The country music legend was one of the most beloved public figures of her time, but it seems that in private, she struggled with doubts and anxieties that plague most people at one point or another.
In a newly resurfaced interview, Dolly candidly opened up about the emotional turmoil she experienced in the mid-1980s.
Dolly Parton performs on the Pyramid Stage during Day 3 of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm on June 29, 2014 in Glastonbury, England. (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)
At the time, the singer was dealing with major health problems and the realization that she might never have children with her husband, Carl Dean.
Parton’s depressive episode came after she began experiencing menopause and underwent a partial hysterectomy.
The procedure left her unable to have children, something that became an enormous source of emotional pain.
Dolly also admitted that she felt guilty about putting her career ahead of motherhood. She had spent years building a remarkable career, but she couldn’t help wondering whether she had made the wrong choices.
The emotional toll became so severe that Parton described herself as suicidal.
“Then one day, I just said to myself, ‘Right, get off your fat b-tt, or if you really are suicidal, then go and shoot your brains out. But get your misery out of other people’s lives and shut up!’” she recalled (via Radar Online).
Despite everything she had accomplished, Parton admitted she sometimes imagined what life would have been like if she had become a mother.
“I think I would have made a nice mama,” she said.
Parton and Dean had tried to have children for many years. She explained that she had initially put motherhood on hold because her career was thriving and she was taking birth control pills. After eventually stopping the medication, however, she still did not become pregnant.
Over time, Parton found a way to make peace with that part of her life.
“I don’t feel sad about it,” she explained, saying she came to believe that perhaps God had another purpose for her.
Dolly ultimately devoted enormous energy to helping children through her charitable work, including her beloved Imagination Library. She came to view her relationship with children around the world as part of a larger plan.
“I thought maybe God didn’t want me to have kids so that everybody else’s kids could be mine,” she said.
Parton’s relationship with Dean remained another source of strength throughout her life. The couple married in 1966 and remained together for nearly six decades until his death in March 2025.
In a 2024 appearance on Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast, Parton reflected on the secret to their long-lasting relationship.
“We never fought back and forth,” she explained, adding that either one could use humor to break the tension when things became difficult.
Dean died at 82. Seventeen months later, Parton died at 80 following a brief battle with cancer.
Her private struggles serve as another reminder that even the brightest public personas can conceal profound pain.
Normally, we’d have to quibble (however politely) about reports on casting.
However, when the news broke on Instagram, Remini replied.
“It’s true!!” she wrote, sharing the post so that her own followers wouldn’t have to find out from someone else.
The Season 16 cast will also include Kyle Richards, Erika Jayne, Dorit Kemsley, Bozoma Saint John, Sutton Stracke, and Rachel Zoe.
We’ll be seeing Jennifer Tilly as a “Friend of” this season. Unfortunately, we can also expect Kathy Hilton to show up as well. (We’re not Kathy haters, but she does bring a weird tension to the show that’s just not as fun as it should be.)
Sometimes, we can only guess at what storylines will jump out with a cast member. That remains true of even big names in the entertainment industry.
(Who among us would have predicted Denise Richards’ biggest storyline when she was first cast?)
In the case of Lean Remini, however, we do know two big things that she has gone through that will, at the very least, inform her choices and attitudes.
The first is that she is divorced. In 2024, she and her long-time husband split after over two decades of marriage. That is an adjustment, even two years out.
More famously, Remini’s innocent questions about Shelly Miscavige’s whereabouts in 2006 led to her apparent persecutions by the Church of Scientology. Eventually, she and her family escaped from the widely condemned organization, and she has used her platform to speak out against them ever since.
Within a couple of years of escaping the Church of Scientology, Leah Remini and her immediately family converted to Catholicism.
Though Catholicism is a religion and has never, to our knowledge, been classified as a predatory business by any government entity, there are some superficial and structural similarities.
This seems like a natural leap for someone who grew up in Scientology, as both are powerful institutions that own property all over the world, have a confessional apparatus, and are deeply controversial.
