The Swiftie and The Scholar
Angela McDow | Dr. Jerry Coats
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A weekly podcast exploring the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. Hosted by Angela McDow, the Swiftie, and Dr. Jerry Coats, the Scholar, we read between the lines AND the liner notes. Join us each week for lyrical deep dive through Taylor Swift's eras.
Afleveringen
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Empathy from Experience in Patient Zero
5 november 2026 · 1 uur 52 min
We get into A LOT in this episode. Love bombing, toxic relationships, the connections Angela found to other songs that make it clear to her who inspired this song, and car salesmen. Hope you enjoy! Lees meer
*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
In Past Tense – Tara Boyd
Patient Zero – Hammerfall
Weasel/Patient Zero – Marvel Universe
Patient Zero – The Outer Limits (2001)
Dramatic Monologue
Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall (The Poldark Saga, 1) – Winston Graham:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Logos, Pathos, Ethos
Metonymy
Isaiah 6:6-8
Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory
Apophasis
*Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Canterbury Tales Prologue – Geoffrey Chaucer
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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The Illusion of Liberation in Babylon
29 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 54 min
Buckle up, y’all. We’ve got a beefy one for you today! We’re tackling Babylon from Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore. I think we all knew this one would give Uncle Jerry plenty to think about and chew on and teach from, and he did not disappoint. Maybe grab your breakfast or dinner and a nice beverage and get comfy, because this is our longest episode yet. Lees meer
*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
The Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Angela’s Reaction Video – The Encore
Professing Literature: An Institutional History – Gerald Graff
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Ancient Babylon
What Does "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin" Mean?
Ozymandias – Percy Bysshe Shelley
Babylon (2022)
Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory
Wild Things (1998)
Where The Wild Things Are – Maurice Sendak
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
Wild Thing – The Troggs
The Libertine (2004)
Onomatopoeia
Metonymy
Logos, Pathos, Ethos
Dramatic Irony
Miniver Cheevy – Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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Art Becomes Memory in Tim McGraw
22 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 30 min
In this episode, we are taking it back to the very beginning with Tim McGraw from Taylor Swift’s debut album. Uncle Jerry finds plenty to discuss and is charmed by hearing both young Taylor’s early poetics and her country twang. Lees meer
Works Cited:
Tug McGraw
In medias res
Free indirect discourse
Alliteration
Metonymy
Signposting
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Palimpsest
Enjambment
Frame story or frame structure
Leitmotif
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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BONUS: Interview with Sarah Anderson, Author of Fallow
20 oktober 2026 · 54 min
Today I have something a bit different for you! I sat down with Sarah Anderson, author of Fallow, to discuss getting published, her love of short stories, how she wrote the main character of the book, and so much more. All of the books we discussed are linked below. Lees meer
Fallow – Sarah Anderson:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Take Me to Kirkland – Sarah Anderson: https://joylandpublishing.com/fiction/take-me-to-kirkland/
The Best American Short Stories 2025 – Celeste Ng, Nicole A. Lamy:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Marlena – Julie Buntin:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Famous Men – Julie Buntin:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Health Trackers Are Everywhere. Do Babies Need Them Too? – The Daily:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5QNrdUSF28Vsxla5a0exzK?si=TPgMlCapQwy4AJuqP1ptoQ
Temporary – Hilary Leichter:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Quick and the Dead – Joy Williams:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Visiting Privilege – Joy Williams:
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
All Fours – Miranda July
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The First Bad Man – Miranda July
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Margo’s Got Money Troubles – Rufi Thorpe
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
East of Eden – John Steinbeck
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
The Maltese Version – Katy Simpson Smith
*Amazon
*Bookshop.org
*Libro.fm
Follow me around the internet:
YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@angelawyattmcdow
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https://www.patreon.com/cw/TheSwiftieandTheScholar
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https://www.instagram.com/swiftieandscholarpod/
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Folklore as a Unified Literary Work | Wrapping Up Folklore: Part 2
15 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 46 min
We did it! One album down, lots to go. Uncle Jerry takes us through alllllll the unifying themes, devices, questions, and more (13 to be exact) of the folklore album as a whole. Thanks for coming on this journey with us! Lees meer
*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
Sonnets from the Portuguese 20: Beloved, my Beloved, when I think – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Aurora Leigh: A Norton Critical Edition – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Morphology of the Folktale – V. Propp
