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TMIQ Today: Dolly's Legacy · The Most Important Question

• 0:06
  It's difficult to picture three hundred million books, but that's at least how many books Dolly Parton's Imagination Library gave away before she passed away at the age of eighty.
• 0:17
  I had a whole other thing I wanted to talk about today, but Dolly is a hero of mine, so here we are. I'm not gonna make this long, and I'm not,
• 0:26
  as so many other folks understandably are, gonna compare her to some of the very real bad guys that are somehow still alive and making it so difficult for other people to live.
• 0:38
  Dolly doesn't need any comparisons because there aren't any. In isolation, in a world without bad guys, she is still among the most generous and impactful humans to have ever lived.
• 0:50
  First among equals, to say nothing of villains. Maybe somewhere along the way, once in a while, Dolly asked the most important question, "What can I do?" But she also just did it.
• 1:03
  She did actually donate three hundred million books to kids because her own dad was illiterate.
• 1:10
  She used her residuals from Whitney's vision of, version of I Will Always Love You to invest in Black communities near her hometown. She donated tens of millions to disaster relief around the world.
• 1:21
  She donated enough money to the Salvation Army once in one year to provide two and a half million meals.
• 1:26
  She donated millions of dollars to children's hospitals and pediatric advents- i-in-infectious disease research, because why not? She helped save the bald eagle.
• 1:36
  She helped fund the Moderna vaccine, saving many of our lives. There's never been a better time to give a shit and mean it, but you have to show up. And Dolly did, and I'm thankful.
• 1:53
  [outro music]