It is unclear if Remini’s new beliefs will be a factor as she joins the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast, however.
We may end up seeing her work, her relationships, her activism, or even feuds as she enters her Bravo era. It could be exciting!
We can’t predict the future, neither can you, and in a sport like college football, chaos, upsets and endless debates are pretty much the only guarantees. But looking ahead to the 2026 college football season, we had to throw down some predictions. From the 12-team College Football Playoff field and the 2026 national champion to coaches’ projections with their new teams and Heisman Trophy finalists, we’re breaking down our bold predictions. Some may come to fruition, and some may not be quite right come January, but this is how we see the season unfolding. So as FOX Sports’ college football experts, here are our 12 bold predictions for the 2026 season. Perhaps my Bloomington roots are showing, but I’m shocked at how much it feels like the defending national champs aren’t being taken seriously to repeat as Big Ten champions. Quarterback is a real question, albeit Josh Hoover has all the experience you could want in someone taking over for a Heisman winner. The defense will be as good as any in the country again and if things click under center, I like the Hoosiers to push Ohio State and Oregon for the Big Ten title. One other note that hasn’t been discussed enough — Cignetti brings back nine of his 10 on-field assistants from last year’s squad. That’s not nothing. — Ben Portnoy In my Ultimate 138 CFB Rankings, I put North Dakota State just out of my initial top 25, and that piqued the interest of many. It might shock you that I believe the Bison will not only enter FBS and be immediately competitive but the best Group of Six team in the sport. In the eyes of the committee, that’s what they’ll have to achieve to make the College Football Playoff this season. As the rules state, only the highest-ranked Group of Six program will be rewarded with a spot in the CFP — regardless of whether that team won its conference title. After announcing their move to FBS earlier this year, I asked Bison coach Tim Polasek a pointed question. “Do you think your team is capable of competing for the College Football Playoff?” I asked. “I think I like our team,” Polasek told me. “We’re going to have some learning and growing to do about our opponents, but I really like our process, the year-round work that we do and how we practice. Those things position us to be very competitive in every game. And if you happen to knock them down one at a time, there’s no reason North Dakota State can’t be in the conversation for the College Football Playoff.” — RJ Young After getting off to a rough start in his first year as the Longhorns starting quarterback — who wouldn’t be impacted by all that national hype and expectations? — Arch Manning will look like the five-star talent everyone has been waiting for. He gave us a taste toward the end of last season, especially against Texas A&M and Michigan, but this season he’ll find that next level. Texas has one of the more challenging schedules in the country, but Manning’s leadership and growth will have the Longhorns poised for a national championship run. — Laken Litman When discussing his chances of winning the Heisman Trophy during an interview at Big Ten Media Days last month, Smith told reporters the only way for a player at his position to accomplish that feat is if the production mimics that of former Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith, who caught 117 passes for a staggering 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns in 2020. There’s an opportunity for Smith to approach that kind of output in a receiving corps lacking proven targets behind him now that Carnell Tate is playing in the NFL. Only one receiver in college football history has eclipsed 2,000 yards in a season: Trevor Insley of Nevada in 1999. It’s time for Smith to push for that milestone. — Michael Cohen Despite all the hoopla surrounding Lane Kiffin — the latest being LSU recruiting tight end Dae’Quan Wright after he was waived by the Cleveland Browns — the Tigers will make the CFP for the first time since the 2019 season when they won the national championship. And in doing so, Kiffin will remind the college football world just how good of a coach he truly is. — Laken Litman Realize Miami, Notre Dame, Washington and TCU combine for three more national title game appearances since 2022 than the SEC. Realize the SEC champion hasn’t reached the national title game since 2022. Realize that Mario Cristobal is 5-1 against the SEC at Miami and won his last five in a row against the league where “it just means more.” Finally, realize