UP FRONT

Back in high school, Lindsay Graham aka “Not the Senator” was your standard geek with a penchant for listening to, writing and making music. His genre partialities run the gamut — Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Tom Waits — and inspired his life’s soundtrack.

He launched a local music podcast long before Ira Glass made the medium mainstream. Graham played (primarily) guitar in Timmy and the Sinister Clan, a teenage “circus-y rock band” that coined seven original songs and played exactly two shows, Graham says. These ventures, as such, propagated little popularity or prosperity, but his passion-driven pursuits put him on a path leading there.

Serendipity and imprecise preparation proved pivotal to Graham’s current success as the host of the hit podcast “American History Tellers.”

Perhaps it arose with Comedy Central’s “Drunk History,” wherein a cast of celebrities reenacts historical events while an inebriated guest-star narrates, or Lin-Manuel Miranda’s portrayal of Alexander Hamilton as a plucky, sharp-witted, rapping/singing, swaggering badboy romantic.

Whatever the root, history went hip.

“I hadn’t thought about the history-as-beingtrendy angle,” Graham says, considering the suggestion. But he is aware of a closely related societal shift: “The acceptance of nerd culture.”

He expounds, “You can be as geeky as you want today. We have license to publicly show enthusiasm for history” … or science and topics once reserved for dudes who sat alone at lunch.

Then there was the great podcast craze of 2014. It came some years after Graham graduated University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia (the town fueled his fascination with American lore).

Graham’s aforementioned audio outfit operated in an East Dallas home and secured work for Wondery, a podcast network started in 2016. Today it claims some of its industry’s biggest buzz building shows.

But this was before Wondery became the “prominent podcast producers,” as USA Today puts it. Eventually the Wondery crew beckoned Graham and his inviting baritone voice to narrate “American History Tellers.” He could compose the score, an essential piece of podcast production, too. He recognized the catchiest podcasts “possessed a certain musicality,” proper pacing, he says.

A paid opportunity to combine his foremost obsessions and skills? “I grabbed it,” he says. Graham dubs the series “pop history, rooted in entertainment.”

Its stupendous reception is a testament to powerful storytelling.

“Imagine you’re a tavern keeper in Liverpool in year 1776 …” “Imagine it’s 1794. You’re a Scottish immigrant …,” — this is Graham’s trademark intro. What follows is an examination of critical events, eras and people that shaped the United States, delivered by your coolest-ever and most sanguine professor — he maintains this infectious faith that we still can learn from our past and live better.

Graham — and his relatively small team of researchers, writers, editors — turns lessons about the Cold War, space race and prohibition, for example, into dramas with complex characters, binge-worthy plots. Storytelling sans imagery can be challenging, he says. He feared the National Parks episode might be a bore without those majestic visuals Ken Burns had at his disposal. He was wrong. Now a six-part series, “It turned out amazing.”

He voices episodes out of the East Dallas studio and lives near White Rock Lake with wife Libby and 3-year-old daughter.

He doesn’t plan to move to L.A. seeking superstardom, he says, though he did fly there once to meet the Wondery team. “That was a great experience,” he says. “It upped everyone’s motivation.”

A new podcast, “American Scandal,” is on the horizon. “The format will be similar [to AHT], but we dive deeper into scandalous, salacious events,” Graham says. Think steroids corruption, Eliot Spitzer, Iran Contra.

“I got in early,” he says. “It’s been a ride.”

HOW HOT ARE WE, LAKE HIGHLANDS?

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS: IT’S FINALLY FALL.

Temperatures are decreasing. We survived the hottest July 19 — a scorching 109 degrees — in the history of North Texas.

And even that could’ve been worse. In 1936, temperatures reached 110 in Dallas-Fort Worth and an all-time high of 120 in Seymour, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Engineer Willis Carrier, who invented the air conditioner in 1902, deserves infinite praise.

Now here’s a less-than-uplifting truth: Dallas’ lack of trees also increases the temperature outside.

Places like parking lots, plazas and sidewalks absorb heat and cause surface temperatures 50 to 90 degrees warmer than the air, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

By ELISSA CHUDWIN

It’s called the urban heat island effect, and it increases energy consumption, air pollutants and greenhouse gases.

Janette K. Monear, chief executive of the Texas Trees Foundation, explained the phenomenon in a Dallas Morning News editorial.

“When the weather forecaster says, ‘Today we will reach 108 degrees,’ that doesn’t take into consideration the radiant heat coming off the surface of the ground in the city of Dallas,” Monear wrote. “On July 19 at 3 p.m., the Texas Trees Foundation recorded surface temperatures on the plaza at Dallas City Hall at 142.5 degrees and surface temperatures at Fair Park of 151 degrees.”

LAKE HIGHLANDS: HOT OR NOT?

The Texas Trees Foundation conducted a study in 2017 to determine the hottest areas of Dallas and what will happen as development increases. In case you were wondering, the Medical District, Love Field and the U.S. Highway 75 corridor are the most sweat inducing.

Most of Lake Highlands’ parkland surrounds its trails, according to Robert Kent, North Texas area director of the Trust for Public Land.

Harry S. Moss, Flag Pole Hill, Fair Oaks and Olive Shapiro parks account for the majority of our green space. Despite having several trails and White Rock Lake in our vicinity, City Council District 10 comprises only 3 percent of Dallas’ 23,464 parkland acres. North Lake Highlands and Vickery Meadow are some of the city’s most prominent “park deserts,” Kent says.

But what Lake Highlands lacks in parkland it makes up for in mature trees, thanks to its well-established residential areas. “Lake Highlands and Lakewood are definitely up there” in terms of green space, says Matt Grubisich, TTF’s director of operations. In other words, we are sweating less than Northwest or South Dallas, although we shouldn’t congratulate ourselves quite yet.

The study also imagined what would happen if Dallas lost 10 percent of its tree canopy. The impact could be dramatic, particularly near Interstate 635, according to Grubisich. “We just can’t plant enough trees is what it comes down to,” he says.