991.
Laura Beil, now living in Cedar Hill, Texas, and working as a freelance medical journalist, is a tenacious reporter who knows her stuff. (She won the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting in 2018 for her body of work over a five-year period.) So it wasn't a surprise to me that she had been contacted by podcast production company Wondery, whose folks had found her website (laurabeil.com), saw her work and knew that she could handle a new podcast project.
Wondery asked Beil to investigate the case of Dr. Christopher Duntsch, a Dallas-area surgeon who was eventually convicted of gross malpractice for seriously injuring 31 patients, killing two of them. One of those injured was Jerry Summers, Duntsch's best friend since their childhood in Memphis who was left a quadriplegic after a surgery during which Duntsch was allegedly high on cocaine.
Long story short, Duntsch is now serving life in prison for his crimes, and Beil, who had never worked on a podcast before, is now a Wondery star. Dr. Death, released in 2018, has been translated into seven languages and has been downloaded millions of times. It is still among the Top 50 podcasts on Apple's chart. And it's being made into a miniseries starring Jamie Dornan as Duntsch, with Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater playing fellow surgeons who work to stop Duntsch.
The studio UCP, owned by NBCUniversal, is producing the series and will shop it to networks as it did successfully for the podcasts Dirty John and Homecoming.
Beil is not involved in the TV version. She has moved on and will be in New York on Wednesday, at an out-of-the-ordinary listening premiere party at the Ace Hotel for her latest podcast, Bad Batch. The podcast will be ready for the public Oct. 23.
Beil told me about the new one several weeks ago during a catching-up phone call, but it had not yet been given a title. As always, Beil was so deep into her investigation that she had little time for her husband and teenage children, her dog -- which she had taken for a quick sprint to the dog park while we were talking — or for an old friend who now writes about podcasts for an Arkansas newspaper.
Beil was very excited about what she had uncovered for Bad Batch: Liveyon, is a stem cell startup that claims to treat pain, autoimmune diseases, infections and even autism, until its stem-cell buying customers start getting really sick.
Beil will host a Q&A after the podcast is played.
ONE FOR FARMERS?
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue is a former veterinarian who was in the grain business before becoming governor of Georgia. Now he has a podcast called The Sonnyside of the Farm, and his first guest was former White House press secretary, Arkansan Sarah Huckabee-Sanders.
The podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud. The Sanders episode dropped Oct. 4, and the pair got together in the backroom of Doe's Eat Place on Markham Street.
After listening to most of the 21-minute podcast, I'd learned nothing about farming.
New episodes will be released on the first Friday of each month. Future episodes promise more about farming, with American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duval lined up as one of the guests.
If you have a podcast produced in Arkansas or listen to one, please send an email with the title, where it can be found, what it's about and who hosts. We are working on a comprehensive list of all Arkansas-based podcasts. Email
jmcleod@arkansasonline.com
Style on 10/15/2019