the Big Ten has seen a member win the last three national titles and is poised to pull off a feat that only the SEC has in CFP era: feature two members from its own league in the national title game if the rankings hold true. From Ohio State to Oregon to Indiana, there’s every reason to believe the Big Ten can increase its streak to four. But how devastating will it be to fans of the SEC if it goes 0-for-4 in national title game appearances in the same timeframe? I’d like to find out. — RJ Young Lincoln Riley has signaled he believes this might be his best Trojans’ team. A large part of his confidence centers on alignment between himself, athletics director and president at USC. He learned the value of that alignment while at Oklahoma, and has developed it at USC. He also returns a starting quarterback, in Jayden Maiava, who can lead USC past good opponents, and a pair of running backs he believes can be as productive as Joe Mixon and Samaje Perine were on his Oklahoma teams. He brought in a College Football Hall of Fame coach as his defensive coordinator in Gary Patterson. All of this has turned me into a believer in the 2026 Trojans. — RJ Young I picked Miami quarterback Darian Mensah to take home the hardware, but the receiver class could steal the headlines in this year’s Heisman campaign. Cam Coleman is the type of freak athlete that could find his way into the mix if the Longhorns live up to their billing. Jeremiah Smith is, well, Jeremiah Smith, and I’d be shocked if he doesn’t lead the Buckeyes and the Big Ten in receiving this year. Malachi Toney, too, will likely get some consideration if Miami is as good as advertised. What about tailbacks Kewan Lacy (Ole Miss) or Jadan Baugh (Florida)? Or, let’s get weird and see Navy quarterback Braxton Woodson in the mix. Bring it on. — Ben Portnoy The James Franklin era begins at Virginia Tech. The Hokies went 3-9 last year, but Franklin has brought in a strong transfer class, which includes former Penn State quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer, who earned valuable experience when he replaced an injured Drew Allar last season. The Hokies have road games at Clemson, SMU and Miami and will win at least one of those, while Franklin’s former employer, Penn State, will struggle in its three toughest games against USC, Michigan and Washington. — Laken Litman DeBoer was arguably the hottest name on the coaching carousel following two incredible seasons at Washington, which ended with a national championship game appearance in 2023. Since then, though, he’s lost four games in each of his first two years at Alabama — a far cry from the impossible standard set by predecessor Nick Saban — including four defeats to unranked opponents. That’s the same number of unranked losses that Saban suffered in 17 years with the Crimson Tide. And while DeBoer signed a new seven-year contract in April that will pay him an average of $12.5 million per season, his buyout of $10 million might be worth stomaching for wealthy Alabama fans if things go awry this fall. — Michael Cohen This isn’t the hottest take on the planet, but I have a really hard time seeing anyone from the ACC outside of Miami challenging for a College Football Playoff spot. Rhett Lashlee has done incredible work at SMU in a relatively short time, moving the Mustangs up from the American Conference to the Power Four, but I’m not sold quarterback Kevin Jennings is the guy to get the Ponies back into the CFP mix. Outside of SMU, who is challenging Miami this year? Louisville? Maybe. Cal? For reasons above, perhaps, but that’s asking a lot. — Ben Portnoy No Big Ten player will receive more scrutiny than Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover, a TCU transfer tasked with following in the footsteps of Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza. But head coach Curt Cignetti and his staff have proven they can identify quarterback talent as well as — or better — than seemingly everyone else, so casting doubts about Hoover seems rather foolish. If Hoover can perform anywhere near the level established by Mendoza and predecessor Kurtis Rourke, who also guided Indiana to the College Football Playoff, then this loaded Hoosiers’ roster can extend one of the sport’s best fairytales. — Michael CohenLatest Sports News from FOX Sports
On the heels of viral trends like looksmaxxing (maximizing one’s attractiveness) and healthmaxxing (optimizing physical and mental wellness), moneymaxxing describes the pursuit of better finances. But what does it mean, exactly? Well, it starts with a concept that’s been around…
One of the best parts of visiting Aldi is the new products that come out every month. Here are our favorite new items hitting shelves in September 2026.
