Speaker 1: WNYC Studios is supported by the CUNY School of Professional Studies, offering affordable online master's degrees for busy working adults like you. Submit your application by the April 6th priority deadline and have your application fee waived. Learn more at sps.cuny.edu/gradonline.
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Speaker 2: Listener-supported WNYC Studios.
Speaker 3: America from a Dolly's eye view [music] is this quivering mass of irreconcilable contradictions.
Speaker 4: I'm going to be both. I'm going to be adored by church ladies and the gays.
Dolly: Yes, the sexuality, the spirituality, the sensuality, that's exactly who I am.
Speaker 6: She's just a beautiful fountain of goodness.
Dolly: It is me.
Speaker 7: 100% Dolly is an extractive capitalist.
Dolly: I always say I give God the credit; I just want the cash.
Speaker 8: In terms of cultural power, I think she's like second to Walt Disney.
Jad Abumrad: This is Jad Abumrad from Radiolab and More Perfect. For the last two years, I've been following Dolly Parton around the world-
Dolly: [laughs]
Jad Abumrad: -trying to figure out who she is.
Dolly: You'd be surprised to know who I am.
Jad: That's why we're here. We're trying to find out.
Dolly: I know, but you're never going to find everything out.
Jad: [chuckles]
Dolly: I'm a mystery to myself.
Jad: I'm trying to answer the seemingly simple question, what is Dolly Parton's America?
Dolly: Well--
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Jad: Answers coming soon on Dolly Parton's America.
Dolly: [laughs]
Speaker 10: This week on The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll talk with presidential historian Jon Meacham on the stakes of a Trump indictment and a Trump revival.
Jon Meacham: I think the person at the top matters enormously, obviously, but this is up to all of us. It is a perennial struggle between our worst instincts and the better angels of our nature.
Speaker 10: Jon Meacham on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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