Introduction – The recent loss of cultural icons has left a significant mark on the hearts of many. Among these figures, Dolly Parton stands out not only for her musical contributions but also for her rich legacy. In this article, we will explore her exceptional life and the lessons she imparted, as well as delve into contemporary issues that echo her values and influence.
Part the First: Dolly Parton, American from an Old School. August 2026 was a poignant month for me, marking the passing of Dolly Parton, followed closely by Wendell Berry. While we’ll reflect on Mr. Berry next week, today we remember Dolly Parton. My memories of her date back to the late 1960s when she was a “girl singer” on Porter Wagoner’s syndicated television show, which aired on our modest 19-inch black-and-white television, connected to the early form of cable TV. As a junior high school student, Dolly left a lasting impression on me.
Elizabeth Stice articulates her remarkable qualities in her piece at Front Porch Republic (FPR), titled Dolly Parton: A Woman of Many Virtues:
Like many celebrities with enduring careers, Dolly Parton has experienced various phases in the public eye. Initially a “girl singer” for Porter Wagoner, she evolved into an accomplished country artist, later becoming a pop icon and film star. Her ever-changing image has been the subject of both admiration and humor over the years. In recent times, she has emerged as a saintly figure deserving of deeper study, sparking interest even in university history courses.
There will always be only one Dolly Parton, yet her legacy offers numerous perspectives and insights into the culture of our nation. Much can be learned from her experiences.
Viewing Dolly Parton through the lens of the American Dream reveals her remarkable achievements. Born in rural Tennessee in 1946, she emerged from humble beginnings as the daughter of a hardworking, illiterate sharecropper, in a one-room cabin with eleven siblings. Her song “Coat of Many Colors” draws on her childhood experience when her mother stitched together a coat from rags one winter, confronting the mockery of classmates. As Dolly sang, “But they didn’t understand it, and I tried to make them see / One is only poor, only if they choose to be / Now I know we had no money, but I was rich as I could be / In my coat of many colors my momma made for me.”
Mary Townsend highlights in her piece Dolly Parton is Magnificent that Aristotle’s concept of kalos resonates with Dolly: something “good but also lovely, perfectly beautiful while astonishingly good; never just a duty but always a pleasure.” Though her appearance may have deterred some, I fondly recall when she humorously quipped to Johnny Carson, “Honey, it takes a lot of money to look this cheap!” Stice concludes:
Somewhere, someone is likely composing a critique explaining why Dolly Parton was not flawless and why some Americans idolize her excessively. While no one is perfect, certain individuals can still serve as exemplars. Dolly Parton embodies the potential for greatness, challenging our excuses for personal shortcomings. She represents human genius and generosity, proving that even in divided times, one can remain true to oneself without causing division. Her success is intertwined with familial and community embrace, illustrating that it’s possible to love one’s work and contribute positively to society. Miles Smith remarked on Twitter that the grief surrounding Dolly’s passing is akin to Appalachia mourning the death of Queen Elizabeth. Respectfully, this sentiment extends across all of America. Dolly Parton accomplished much, one of which was becoming a national role model. While her legacy will endure, her absence will be profoundly felt.
Amen to that. Last week, I made a contribution to her Imagination Library to help ensure that millions of young readers will receive books for many years to come.
Part the Second: Dolly Parton the Writer (and the Singer). More than thirty years ago, I often pondered how many people captivated by Whitney Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” knew that Dolly Parton penned the song as a farewell to Porter Wagoner when she sought to carve her own path. It’s said she wrote over 3,000 songs. In Eagles Were Born to Fly, Michial Farmer gathers a selection of her finest works. I listened to all of them, from her performance of “Backwoods Barbie” to Bettye LaVette’s interpretation of “Little Sparrow.” While taste may vary, these masterpieces reflect pure genius, created by other exceptional talents, including Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, Margie Joseph, and Norah Jones. Enjoy!
Part the Third: The Wages of Industrial Agriculture Is Death. Back to a less picturesque world, yet one where Wendell Berry’s insights ring true. The dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River continues to fluctuate throughout the year, as detailed in Mapping America’s Largest Dead Zone (archived). As many of my long-time readers know, I grew up near the ocean and often visited my father’s siblings in Louisiana. Despite the differences, both estuaries were traditionally bountiful, evidenced by the plentiful catches brought back by shrimp boats. However, times have changed:
On a sweltering July night, a team of scientists set off aboard the R.V. Pelican in Houma, Louisiana. Under a stormy sunset, the blue-and-white vessel rested in a tapestry of water hyacinths.