In one of the most remote towns in America, a group of teenagers is fighting to put an initiative on the November ballot that would raise the minimum wage for the largely Native population of Nome, Alaska.
The idea took hold earlier this year when the six young women were invited to a conference in California as part of a Native youth leadership group they’d joined at their high school. There, they listened to Saru Jayaraman, who heads a national effort to raise the minimum wage, speak about the work being done city by city to secure higher pay. They kept looking at each other as she spoke. We should do this in Nome, they thought.
“We were just talking amongst ourselves, and we were like, ‘There’s people in Alaska who work for their whole lives, and their minimum wage doesn’t change at all to support their children and their elders, and their whole family,’” said Alora Stasenko, one of the women leading the effort who graduated this spring. Another student leader, Renee Brown, was working part-time at the local preschool and saw how many of her coworkers lived out of renovated shipping containers and walked to work in harsh conditions. The low in Nome reached -26 degrees Fahrenheit last year.
“We decided that money was a problem, and that we wanted to help get, not just a few people, but everybody, what they need,” Stasenko said.
Nome, a town of about 3,700 on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, just 150 miles off the coast of Russia, is perhaps best known for its history as a gold rush town and as the ending point of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. The next nearest town is 70 miles away, and supplies need to be shipped or flown in. That makes living expensive. The minimum wage is $14 an hour, but the cost of living is about 69 percent higher than the national average. Gas often tops $6 a gallon. Milk is $10 a gallon. Grocery stores are rarely full and so expensive that many people hunt for their food.
“It takes a while to go out on boats or snow machines or trucks or four-wheelers, and you have to buy your ammo and your guns and all your equipment to go out. Everything gets expensive,” Stasenko said. “I grew up living a very subsistence lifestyle.”
In her freezer: caribou, fish and walrus that she helped hunt herself.
Stasenko and the other students were gripped by the idea that raising the minimum wage in Nome could help give people there a better quality of life. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Living Wage Calculator sets the living wage there — how much one person working full-time needs to support themselves — at nearly $24 an hour. A family of four would need two working adults earning about $28 an hour each to stay afloat.
Jayaraman was impressed when the students followed up with her after the conference. It was the first time in her decades of activism that she had been approached by high schoolers to start a campaign.
With her guidance, the students formed the Nome Living Wage For All Alliance and convened a call with some of the town’s largest employers to discuss interest in a ballot initiative. They settled on a goal of raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour. They’re proposing a phase-in period, giving large corporations until 2029 to raise wages and small businesses until 2032. Already, the town’s top employer, Norton Sound Health Corporation, sets its minimum wage at $25 an hour, so raising the floor would only apply to about 15 percent of workers in the city.
They submitted a ballot petition to the city in May, which was approved, and now need to collect 108 signatures — representing a quarter of ballots cast in the 2025 local election — to get their proposal on the ballot in November. They have until the end of the month to collect enough signatures.
“They’ve initiated this conversation in Nome,” said Jayaraman, who added that the story of the group’s work has also inspired other organizers around the country. “Whether they make it on the ballot this November or not, they’ve already had such profound impact on the national movement, on young people all over the country, on workers in other states.”
Because Nome is also a larger regional hub, part of the hope is that improving wages there could also help raise them in neighboring towns where conditions are even harsher — where stores often lack meat or fresh produce and there is no running water.
Over the summer, Brown, one of the student organizers, spoke at a national mobilization event in Washington, D.C. about the hope she had that Nome’s movement “will not only improve the lives of our community members, but will inspire our fellow classmates and peers across Alaska to believe in the power of effort, advocacy and determination.”
“Our efforts will help Nome pioneer a new kind of American dream — one where dignity is the baseline and every resident can afford to stay on our golden beaches,” Brown said.
Most of the organizers spent much of the end of their senior year at Nome-Beltz Middle High School strategizing. Kaya Kent, another organizer, said she remembers talking excitedly about it with Stasenko during classes.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I was checking my email constantly, and I was waking up thinking about the campaign,” Kent said.
