The Swiftie and The Scholar - Answering Your Questions - Volume 1

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

In this episode, Uncle Jerry and Angela get caught up on the latest Swiftie news, including the engagement and The Release Party of a Showgirl, and then they get into answering your questions from Instagram and TikTok. We cover poetry curriculum, how to get into scholarly pursuits, how Angela convinced Uncle Jerry to do the podcast, and how we select which songs we cover.There are links below to (most of!) the recommended literature from the episode. Some links are affiliate links, which means if you click and purchase, we will make a small commission at no cost to you.Works Cited:i carry your heart with me – e.e. cummingsEpithalamion – Edmund SpenserThe Hornblower Series – C.S. ForesterMr. Midshipman Hornblower (Book 1) – C.S. ForesterAfrican Queen – C.S. ForesterThe Good Shepherd – C.S. Forester2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. ClarkeStranger in a Strange Land Paperback – Robert A. HeinleinThe Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-ExupéryThe Oxford Book of Modern Verse – W.B. YeatsThe Oxford Book of English Verse – Christopher RicksThe Norton Anthology of American Literature – Robert S. LevineE. E. Cummings: Complete Poems, 1904–1962The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens: The Corrected EditionLeaves of Grass – Walt WhitmanMetaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark JohnsonTwenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair – Pablo NerudaThe Poet and His Book: The Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent MillayThe Complete Poems of Emily DickinsonThe Complete Poems: Anne SextonThe Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry Paperback – Rita DoveAmerican Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume 1: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker – Robert HassThe Oxford Book of American Short Stories – Joyce Carol OatesA Cool Million Paperback – Nathanael WestLucky Jim Paperback – Kingsley AmisCold Comfort Farm Paperback – Stella Gibbons Bleak House – Charles DickensThe Old Curiosity Shop – Charles DickensNicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens⁠YouTube⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠Instagram⁠Angela’s Instagram

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at a month in Shopify pointe at records. Welcome to the Swifti

and the scholar. The podcast where we examine the lyrics, lore, and literary legacy of Taylor Swift. I am Angela McDowell the Swifty. And I am Dr. Terry Coates, the scholar. Yeah. Hello.

Hello. How you doing? I have my old guy vacation shirt on. I love it. Because I didn't have to study this week about a poem. I take those dang poems she sends me and I study them and read them and study them and write all over them and think about them. And then go back and read them. him again and yeah get a little break this time yes because because the last one was a a lot it was a lot yes

yeah okay so today what we're going to do is get caught up on the swiftly news as of late right and then we're going to answer some questions that people submitted to us okay wake me when you're done no no you have to be here oh okay okay so first of all we have not gotten to talk since taylor and Travis got engaged Do you want to talk about how I broke that news to you and then you couldn't stop thinking about it? Yes, go right in. So I, you know, found out that like, you know, 30 seconds after it was posted on Instagram, as one does. And proceeded to get zero work done the rest of the day because I had to tell everyone. I had to talk about it.

I had to cry about it. We had to do all the things. Did you really cry? I don't think so. Like, maybe you got close. No, okay. I got teary for her. Oh.

Okay, first we've talked about how she called herself the English teacher in the caption. She said, your English teacher and your, what did she say again? Your gym teacher. Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married. Yeah. You sent that to me, and I love it. Yeah. I have to say, I have been really, really impressed with the number of literary devices, the poeticism of her work.

So, yeah, I mean, when she called herself, that? I thought, yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that was very exciting. You were out of the country, but I felt like you needed to know, so I texted you. I know. I was in England, and it's like Angela's, they're getting my brain. And then you had, you came back a little while later and said, I can't stop thinking about this, because I'm in your head now. Taylor's in your head now. We're like, we could do a whole episode on, you know, poems about marriage. You had like off the cuff like five or six ideas. Oh, yeah.

Well, I mean, first of all, so we're in England and I mean the English press would not let it go. I mean, I saw pictures of Taylor and Kelsey and I saw the, you know, pictures in the garden of him on his knee and, you know, you're texting me and I'm watching the BBC and or British news and it's all over. I mean, Global. They are just about as nuts about her as apparently you are. And, okay, I'm becoming. Swift curious. Yes, Swift Curious.

But there are a lot of poems about marriage. You know, I mean, I, E. Cummings has one of my favorite. I carry your heart. I carry it in my heart. It's beautiful, beautiful poem. I thought about Edmund Spencer's Epithelamian. There are a couple of different epithelamia that is collections of sorts. songs about love and marriage.