As midnight approached, the scientists hurried to finalize their equipment in the ship’s confined laboratories. They would spend the next week working around the clock to measure the dwindling oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico’s infamous dead zone.
This dead zone results from excessive nutrients, primarily from fertilizers, washing off farmland into the Mississippi River and eventually into the Gulf. The size of this oxygen-depleted area fluctuates yearly, expanding as more nutrients flow into the Gulf and contracting after tropical storms or strong currents mix the waters.
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Nutrients from (industrial) farms permeate the Mississippi River, reaching the Gulf and spurring algae blooms. When these blooms die, they feed bacteria that deplete the water’s oxygen.
This ongoing crisis threatens marine life and the livelihoods of countless shrimpers and fishers. The search for oxygen drives fish accustomed to the seafloor to migrate upwards, while bottom-dwelling creatures like shrimp head toward the edges of the dead zone.
This exodus leaves the upper water layers teeming with life but renders the seafloor an almost lifeless expanse.
The research conducted by these marine scientists is crucial, serving as a stark reminder of the devastation humans have inflicted on the natural world—a fact often overlooked in our current neoliberal climate. Unfortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has faced a 44% budget cut during the Current Administration. The situation is alarmingly ignored. Southern Louisiana is losing land at a staggering rate, about one football field every 100 minutes. Seven football fields here, another seven there, day after day, adds up to incomprehensible loss.
Part the Fourth: Is Junk Food Addiction Real? Big Ag and Big Food will adamantly claim, “No!” Although opioids and opiates trigger brain responses that processed foods do not, the problem lies in how Big Food has become adept at creating industrial food-like products that thrill our taste buds with salt, sugar, and fat—commonalities outlined in the highly recommended book Salt, Sugar, Fat. This is where the challenge arises. Whether the addiction to ultra-processed foods (UPF) is akin to heroin addiction is irrelevant if UPFs are intentionally engineered to be habit-forming. I plan to detail the case of a scientist who resigned from the NIH to avoid being dismissed by the Current Administration for distinguishing between “addictive” and “habit-forming.” Kevin Hall, now at the University of Ottawa, will present at the 2026 Trottier Symposium at McGill University on September 29th. I encourage those in Montreal to attend. I’ll watch the available video afterward and share my insights.
Emily Shore provides a concise overview in her article from the McGill Office for Science and Society on The Junk Food Addiction:
Ever felt like you’re addicted to food? Not all food, of course, just junk food—the kind my children negotiate to consume daily, despite my attempts to instill the value of proper nutrition. The label “junk” signifies the meager nutritional value these foods offer, but taste is in abundance. Such foods ignite our taste buds and brains, leading to an insatiable desire for more. For some, the only way to quiet these cravings is to give in.
The concept of “food addiction” began gaining traction as access to highly caloric, processed, and palatable foods increased. The term dates back to 1956, when allergist Theron Randolph introduced it in relation to corn, wheat, coffee, milk, eggs, and potatoes. Today, “food addiction” is associated with foods that are highly processed, laden with additives, and typically high in calories, fats, salt, and sugar. Such ultra-processed foods are low in nutritional value, yet engineered to be so appealing that they behave like addictive substances. While they share similarities with “junk food,” the defining aspect lies in their manufacturing and formulation; “ultra-processed” is a technical term.
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The lengths to which food manufacturers go to create hyperpalatable products has been compared to the tactics employed by tobacco companies to entice smokers.
Thus, we face another significant dilemma regarding our so-called “diet.” Like other pressing issues, this one is solvable. Despite varying opinions, it seems to be a priority for the Current Administration. However, their commitment to addressing the issue remains uncertain.
Part the Fifth: AI Meets Its Match. The prevailing belief is that algorithmic intelligence will be a tremendous asset to scientific exploration. I agree, provided the problem is well-defined and the training set is legitimate. For instance, the advent of AlphaFold has transformed the study of protein structure and function.
The protein folding dilemma has existed since Christian Anfinsen demonstrated in 1961 that while the amino acid sequence of bacterial ribonuclease (an RNA-degrading enzyme) is necessary to create an active enzyme, that alone is insufficient. Unfortunately, the “but not sufficient” part is often overlooked. When discussing this with protein folding experts, I often receive a look that suggests they wonder how a biologist wandered into their domain.
