Get the Ricochet app
Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.
Become a member.
Tired of the toxicity of social media? Why not join Ricochet for just $5/month? Think of it as an online bar. Come in, have a drink, hang out, say whatever you want. But don’t badger, bully, or berate the other drinkers. That's our only rule.
Forgiveness. That’s All There Is
Episode length: 12m
Rob Long talks about Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” — written as a graceful goodbye to Porter Wagoner when she left his show to go solo — as a way into the real question: how did Dolly stay beloved across a divided culture? He tracks the WNYC/Radiolab podcast Dolly Parton’s America, in which earnest public-radio producers keep trying to claim her as a feminist, a lesbian icon, an anti-Trump ally — and Dolly keeps politely declining every label. Her secret, Long argues, isn’t ideology but her small-C Christianity: she reconciled with and financially rescued the man who once sued her, she wrote emotionally true and honest songs, she loved the stranger.
- Host:
Rob Long