Okay. So he takes 24 poems and they're 24 hours of the day they get married and they're beautiful works. So yes, I mean, I can just, I can think of four or five or six authors. Okay, yeah. Would be great. Okay, so we might have to have a special episode. And maybe she'll write something about it.

I can't wait. She absolutely will. Yeah. It will get it in, you know, three or four years. Or maybe she writes 12 songs about the 12 hours of the day they get married, and then a 13th that she only sings to trash. Oh, dear. Okay, moving on.

The other news we have is that there's a release party, the showgirl album, happening for that weekend, the album release weekend. I panicked. as as I often do when there's I feel like there's limited tickets for things and I bought tickets for our literal whole family not our whole family but a lot of people in our family and I'm going to leave that up to you if you actually want to go or not we have to decide I know it's it really is I mean I want to go but then I also don't I mean one of the deals is one of the deals that you originally came up with is I don't know anything about Taylor Swift yeah I mean, oh, then she's rich and a singer in Dakes Travis Kelsey. Yeah. And I knew exactly one song by her, and that was it. And so when I read her work, I read it as a work of literature, as a poem.

And I'm not, I'm not jaded. I'm not influenced by seeing her, knowing, her hearing her, none of that stuff. Yeah, what the song actually sounds like. Right. If it's too poppy or whatever. Right. I haven't heard it. Yeah.

So. So that's the thing we have to decide. I kind of want to leave. it up to you because I'm fine with it either way. Like, I think it would be fun to experience, like, the, in the, in the, the, the, the Kelsey Brothers podcast when we heard her talk for two hours, I didn't realize that this was an Easter egg, but she said, like, I'm always looking for ways to make music an event, like in a community thing, like something that brings everybody together.

And now I realize she was saying that because she knew this was coming. And she knew you would buy tickets for everybody. Yeah, I just. Just take all my money. And so I do think it would be fun for you to experience that. And I don't know that you hearing the songs one time in a movie theater full of people is really that much of a spoiler. Like I don't know how much that'll stick in your head. But again, we just have to decide.

So we'll let you know. I told you I was a little bitty kid when a Hard Day's Night debut and some neighbors. daughters took me to the theater and it was a it was pandemonium yeah screaming girls and me saying they're going what is the world so I don't know I'm I might want to experience that yeah yeah so we'll see we'll decide but what we're really here for today is to talk about to talk through some questions that you all have given us I got these questions from a couple from the comment sections on at YouTube and then other people submitted questions to us on TikTok and Instagram.

So let's just start and we'll see what we get through. Okay. Okay. So the first one, I love this one, is from her TikTok name is Fan Girl He He. She said, my mom is an English teacher and we watch your podcast every Friday, which I just love. It's a multi-generational thing. That's what I wanted to do. I love it.

Right. We are, in fact, multi-generational. Yeah, a little. Yeah. I'm a teen, and I was wondering if uncle... I'm sorry, but I can't help the age I am. Okay. I can't change that.

That's an Easter egg for a previous episode. Oh, okay. Sorry, go ahead. Okay, question. I was wondering if Uncle Jerry had any advice for young scholars, reading, writing, analyzing, whatever. Oh, okay. Don't do it.

I mean, just ask your mom the English teacher. It is hard being a teacher today. And I'm just kidding, of course. Okay, so I mean, no, I'm not kidding about it being hard. Yeah, definitely is hard today. So, I mean, I guess my first bit of advice would be read anything. Read everything. You know, read what you like.

Read what's fun for you or interesting for you. you develop taste as you read. Yeah, agree. So when I was in graduate school, I got my master's degree in history, but I went and got a master's degree in English. And when I was studying English,

we had to take a course in literary criticism, and I had the opportunity to read T.S. Eliot's, you know, T.S. Eliot, who wrote The Wasteland and the Love Song of Jay Alfred Bufrock and the song Midnight and Old Posson's Book of Practical Cat, that gave us the musical cats.

Oh, okay, okay. But T.S. Eliot also wrote literary criticism. And one of the things he said that offended me at the time was you should read everything, but don't try to understand anything until you're at least 35. Oh, dear God. I know, and I was like 27, and I was pretty full of myself and thought that I was really smart. Of course. Yeah, the latter was not so much true.

The former is really what was true. You know, and I found when I, when I hit 35, I thought, wow, that T.S. Eliot's pretty smart guy. Yeah, you do really figure a lot more out at 35. You really do. I mean, you just, you see, you know, it's like, it's like developing any skill, the more you do it, the more you do it well. And so, you know, I personally, I started reading historic fiction. I read the Hornblower series by C.S. Forrester and African Queen.

