Dolly Parton’s Life & Legacy; NFL Brain Disease Study; ChatGPT Can Read Your Texts; Going To Europe For IVF

**Mosheh Oinounou** (0:04)
Hey, everybody, it is Wednesday, August 26th. You're listening to the Mo News podcast. I'm Moshe Oinounou.

**Jill Wagner** (0:10)
And I am Jill Wagner. This is the place where we bring you Just the Facts.

**Mosheh Oinounou** (0:14)
And we drink tea and down lozenges, to try to read all the news and read between the lines you don't have to.

**Jill Wagner** (0:20)
So we're just going to get straight to it. I will read the headlines solo.

**Mosheh Oinounou** (0:25)
I have so many thoughts, folks, but I'm going to try to preserve my voice.

**Jill Wagner** (0:28)
This is going to be a true test, Mosheh, to see if you can stay quiet. I don't know.

**Mosheh Oinounou** (0:32)
Honestly, I came to this podcast given my voice situation, mainly to remember Dolly Parton. After we get to the Dolly story, Jill, I might just leave.

**Jill Wagner** (0:40)
Respect, Mosheh. Let's get to the headlines here, starting with the loss of a universally loved American icon, singer and philanthropist, Dolly Parton. She died at the age of 80 We'll look back at her nearly seven decades of making music, movies and giving. About two weeks out from the NFL season kickoff, there is a new study that found at least one in four former players who died over a five-year stretch had a brain disease called CTE. Why researchers think the real number may be far higher and what the league says it's doing about it. The trade war continues to escalate as promised. Canada out with retaliatory tariffs against the United States, and President Trump is threatening to rename Lake Ontario.
Any guesses?

**Mosheh Oinounou** (1:28)
He's thinking about the same name he gave to the Gulf of Mexico, Jill.

**Jill Wagner** (1:31)
And fertility treatment in the US is so expensive that some couples say it's actually cheaper to go on vacation in Europe and get the treatment there than it is in the United States, including travel expenses. And in tech, a new ChatGPT plugin can now read and send your text messages, but it's raising a ton of privacy concerns. We'll break that down. And Mosheh potentially has on this day in history, if he can make it.

**Mosheh Oinounou** (1:56)
Jill, if we get there, you might have to read it.

**Jill Wagner** (2:01)
All right. Starting with the sad news that legendary musician and philanthropist and American icon Dolly Parton has died at the age of 80 Her representatives confirmed late Tuesday night that she died after a, quote, brief battle with cancer, although they did not disclose the type of cancer. Earlier on Tuesday, her nephew, Brian Siever, revealed the news of her death in an Instagram video.

**Brian Siever** (2:24)
This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality. Dolly opened doors not just for me, but for her entire family to reach the potential we didn't even know was possible.
Dolly also opened doors for generations of singers, songwriters, musicians, and dreamers from every walk of life and across every continent. By her example, we believe that anything was possible. She never saw a door she couldn't open, and the door she opened made and changed history.

**Jill Wagner** (2:54)
Parton's career spanned nearly seven decades. She is the best-selling female country music artist of all time. She sold more than 160 million albums worldwide. Her debut album was 1967's Hello, I'm Dolly. She went on to release a slew of hits including I Will Always Love You, Nine to Five, and Jolene. She shared an update on her health as recently as last Friday, acknowledging her recent decline after the March 2025 death of her husband, Carl Dean. She said she was dealing with some health issues that she did not pay attention to when she was watching over her husband. Now, concerns about her health started last year when she postponed and then later canceled her residency in Vegas. There was actually so much concern that she posted a video on social media saying, quote, I ain't dead yet.
Most part of the reason that there was so much concern is that in a world where everything is so divided and partisan, everyone seems to love Dolly Parton across political divides, races and ages. As far back as 2019, the New York Times ran a story. The headline was, is there anything we can all agree on?
Yes, Dolly Parton. It wasn't just her music, it was her philanthropy. She had built a business empire. She told the Times back in 2002, hopefully people can see beneath the hair to know there is a brain, beneath the boobs, to know there is a heart, and behind all of the other stuff to know there's some talent. Mosheh, definitely talent. She wrote more than 3,000 songs in her lifetime.