*The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales – Bruno Bettelheim
*Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion – Jack Zipes
*Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale – Jack Zipes
*The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales – Jack Zipes
*The Great Fairy Tale Tradition: A Norton Critical Edition – Jack Zipes
*Literary Theory: An Introduction – Terry Eagleton
*Witches, Ogres, and the Devil's Daughter: Encounters with Evil in Fairy Tales – Mario Jacoby, Verena Kast, Ingrid Riedel
*Retelling / Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times – Karl Kroeber
*Linguistic Criticism – Roger Fowler
*From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers – Marina Warner
*No Go, the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling, and Making Mock – Marina Warner
[anyone lived in a pretty how town] – e.e. cummings
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird – Wallace Stevens
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Lore & Lyrics
Ulysses – James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
*Slaughter-House Five – Kurt Vonnegut
*The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
*Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Hilary Duff is trying to listen to the healthy part of her brain – Los Angeles Times
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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Wrapping Up Folklore: Part 1
8 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 9 min
Well, guys, we’ve really stressed Uncle Jerry out with this one. He went so deep on the folklore album as a whole that this episode focuses mostly on the prologue and how it sets up this new style of storytelling, different from all her previous albums. Hope you enjoy, and we’ll see you back here next week for Part 2! Lees meer
*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
*Starship Troopers – Robert A. Heinlein
Folklore (Taylor Swift album)
*Shakespeare's Sonnets & Poems – William Shakespeare
*Sonnets from the Portuguese – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
*Astrophil and Stella – Sir Philip Sidney
Semiotics
The Odyssey – Homer
Beowulf
Dryads
Hulder
Folklore prologue
Daddy – Sylvia Plath
Anecdote of the Jar – Wallace Stevens
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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The Despair and Persistence of This is Me Trying
1 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 9 min
We’ve made it to the end of the folklore road! Join Uncle Jerry and Angela as they discuss this is me trying, where the duo finds some Typical Taylor, ambiguity, paradox, multiple meanings, and so much more. Lees meer
Come back for the next two weeks as we wrap-up discussion of the album as a whole.
Works Cited:
Couplets
Heroic couplets
Anaphora
Starship Troopers (1997)
Enjambment
Ellipsis
In medias res
The Odyssey – Homer
Caesura
Why I Write – Joan Didion
Simile
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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The Secretive Destruction of Illicit Affairs
24 september 2026 · 1 uur 14 min
Today we’re covering our penultimate folklore poem with Illicit Affairs. Uncle Jerry finds this song fits perfectly within the category of folklore, and shows us just how Taylor Swift’s use of language showcases the lack of love in this song. Lees meer
*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
Interlocutor
Imperative verb
Dramatic irony
The Book of Jonah
Synecdoche
The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost
Aphorism
Assonance
Alliteration
*The Pleasure of the Text – Roland Barthes
Anaphora
Synesthesia
Sonnet 138 – William Shakespeare
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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The Paradox and Parallelism of Peace
17 september 2026 · 58 min
Did we finally find Uncle Jerry’s least favorite folklore poem? And maybe Angela’s too? In this episode, we dissect Peace from Taylor Swift’s 2020 album, and Uncle Jerry finds many paradoxes and double meanings, while struggling to find a window to crawl through into the narrative. Lees meer
Works Cited:
Paradox
Apostrophe
Synecdoche
I Would Die 4 U – Prince
You’ve Got a Friend in Me – Randy Newman
Easy Silence – The Chicks
Two Sleepy People – Fats Waller
Stuck in the Middle With You – Stealers Wheel
You Are My Sunshine – Jimmie Davis
Standing In The Rain – John Paul Young
Standing In The Rain – Al Green
Standing In The Rain – Electric Light Orchestra
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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Time’s Mystic Meandering in Invisible String
10 september 2026 · 1 uur 51 min
Buckle up, folks. This is a long one! Invisible String is up next in our folklore canon, and Uncle Jerry showed up PREPARED. He and Angela chat through folktales about the red thread, handfasting ceremonies, and more before diving into the poem. They then get into a long and philosophical conversation about fate and predestination and Forrest Gump. Lees meer
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*Links with an asterisk are affiliate links, which allow us to make a small commission on your purchase at no cost to you. Thanks so much for your support!
Works Cited:
All in green went my love riding – e.e. Cummings
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
Red thread of fate
Handfasting
Pope Innocent III and Handfasting
2 Kings 14:21 – 16 as the age of ascension
Epizeuxis
*The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Enjambment
Metanarrative
Synecdoche
Goddesses of Fate
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Caesura
Forrest Gump – Winston Groom
Forrest Gump (1994)
Design – Robert Frost
Hap – Thomas Hardy
Proverbs 16:33
The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix
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