The Good Shepherd. I read science fiction. I read Arthur C. Clark and Heinlein novels, many of which are juvenile. Okay. They're not great works, but you develop your skill as a reader. You begin to recognize major thematic thrusts and work. You begin to recognize the literary qualities of work. And you begin to develop ten.

taste. Yeah. You know, so. Yeah, you got to read it all to figure out what you like. You really do. And, you know, I mean, it's funny because I, my students always used to say, you know, you love all this stuff. I mean, because I would start class with, oh, this is one of my favorite works.

And they began to realize, well, they're all your favorite works. And it's true, you know. I mean, I mentioned Edmund Spencer. I mean, he's a 17th century writer. but then I mentioned E.E. Cummings, he's a 20th century writer, you know, so, you know, my first degree was in classical civilizations, and I read a lot of Latin and Greek writers. So, yeah, I mean, I would just say try to read as much as you can and develop discernment. And it's that discernment that I think leads to understanding. Yeah, absolutely. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Okay. Yeah. And don't worry about children's literature. I mean, I read, I mean, one of my,

My favorite book still is The Little Prince. You know, I think there's a real beauty and wisdom. And the same author has written several works, Esperche, and he's kind of wonderful. Yeah. You know, so I like Harry Potter. Yeah, I was going to say, like, before Harry Potter was what it is, you told my parents, like, there's this book, y'all should read it. It's very fun. It's like four kids, but not really, like, it's written.

for kids and marketed for kids, but it's great for all of us. And that got all my parents and I into Harry Potter, my brother, into Harry Potter before it became like a huge thing. So, yeah. Well, and I actually got the recommendation from a student. A student came to me and said, oh, have you read this Harry Potter? And I hadn't. I thought, no, it's kind of a kid's book.

Yeah. She said, no, you really ought to read. It's fun, more fun than you'd think. And I enjoyed the first one. The second one was kind of the first one again. Yeah. Yeah. which is a pattern in a lot of literature.

Yeah, series is. When the third one came out, it was something different. Yeah. You know, Prisoner of Ascaband was twice as long. It was a runner up for the Whitbrid Award, the British National Book Award. It lost out to Seamus Haney's translation of Beowulf. Oh, wow.

Yeah, if you're going to lose to. For sure. And it's, you know, if you've read the book or you've seen the movie, you know that it's written with a literary eye. You know, it begins with an aunt deprecating the value of his family, you know,

and saying, well, he looks just like his parents. And then it ends with him realizing he looks just like his parents. Yeah. You know, and that's,

you know, in the opening, it's a bad thing. And at the end, he realizes it's a good thing. Yeah. It's a lovely, you know,

way to do the exposition of the denou mall. And then you realize, wow, she's a better writer than I gave her credit for. Yeah. You develop discernment. Read everything. Yeah. Okay. Agreed.

Read it all. Okay. Macy from TikTok. This one is a little bit more in depth, maybe. Uncle Jerry has made you want to do some continuing education in poetry. Oh, all right. What would he recommend for a curriculum for someone who hasn't been in school in a very long time? Okay, for poetry.

Yeah. You know, you might go to Amazon and just look at an anthology for poetry. You know, again, you develop taste. So if you go and you'll see the Oxford Book of Modern Verse or the Oxford book of 20th century English poetry or the Oxford book of 19th century poetry and you'll see collections of books by Oxford. Or you can do that for almost anyone. There's a Cambridge series as well. So there are a lot of collections. Go get a Norton Anthology of American Literature.

And you'll get just a little taste, and it's usually the best. Yeah. But you'll get a taste of, you know, if you get the Norton Anthology or the McMillan Anthology of American Literature, you'll get Walt Whitman and you'll get Emily Dickinson and you'll get W.S. Merlin. or you'll get E. Cummings or Lawrence Ferlingetti or Gary Snyder or all kinds of really good poets. Yeah, and then you kind of follow that. What speaks to you and you follow that down. Whatever speaks to you, then you just follow that. I mean, I hate to recommend one poet.

Yeah. You know, I mean, I love E. Cummings. You know, I have read, I have his collected poetry. It's right there. Yeah. You know, of course, I love Robert Frost, like most Americans. It's unpatriotic, not too much. You know, even though old Daddy Frost could be a very, very dark writer. Oh, Daddy Frost. Well, you know, he was a little rough on his son.

But my favorite American poet, maybe Wallace Stevens. Okay. He's an academic poet can be very abstract, sometimes difficult to understand. Oh, so that's good for. getting the old brain going. Yeah. And I love Walt Whitman. I mean, to me, Walt Whitman is another kind of Bible.