Anfinsen succeeded in producing meaningful quantities of a functional enzyme only by adding small amounts of a reducing agent, which permitted the chain of amino acids to explore conformational space without hitting an irreversible dead end, folding into the active enzyme. This reducing environment mimicked intracellular conditions, proving that an amino acid sequence required no additional genetic information to form an active protein. At the time, the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology (DNA makes RNA makes protein) was still in its infancy, placing this inquiry at the forefront of molecular biology. The cellular inheritance present in every cell for the last three billion years was crucial for forming functional proteins—a fact often forgotten.
Returning to the narrative of biological functions and AI, the bacteriophage ΦX174 became the first genome to be entirely sequenced during my undergraduate years, garnering immense acclaim. We understand as much about ΦX174 at the molecular level as any other “organism.” Consequently, the initial viral genomes designed by AI were variants of ΦX174. Recent research has led to the systematic mutation of nearly every nucleotide—another milestone in genomics—to ascertain the consequences.
Most of these mutations harmed the virus’s survival, yet the reasoning behind many of them remained elusive. “Even in this well-studied system, we can’t explain why a quarter of the mutations are lethal,” remarked Ben Lehner, a molecular biologist from the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK, who co-led the study—recently posted on the bioRxiv preprint server (please note: this preprint has not undergone peer review, and peer review’s standards are often questionable).
Despite AI tools showing promise in identifying harmful mutations, they faced challenges predicting how changes affected the phage. This highlights the necessity of more extensive and superior experimental data to enhance these biological-AI applications.
The abstract from the preprint is worth reading in its entirety:
The bacteriophage ΦX174 was the first genome to be sequenced and the first to be chemically synthesized. Here we provide a complete map of the consequences of altering every nucleotide in the ΦX174 genome and every amino acid in the proteome. In total, half of nucleotide and over 60% of amino acid changes hinder fitness. However, this varies significantly among proteins and non-coding regions. Surprisingly, the primary mechanistic cause of reduced fitness is the disruption of protein interaction interfaces, accounting for nearly half of damaging protein variants. Additionally, one-quarter of harmful variants disturb protein cores, yet one in four lacks a mechanistic explanation. Mutational effects are only moderately well-predicted by leading AI models but can yield mechanistic hypotheses and insights when integrated with structural modeling. This complete mutagenesis of a biological system quantifies the limits of our current understanding and ability to predict molecular biology.
So, what conclusions can we draw? From my perspective as a biologist, these scientists seem to overlook the three billion years of cellular inheritance in their assumptions. More extensive data won’t necessarily enhance these “biological-AI tools.” That “protein-protein interaction interfaces” play a pivotal role is hardly surprising; these interactions are essential to biological life. The interplay between genetic and cellular inheritance raises fascinating discussions among scientists. Both components are fundamental to life, forming a three-legged stool on which existence rests; the importance of each leg is not easily determined.
This leads to the looming future where AI dominates our lives. The intricate nature of cellular inheritance defies algorithmic intelligence and likely always will. Similarly, the institutional knowledge and experiences that facilitate productive work—except in robotic settings—constitute significant yet often ignored truths in our cultural, social, and political ecosystems. The complexities encountered by a virus infecting a cell mirror the intricate existence of humans within society. The inevitable harm caused by AI grows as the powers that be strive to render us all into uncaring robotic serfs. Alternatively, we might simply assert our refusal to accept this fate.
Parting Shot: AI Still Makes Us Stupid but At Least We Will Sound Like One Another. Researchers worry that generative AI is homogenizing culture and cognition.
Emily Wenger, a computer scientist at Duke University, warns that the risk of cultural homogenization poses an existential threat. “If we’re all using AI for our emails, what do we become as a species?”
She cautions against the dangers of groupthink, highlighting that society suffers when we silence or overlook dissenting voices.
Interesting perspective, Professor Wenger. The marginalization of dissenting voices—when they are not completely silenced—has been escalating to levels akin to historical red scares, largely irrespective of AI’s influence. However, with the prospect of AI diagnosing “pre-crime” looming on the horizon amidst total information awareness, the future is uncertain.
Thank you for joining me for this exploration! I look forward to being with you next week, and for those celebrating in the United States, Happy Labor Day! Debout! les damnés de la terre! Debout! les forçats de la faim!
