Sep 2, 2026 · 55 min · 18 segments
This week's Culture Catch-Up covers a lot of ground: personal life updates and housewarming plans, honoring Dolly Parton and the recent losses in music and theater, the Met Gala's controversial theme…
Eli RalloHost
I don't want to sound like a pick me, but the only other time I got this emotional about someone passing away was Joan Didion and Gavin Creel, to be honest.
And like, I'm so sorry, that sounds like so fake, but I swear to God, this one has been really, really devastating to me.
And I think because, and I've seen this circulated around, but Dolly Parton showed me that as a beloved you can be sexy you can be beautiful you can be fun you can be silly you can be larger than life you can be talented you can be generous you can be kind you can be cool you can be smart like you can be everything to people and to yourself and And I think that that's just, like, an underrepresented thing.
Like, a truly beloved, fulfilled, larger-than-life woman who isn't being, like, absolutely destroyed on a mass scale.
And that's not to say that she didn't have her fair share of nitpicking and criticism, but, like, it did feel like everybody loved her.
And, of course, there are always going to be people that don't like someone, but...
And to watch a woman be universally beloved the way she was, like, was a special thing.
And the fact that she was in the background of our childhoods, like, I never knew a life without Dolly Parton.
Not to mention, she was an incredibly generous philanthropist who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to childhood literacy, to healthcare, to disaster relief.
And to the community that she came from, which was a poor community in Tennessee, in Appalachia.
So incredibly humble, resilient, and just a masterful example of like a true good person.
I don't want to sound like a pick me, but the only other time I got this emotional about someone passing away was Joan Didion and Gavin Creel, to be honest.
And like, I'm so sorry, that sounds like so fake, but I swear to God, this one has been really, really devastating to me.
And I think because, and I've seen this circulated around, but Dolly Parton showed me that as a beloved you can be sexy you can be beautiful you can be fun you can be silly you can be larger than life you can be talented you can be generous you can be kind you can be cool you can be smart like you can be everything to people and to yourself and And I think that that's just, like, an underrepresented thing.
Like, a truly beloved, fulfilled, larger-than-life woman who isn't being, like, absolutely destroyed on a mass scale.
And that's not to say that she didn't have her fair share of nitpicking and criticism, but, like, it did feel like everybody loved her.
And, of course, there are always going to be people that don't like someone, but...
And to watch a woman be universally beloved the way she was, like, was a special thing.
And the fact that she was in the background of our childhoods, like, I never knew a life without Dolly Parton.
Not to mention, she was an incredibly generous philanthropist who donated hundreds of millions of dollars to childhood literacy, to healthcare, to disaster relief.
And to the community that she came from, which was a poor community in Tennessee, in Appalachia.
So incredibly humble, resilient, and just a masterful example of like a true good person.
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