I really believe it is inspired work that can guide us and make us better people. Love that. Yeah. His leaves of graphs are just beautiful works. And they're written in free verse. Most of them, almost everything he wrote is free verse. You know, so, I mean, I could recommend it. individual poets, but so far as how to get into poetry, I would get an anthology.

Yeah. I'll try to find those and link them so we can help people along. Helen on YouTube, this one I guess is more for me. She says, as always, a deep and free-flowing discussion, wondering how you're curating what songs you discuss. Yeah, how do you do that? Yeah, okay. So this is a question like all my friends have asked me too, like, how are you, Why are you? What are you doing? And like some of it, there has been a little bit of a method to what I'm choosing. Like we started on the anniversary of like the fifth anniversary, I think, of folklore. And so I wanted to choose a folklore song.

And it felt like my tears ricochet was a good place to start because we could also discuss her owning her or getting her master sold out from under her. So I knew there would be like a little bit more discussion around that. And then you, you know, blew all of our minds and just guessed that it was like about something like that. And then I knew I wanted to kind of pick songs from each album. Like I wanted you to have a little sampling throughout her career. And yeah, some of them have been, you know, my favorite song on the album. Some of them have been the song that I think had the most for us. talk about on that album.

Like so long London I picked because I just knew you would like that one. You know? So there's just been a little bit of everything. And then like we just did all too well. And I chose that because that's my very favorite. But I chose that because it's now fall. And I that seemed like the right time to introduce Red to you. So I do have, I'm not just like picking things at random, but I'm also trying not to

overthink it too much because I do that and then we would still not be recording anything because I'd still be thinking about it, you know? So I know there's more songs y'all are waiting for. I know everyone wants the lakes. I know everyone wants Ivy. I know everyone wants Peter. I want all of those two. But I feel like we need context before we get to those really good ones. So we'll get there, I promise. But yeah, I'm just, it's a little bit vibes based and a little bit strategy base. I'm just, I mean, I'm just the Taylor Swift Virgin

and, you know, I just rely on Angela. She sends me a copy of the lyrics and I just get to work, reading, and marking them up. Yeah. So, yeah, I just, I'm trying to pick ones that have good discussion and good poetics, really.

Well, I have loved it. Yeah. It's been fun. Yeah, I just, yeah, I keep telling my wife I'd turn around And I go, wow, this is a really good line. Wow, what a great word, you know. So thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, Clara from TikTok, now that you have read slash listen to multiple songs, what does Dr. Uncle Jerry enjoy the most about Taylor's poetry or about her style of writing? Oh. I really like the literary devices she uses. You know, we talk about metaphors every single time. And I recommended George Lachoff and Mark Johnson's metaphors we live by. She, her songs live by her metaphors. Yeah.

And they're not just, they're not just comparatives. She inserts into the songs, but they resonate with one another, right? You know, when they come out in patterns, you know, and so it helps provide the patterns. the patterns provide context. So it's more than just flashing a literary device out there. Yeah, she's not just throwing a metaphor in for the heck of it. I mean, you know, when I used to teach composition, I would have students,

I would teach students a number of different literary devices, and then I would say these are things that make you sound like a mature writer, and if you can't be one, at least try to sound like one. And so I would assign them in their third paper to incorporate rate at least two of the literary devices. Okay. And sometimes it worked and sometimes they were very clumsy. Yeah, just stuck in there.

They were just stuck in without meaning or real context. But I mean, but I was, you know, you don't do this stuff naturally or without practice. For sure, yeah. And so I was never hard on the students. I told them it doesn't have to be, you know, stunningly creative. It just has to be there. Yeah, you just got to start somewhere. That's right.

I just want to start. It's her use of literary devices. It's her metaphors. And I'm also going to say the way she links words together, you know, in the last poem we did. You know, she uses, you see the word, you see a word appear in the first stanza, in the middle stanza, in the end, or you see it in the chorus, you know. And you see her systematically employing words with multiple meanings. I love ambiguity. So yeah, it's that element of her style that is really interesting.

Yeah, agreed. I think that's my favorite thing, too. Okay. Harshada on TikTok asks, Are there any writers Taylor reminds you of? Also, tell Uncle Jerry I'm writing memoir as resistance essay for grad school, and I talk about Taylor's use of metaphor because of you. Oh, well, good.

Okay, Harsada. I recommended this in the last episode. Metaphor as we live by. This is 1980. It's a classic by now. It's a little bit dated. Then there are lots of people you can follow up. But they do such a great job of describing the different classifications of metaphors,

the different employment of metaphors, how they in and date our speech habit, how they surround us and help us interpret our world. So, yeah, be sure and get a copy of that book and reference it. For sure. People, she reminds me of, yes, I actually have somebody right here. Oh. I know.