A $500 million-plus project to turn Nome’s dock into the nation’s first deepwater Arctic port just kicked off, and though it will likely bring in money for all the businesses that traverse through there, the organizers want to make sure the people of Nome can benefit, too.
Even those already earning more than $25 an hour — like Kent’s mother, who works in an administrative position at the local hospital — are still struggling to live comfortably in Nome, Kent said.
“If it’s like that for my mom, who’s able to make $40 an hour, I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people that are making way, way less than that,” she said.
It’s an effort that is about fundamental survival, and it mirrors a lot of what’s driving Gen Z students to get engaged politically, Jayaraman said. Some tell her that they support raising the minimum wage because it’s fundamental to them being able to take on any other causes.
“They tell me, ‘This is the thing that’s giving me hope because I can’t envision a future unless I can have one job and earn enough to maybe one day have my own place, maybe think about having a family. I can’t imagine working on any of these other issues I care about, whether it’s climate or immigration or anything else, unless I can survive and my family can survive.’”
Still, getting a tight-knit town that has subsisted on its own to embrace a lofty idea made popular in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago has not been easy. There’s concern over how businesses will be able to absorb the increased personnel costs. There’s dismissiveness because the effort is being led by young women — people say they’re just high schoolers who need to take an economics class, Kent said.
Plus, she added, “with a lot of Nome, change is scary for them.”
But the arguments against a minimum wage hike in Nome are similar to those heard across the country, Jayaraman said. Primarily, it’s the worry that it will lead to rising costs. Minimum wage increases have led to some modest employment loss and some added costs to businesses — but these are often offset by rising revenues. Extensive research that’s been done on minimum wage initiatives over the years has also found significant positive benefits for workers, and particularly low-wage ones.
“What the girls are saying is, ‘We need money to survive costs going up,’” Jayaraman said. For many people in America now, “that argument that it’s going to make costs go up and therefore we can’t do it, they’re like: ‘Costs have already gone up. What are you talking about? The only thing that hasn’t gone up is my paycheck.’”
Kent starts every conversation when she goes out to collect signatures with the same question: “How much money do you make?”
She and the other students are rushing to collect signatures before their deadline is up. Admittedly, it’s been tough to do with most of them out of town or preparing for college this summer. Stasenko already moved to Washington state to attend Shoreline Community College, where she’s studying accounting and playing college volleyball.
Kent will soon move to Colorado to attend Fort Lewis College. As she’s made her final push for signatures, she’s been thinking about how this effort might ensure that if she ever comes back home to make a life, she can.
Before all of this started, she and the other students had never done any activism like this. For Kent, taking it on has helped solidify what she wants to do with her life. When she gets to Colorado this fall, she’ll major in political science.
A vehicle drives past the trans-Alaska pipeline near Galbraith Lake on the Dalton Highway, Alaska. Pump Station 4 is visible in the background. Fedearl regulators are beginning the process of granting a renewed right-of-way agreement to allow 30 more years of operations. (Photo by Craig McCaa/U.S. Bureau of Land Management)
Forty-nine years after it began transporting crude oil from Prudhoe Bay, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System is due for a regulatory renewal that will allow it to keep operating on federal lands into future decades.
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has kicked off the process to renew the right-of-way agreement for the pipeline.
About half of the territory that the 800-mile pipeline system crosses is federal land, so a federal authorization is required. The rest of the territory is state or Native-owned land; the state is also due to issue its own right-of-way renewal.
In a statement, Kevin Pendergast, the BLM’s Alaska state director, predicted a robust future for operations of the pipeline system. It will carry new oil from federal land units, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the Trump administration has pushed for oil drilling, he said.
