Media News

Iconic Dallas media figure Dale Hansen returns to fray via new podcast

Mark Villasana, Lila Levy, Dale Hansen

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An iconic Dallas media figure is back on the air: Former longtime sportscaster Dale Hansen, who retired in 2021 after more than 40 years, is chattering again in a new podcast, "Dallas Dialogue With Dale Hansen," which made its debut on June 2.

The podcast is sponsored by Northwest Insurance Agency, a Dallas-based agency owned by Mark Villasana, an insurance professional with nearly 30 years of experience in the DFW market.

Villasana and his partner Lila Levy (AKA, CultureMap Dallas' own bagel expert) launched a separate podcast in April 2025, called "Beyond The Policy: Covering Everything Dallas," where they share insights on insurance, before segueing to interviews with chefs, artists, musicians politicians, and other local figures.

Hansen was one such figure they interviewed, and that May 26 episode turned out so well, they decided to launch a new monthly podcast starring Dale, providing the outspoken and opinionated Hansen with a platform for his hot takes on a variety of issues.

Here's a few words from Dale:

The return of Dale
""I've seen every movie and TV show that Netflix has to offer," Hansen says. "My wife and I travel quite a bit, and I play a lot of poker with the guys," Hansen says. "So when Lila called, what was supposed to be an hour turned into two and a half. I don't have a lot of conversations with people these days, so it's hard for me to shut up. Halfway through, they said, 'This is really good, would you mind if we make it into two parts.' And then they suggested the idea of doing the podcast once a month. That was the magic moment for me. I love writing commentaries. I was ready to retire for a lot of reasons, but that was the only thing I missed from my television days."

To zoom or not to zoom
"My wife and I live in Waxahachie," Hansen says. "It's not that far from Dallas. We're recording the show in Denton and I make the drive. I don't like having these conversations over Zoom. I know it's technically possible but i like to look the person in the face, and be there with Mark and Lila. Someday we might end up doing it over Zoom but for now, it gets me out of the house. It's about an hour and 15 minutes. Although halfway there, I start thinking, 'Maybe we ought to do this over Zoom.'"

First topic
"The first one I did was about the divide in America — how we've allowed politics to divide us unlike anything in our history," Hansen says. "We've been divided before but never lost friends. But because of my self-identified 'liberal' leaning, I've had conservatives kick me out of a card game. I don't get invited to dinner parties. My sister and I didn't talk for nine years. I blame a single man, Donald Trump, for causing this divide. Previously, you could still maintain friendships. And it goes both ways. I have a liberal friend, we were going to eat at Javier's, and the question was, 'Who else is coming,' because they won't attend if certain people are there."

Future Dale
"Future topics include the Luka and the Dallas Mavericks, and the technology of the world we live in -- phones, computers, Facebook. I do see some of the benefits, but how many influencers does one country need?" Hansen says.

"Bottom line, I am doing a great deal of what I did at channel 8 — talk about social issues, sports, although even when I was talking about sports, I would always weave in social aspects. I just love sparking the conversation. A friend told me that his buddy said, 'The hell with Dale Hansen, he thinks he's right about everything and he's just not.' Well, of course I think I'm right — I wouldn't say it if I didn't think I was right. I didn't understand why that was supposed to offend me."

"Dallas Dialogue With Dale" can be viewed on YouTube or heard via Spotify.

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Movie Review

Animated Disney film Elio is fun but falls short of Pixar top tier

Photo courtesy of Pixar

Elio (Yonas Kibreab) and Glordon (Remy Edgerly) in Elio.

Pixar has done a ton of different things in the 28 feature films they’ve released over the past 30 years, but the one they’d never done is deal with aliens (and, no, the alien toys in Toy Story don’t count). Now they’re going where many storytellers have gone before, but in their own unique way, in the new film Elio.

Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) is a space fanatic who has recently lost both of his parents in an unnamed event. His Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña) is now his guardian, and because she happens to be a member of the U.S. Space Force, Elio finds himself tantalizingly close to communications from space. With a desire to be abducted by aliens for both curiosity and sentimental reasons, Elio sends a message into space, hoping for some kind of response.

He gets that and more when a ship full of multiple types of beings takes him into space, believing him to be a leader instead of a child. An encounter with a hostile force led by Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett) gives Elio both a new friend, Grigon’s son Glordon (Remy Edgerly), and responsibility for maintaining peace during an unexpected galactic crisis.

Pixar has not typically followed the route of many Disney movies of giving their child protagonist the trauma of dead parents, and doing so here is the first of a few minor missteps. Having Olga be his mom instead of his aunt would have altered their dynamic, but only slightly. While Elio is shown to miss his parents, his major focus is on making contact with aliens. Since the film only briefly deals with his grief, it would have been better served by excising it altogether.

For the most part, the film is goofy, with Elio’s enthusiasm for aliens matched by the oddness of the creatures he meets in space. The filmmakers - there are three credited directors and three credited writers - seem to have taken inspiration from sea creatures and Pixar’s own history, as the main bad guy emulates Mike and Sully’s boss from Monsters, Inc. Almost every character in the film is heightened to a degree that makes for funny situations, but not as much sentimentality as other Pixar offerings.

Surprisingly, especially since the film ends with a voiceover from notable astronomer Carl Sagan, the filmmakers play fast and loose with real-life science. Elio’s journeys to and from the alien spaceship are treated as close-to-instantaneous trips, even involving portals directly to Earth. The idea of the story doesn’t allow them to delve into things like relativistic time dilation, but there still could have been other scientific references to keep the story aboveboard.

There are very few stars to be found among the film’s voice cast other than Saldaña and Garrett, who are each fine if unmemorable. Kibreab and Edgerly are given many more scenes than anyone else, and they each do a great job of bringing out both the joy and naivete of their characters. Some lesser-known actors like Jameela Jamil, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Brendan Hunt show up in minor roles, but they don’t stand out in any way.

The story and characters in Elio are sweet and fun, but the film as a whole falls well short of the top tier Pixar movies. The filmmakers could have gone many different directions with a story about a boy who wants to be abducted by aliens, and the way they chose ended up being innocuous and less than compelling.

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Elio opens in theaters on June 20.

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