Pablo Nereida, 20 love songs, a 20 love poems, and a song of despair. That does sound already very, Taylor. Yeah. This is a brand new translation by S. Simon Harris. So W.S. Marwin, the American poet, has also written a translation. Marwin's a poet, and so his translation is poetic, right? So he'll write in, for example, rhymed couplets. But Harris, in this translation, she tries to be more word-for-word accurate.

And the other thing I like about this one is it's got the Spanish on one side and the English. Oh, cool. Okay. So I do read Spanish. I can read it pretty effectively, especially if I have an English-Spanish dictionary. Yeah. To help me out. And so I love seeing the English-Spanish. Edna St. Vincent Malay.

Oh. Yeah, she reminds me a lot of Edna St. Vincent-Malais. This is our collective poems. Some of her works, you'll be reading through and you'll just go, man, that sounds like a song by Taylor's. She does also sometimes remind me. of Emily Dickinson. Yeah. Right.

We've talked a little bit about that. On that note, people are dying for me to tell you that an article came out a couple of years ago that said that Taylor is distantly related to Emily Dickinson. Oh, really? Like, you know, third cousins six times removed or something like that. And I think every time you've talked about Emily Dickinson, we've gotten that comment like three or four times. Oh, that's fine. So people are dying for you to know. Yeah.

Well, you know, and I told this story early on when we were making our recordings, but, you know, when this girl broke up with me, I started reading Emily Dickinson because she's such a love lost whiner. Come on, I was in junior high school. I was a love lost whiner. And, you know, and she has over 2,000 poems, close to 2,500 poems, and I'm telling you, I read the entire collected Emily Dickinson. It's right up there on my show. Yeah. You know, so yeah, she does kind of, not that I would ever characterize Ms. Taylor as a love lost whiner,

but there are elements. There's some parallels, though. I know. It's about the nature of love and that kind of thing. Yeah. But at the same bit of Malay, too. Yeah, I don't really know her at all, so I'm excited to see some of those. Every now and then, for me, she has like little echoes of Anne Sexton.

Okay. Um, who's a really good American poet. Just every now and then when I catch her feminism, um, you know, and sex is right there. Okay. I enjoy her work very much. Um, I don't know. I'd have to really think about it, uh, some more and see if anybody else comes.

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure. We've, we've got time. Okay. You know. Yeah. They'll come up. So, um, Ani, I think her name is on, um, Instagram.

She, um, is from Germany. So she's a couple questions. So the first one is this. I'm not a native English speaker, but I took advanced English classes in school in Germany. We read Shakespeare's Much Adieu about Nothing, and I liked it, but it didn't motivate me to delve further into English literature,

even though I actually thought it was pretty cool. Perhaps it was the early modern English as a non-native speaker. So my question is, what English literature or poetry would you recommend for someone who is still relatively new to it, especially as a non-native speaker. Okay. Yeah.

I'm back to one of those anthologies. Yeah. Yeah. I would get an anthology of 20th century American poetry. I mean, if you're interested in poetry, get an anthology of 20th century American poetry. You know, I've taught world literature, Brit lit, American lit. And my favorite is world lit or Britlet, but students tended to thrive on.

American lit. Yeah, that makes sense. I think because it's modern, relevant to their lives. Yeah, more familiar. It is more familiar. The language tends to be a little simpler. Diction changes over time,

and that includes the structure of the grammar as well. For example, if you read 18th century English writers, they tend to be heavily influenced by Latinate grammar. Okay. They tend to use something called the ablative, absolute. Yeah, you Latin scholars out there just got a thrill because I mentioned the ablative absolute. Sounds fun to say. Yeah, I know. It's actually, it's a type of ablative clause. And you see it in English writers because all those 18th century writers went to school and took Latin. Okay, yeah. They all

had to translate Latin. And so their English writing all tends to sound like Latin. Makes sense. Yeah, the structure of it tends to do that. So, You know, 20th century American tends to be easier in that regard. If you're interested in prose, you know, I would look at an anthology of 20th century American prose, especially short stories. So you could look at an anthology of American short story. They tend to be fairly straightforward and they use of diction, so you don't have to worry about a dictionary too much if you read fairly well in English. So I don't know. And some of it's very funny.

You know, I will warn you that when I taught 20th century American literature, my students always got a little bogged down in the first part of the century. And it's because of World War I and the coming depression, writers didn't seem to be too happy. I don't know why. What a shocker. They were just a little down. And, I mean, we would read these short stories.