“Nearly 50 years after its construction, the Trans Alaska Pipeline is still an engineering marvel and only growing in its importance to Alaska’s economy and global energy markets,” Pendergast said in the statement. “We are acting now to secure the pipeline’s future as we work to unlock the energy resources of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and the Coastal Plain of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”
The Trans Alaska Pipeline System was first authorized in 1974. It was built over the following three years.
The prior federal renewal was made final in 2003 by the administration of President George W. Bush. It was completed just prior to the scheduled 2004 expiration of the original right-of-way agreement that allowed the system to be built and operated on federal lands.
The prior BLM approval process officially kicked off in November of 2000 and involved a full environmental impact statement that evaluated subjects like the impacts of aging on the structure, long-term changes to permafrost and oil spill risks.
This time, the Trump administration is planning a much shorter review. The BLM is preparing an environmental assessment, a less-comprehensive review than an environmental impact statement.
Brenda Younkin, the Department of the Interior’s deputy assistant secretary for land and mineral management, said this renewal process will take much less time. That is in keeping with Secretary Doug Burgum’s new rules for shorter and quicker environmental reviews, she said.
“We’re optimistic about being quick,” she said on Wednesday during a panel discussion at the Alaska Oil and Gas Association’s annual conference in Anchorage. “We better, or we’re going to be reporting to the secretary why not.”
The new rules include strict timelines and page limits for study documents, she said.
The public comment period for the scoping process – the initial step in which interested parties may raise issues they believe should be considered – is only 15 days. That public comment period started on Wednesday, and ends Sep. 10
The compressed time schedule drew criticism from one environmental group.
“The oil burned from Alaska’s pipeline has come with a huge cost to our state’s climate. It’s driving declines in salmon and caribou, and contributing to mega-storms that are making communities unlivable,” Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
“Alaska is facing massive climate disruption, but Trump wants to give the oil companies carte blanche to continue business as usual for the next three decades,” he said. “This process should be thorough and public, not rammed through at the behest of billionaire oil company owners.”
Speaking with longtime friend Stas Karanikolaou and former employee Vic Villarroel, she responded to the latest pregnancy rumor.
“I think that I’m so used to people creating their own narrative,” Kylie admitted, “that I actually have to just laugh about it.”
She added: “And I really don’t care.”
Kylie shared: “I just assume people will figure it out eventually, which is what they always do.”
“Like, people think I’m pregnant right now,” Kylie then acknowledged.
“At least,” she then added, “I saw some things.”
Just because she does not always respond to rumors and speculation does not mean that she does not necessarily see these comments, especially when her superfans are doing the posting.
Unlike her older sisters, Kylie has basically never known a time when she was not in the spotlight.
She has developed a somewhat pragmatic attitude towards dispelling rumors. Mostly, that means letting them dispel themselves.
Kylie Jenner explained exactly why rumors about her, be they absurd or merely untrue, don’t keep her awake at night.
And, more to the point, why she doesn’t feel the need to confirm or deny things.
“I’m not going to address everything ‘cause it’s, like, I’m going to be in a bikini somewhere or I’m going to be out,” Kylie reasoned.
“And,” she predicted, “the rumors will be squashed.”
At the risk of sounding pedantic, quashed is when something is invalid. Squashed is when something is compressed or destroyed. We’d argue that, in this case, both meanings apply.
Kylie Jenner wspomniała o „hate that i made you love me” Ariany podczas nowego wywiadu/podcastu, wymieniając ten utwór jako swoją aktualnie ulubioną piosenkę🫶 pic.twitter.com/9NscYR0hkI
— Ariana Grande Polska ꕤ Arizone (@grandepolska) August 27, 2026
“I, kind of, just don’t feel the need to say anything ever,” Kylie characterized.
(Some of us are dedicated yappers, but it seems that she is not.)
“I can’t, like, talk [or] comment on everything,” she explained.
“So,” Kylie added, “I just laugh about it and join in on the party.”
That sounds like a healthy attitude. But it’s also not one that’s likely to dispel these rumors.
When you’ve kept pregnancies secret in the past, don’t be surprised when people are on the lookout for another.