And my students, by the time we were marching through the 1930s, these students would say, aren't we going to read anything happy? Well, no, not real. I mean, there's lots of happy things. I would recommend Nathaniel West's A Cool Million. Okay. It's a hilarious little novel. You might take a look at British novels from the 1920s and 30s.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Ames. It's a funny, short work. Stella Givens wrote a book called Cold Comfort Farm that has also been turned into a movie. And I like both the movie and the book. Okay. I think the book's brilliant. Okay. I'm going to have to like take notes and get all this for myself too.

Okay. Okay. Meta Pita, I think it is, on Instagram, said, how did you get Uncle Jerry to agree to do the podcast? Yeah, I'm still mending this arm. Yeah. So, I just had this idea and I said, and it wasn't, and I, it wasn't like, oh, I had this idea for a podcast, who should do it with me? It was like, I have this idea for a podcast for me and Uncle Jerry. Like it was, you were in it from the beginning.

If you weren't, if you said, no, this wouldn't exist, you know? And so I immediately told my husband, Chase, I was like, I have a brilliant idea. I'll tell you in just a minute. I was driving. So I was like texting. Don't do that. But I was like, I'll tell you when I get to the office. And he was like, wait, that actually is a good idea.

And I'm like, oh, well, now I have to like pitch it to him. So then I got nervous because it's like, now I'm asking you to like start working again, basically, when you just retired. I just retired. And but I spent, I think, two weeks working on a presentation. Way too long. I just, I needed it to be right. I needed to have my ideas down. So I put together a presentation.

explaining I love Taylor's lyrics. I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out. And I texted Uncle Jerry and I said, I have a little creative project I'd like to run by you.

Can I come by your house this weekend? And I think that probably freaked you out a little bit. I knew because you're such a medium-aven, I knew you were going to ask about a podcast or something. Yeah. I really, but I had no clue it was Taylor Swift. Yeah, I will say that. The first slide, I put it up on your TV in the living room.

And the first slide said like something, you know, new podcast idea for Angela and Uncle Jerry. And then in small down, it said, yes, it's about Taylor Swift. And you said, I saw your face kind of change. Because you were excited. You're like, let me hear what this idea is. And then whenever you saw that it said Taylor Swift, I saw your face change like, oh, my God, what is you doing? Like. Yeah, I really.

I mean, if you could have. But if you could read my mind. I saw it on your face. He was like, I could tell you were like, I know nothing about Taylor Swift. Like, why would she come to me with this? Like, what are she even doing? Like, what would I have to talk about Taylor Swift? You know.

And it turns out my naivit. Exactly what you were looking for. Yeah. So I pitched the idea. I had a couple, you know, I had a basic framework for how the episodes would go. And then I said, but wait, I have lyrics. And then I sat down on the calendar. And you started reading the lyrics to the lakes.

And then we started talking about all the different, like, I think you read a couple of lines. And then we just went from there. And we talked for 15 minutes probably. Oh, at least. And I was like, this is it. Like, this is what I want to do. And then you were like, oh, okay. Yeah, Chase, her husband said, you should be recording this right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, it was very little bribery. I did very much underestimate the amount of time you would spend going over the lyrics. Six hours a week, no more. Yeah, a month. Oh, a month. I thought you would read them a couple times.

You would be like, dot, dot, dot. And then, but here we are. Yeah, for those of you who are asking, you know, how do I improve my reading? How do I improve my poetry knowledge? One of the things I do is I read them over and over and over. again. Yeah. I mean,

it's, I mean, treat it like a song you love. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I've read the Odyssey or the Iliad or the Aeneid

or, you know, any work I really love or any work I've taught. I mean, I must have taught, you know, Shakespearean plays.

I've taught maybe half a dozen of them more than four or five times each, you know? Yeah. So when I quote literature, people are always amazed. Yeah.

It doesn't amaze me. I've been teaching. for 40 years. Yeah, it's just in here. Right. If you, if it's not in here, then you must be pretty dumb. Yeah, it's just been repetition for years and years. You promised a very limited

engagement. I know, I did, and I apologize for that. Because I did not know how deep this was going to go. I have loved it. Yeah, it has been very fun. So, so, yes, if I hope that the joy comes through

the camera lens or through the radio or however you catch us. Because I have loved working with Angela, who's just great, smart. And, you know, she's, you know, she's always been pretty terrific. But really fun to look at something new. Yeah, it's just been totally. And I'm getting a different lens. Like, you know, I knew that she had poetic elements, like, elements of her songs.

I knew there were literary elements, which is. why I came up with this idea. But I could have never guessed that, like, how deep it goes, you know, because this isn't a thing I've studied forever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You mean you can quote the lyrics?

Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Okay. Rachel on Instagram for Uncle Jerry wants to know, what is your favorite Dickens book and why? Oh, Rachel. Is this like asking what my favorite, like, Taylor album is.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which one of my daughters do I love the most? Yeah. I love them all. I mean, they all have things to recommend them. Dickens language is so fun, funny, beautiful, inspiring.

However, I will say that, oh, gosh, I've got bleak. Ah, look. They're never far. Bleak House. Bleak House is generally considered to be his masterpiece. But I just, I don't know if that's true. It's certainly one that affected his life a great deal because it's about the Jarnedice versus Jarnedice legal case.

Dickens did not like attorneys. He did not like law courts. People were constantly violating his copyright and he constantly had to hire lawyers and pay more and more money. He lost every penny he ever earned on a Christmas carol by defending its copyright. That's crazy. Oh, yeah. It would get pirated and republished up in Scotland or in America,

and he just went crazy trying to defend his copyright. I think it also bothered him. I've been to London many times, and I've been to his house several times in London. and when he would walk from his house to where he worked, he had to walk right past one of the law courts. And I think just walking by there every day must have really pissed him on. Yeah, he's getting angrier and angrier. Yeah.

But all of that is in Bleak House, along with all kinds of really fascinating characters. I love, you know, the big characters, but I love the little ones, like the veneeringes, these completely superficial people who are new wealth and their name. or the veneering. Oh, I get it, I get it. Yeah. Yeah. The veneer.

Yeah. Or, I don't know. He's got a teacher in one of his novels named Mr. McChokum Child. Oh, no. I mean, McChokum Child. That's awful and hilarious. You just got to love it. I love the way his novels start.

You know, he's very famous for, you know, he's very famous for, you know, you know, In The Tale of Two Cities, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. He's famous for David Copperfield, you know. He starts out by wondering, you know, he says, I am born, whether, you know, I'm to be the hero of my own life for that station is to be taken by another. These pages may yet prove. Yeah, so. Or Martin Chuzzlewit, where the little baby is like a bun in a warmer sitting by the fire. or the mystery of Edwin Drood where he goes to an opian den,

beside a cathedral and a dark town. I don't know. Each one is wonderful in its own way. They have literally made me cry. When Stephen dies in hard times, hate to give it away. I'm saying no spoilers. Yeah, I know. When Little Nell.

dies. Oh, no. Everybody's dying. He's got to kill somebody all. You know, in Old Curiosity Shop, that's a great story. You know, when he wrote these things periodically, so he published installments every few weeks, right? Oh, okay. Yeah.

And so when he was writing Old Curiosity Shop, he has this character named Little Now, and she would get sick. And she took care of Grandfather Trent. But then, you know, Grandfather Trent had to take care of Little Nell. And they would come across someone who was kindly and they would raise her back to health. And she was okay. But then she'd get sick again. For now. Oh, but she was brought back to health.

Don't worry. But then she would get sick again. What book is this from? It's from Old Curiosity Shop. Old Curiosity Shop. I mean, everybody got involved. Queen Victoria said it would be a tragedy to kill Little now.

Balwer Liddon, another great novelist who wrote Last Days of Pompeii. Bulwer Lidden said you can't kill her off. So you know what he did. So of course he had to kill her off. Killed her off. I mean, it's just the stuff that he does. Nicholas Nickleby's brilliant.

I love the character of Smyke. Guess what happens to him? Dyes. He dies. But he's buried by a large tree that Nicholas and his sister used to play by. Um, okay, so I'm not answering the question. You got to pick one of those if you have to, if you had to.

I really like a Nicholas Nickleby, but I think my favorite is our mutual friend. I love the character of Nottie Boffins, the Dustman, Go Collects Trash. Oh, okay, okay. I just love the name Nottie Boffins. Yeah. Um, it's fun. And so, uh, maybe our mutual friend. Okay.

I mean, you realize there are almost all these big. 900 page novels. He got paid by the word. Oh, so he was just... Yeah, he got paid per installment. So he wrote like 20,000 words per installment. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay. So, prolific. That's Dickens for you. Yeah. Um, by the way, when you're done with Dickens, read Thomas Hardy. Okay. That's, that's your second guy. Your second favorite. And let's not forget of, you know, pride and prejudice. Yeah. And she's pretty wonderful. Yeah. Jane Austen. Austin. I have been to her grave site. I've stood beside the window of the doctor's house where she spent her last weeks. Oh my goodness. Yeah. She's wonderful. Been to Southbury Cathedral, stood at her grave.

Crazy. Okay. Okay. Rachel had a question for me as well. She said, do you listen to Taylor Swift albums as a whole or make playlists with a variety of songs from different albums? And I love this question. It does feel very important. How do you listen to Taylor? and I will say that I am an album listener. I think Taylor is like an album artist. I think some artists are singles artists, and I think that's fine. But I think Taylor, none of Taylor's singles, none of her radio hits are ever in like even the top half of my favorites of the album. So I listen top to bottom.

I will, of course, cherry pick sometimes. But I am in a specific mood. and I pick an album that matches that and listen top to bottom. Did you hear the patronizing way? She said, some artists are a singles artist, and that's fine. It's fine. It's not for me, but it's fine. You know, that is one thing I do look forward to is getting a more holistic picture.

Yeah, me too. The works in an album. Yeah, I am excited to, like, finish one and then have you go through it. Right. front to back and then see what you pick up on. Well, I was so interested in the Falcon fairy tale album. Folklore.

Folklore. Okay. Yeah, folklore. I love the song from it that you gave me early on, and I'm looking forward to saying the rest. Yeah, yeah. We'll get there. We're getting there.

We'll get there. Okay. Megan from TikTok, Megan Taylor's version, from TikTok, asks, what song have you enjoyed the most? and what song do I look forward to showing you the most? So what have you enjoyed the most, do you think?

I guess that's not necessarily what's gotten the highest grade, but maybe it is. All too well. Yeah, yeah. The 10-minute version of all too well. Can't be beat. It's an amazing work, yeah. Yeah. Although I did like So Long London very much.

Yeah. And the one from folklore. I can't remember. My Tears Ricochet. My Tears Rickshay. Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Yeah. Oh, that's the one with the witches.

No, that's from tortured poets. Oh, yes, tortured poets. Who's afraid of little old me? Yes. I like that one very much. Yeah. She reminds, okay, so she reminds me of Christina Rosetti. Okay.

A little bit, and with a little Anne Sexton thrown in. So, yeah, if you want to make a witch's brew there. Yeah, it's good. Give me Christina Rosetti and Sexton and just, a touch of Emily Dickinson and stir well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I liked that one. Yeah, that one's very good.

What song do I look forward to showing you the most? So probably all too well was the one I was most looking forward to, but I was also kind of terrified just because I didn't know what you would think of it. But I think what we still have to go, there's so many. I think most of the things from folklore, specifically the lakes, I'm excited for you to dive deep into that. there's a song called hoax on folklore that I love so much and I feel like I am missing a little bit of it. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say about that.

Tortured poets like most of it because it all is very like lyrically heavy poetic. Probably Peter from the tortured poets department and the Bolter maybe. Yeah, Ivy from Evermore. That's probably also one. of the most requested. So I think I have that on the schedule. So yeah, there's a lot. And then I'm excited for you to hear some of the older stuff too and some of the like glitter

gelpin songs just to see what you think. Like I'm excited to see if you can find anything in there, you know, that that you like. Right. And, you know, it's funny because hearing you talk about the songs, it reminds me of the way I'll talk about Dickens. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I'm throwing these character names.

out and titles out and talking about plot moments and you know and it's not exactly because i'm all that smart it's just because i've read it and really enjoy it yeah she's not all that smart she's just listen to these darn songs over and over again so yeah exactly Shelby from my friend Shelby wants to know what got you into literature slash poetry and i think the answer to that is valentina You did it to me, babe. Broke up with me and took up with Woody, one of my best friends. No. Yes, seriously.

How dare she? I know they sat in the back of the band bus kissing, and it's like, what am I supposed to do here? Hug my bass clarinet. And read Emily Dickinson. And read Emily Dickinson. Actually, I really liked reading historic fiction. Mm-hmm. And my grandmother did.

something weird to me. That sounds ominous. It sure does. And this is the first anyone's ever heard of it. My grandmother, when I was in fifth grade, sent me a book,

101 poems. 101 famous poems. And she said, when I could memorize one and repeat it three times, she would send me a dollar. Oh, my goodness. Well, the red wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams was there.

Uh-huh. The red wheelbarrow is, so much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens. That's it? That's it. Grandma. I got a dollar. Now, this is like the 1960s, and I mean, a dollar went a long way, and there were a

101 Bowens. Yeah, you're about to be a rich man. I was a gold mine, you know, and I'm looking at, you know, you know, and I'm looking at, you You know, Tennyson's, you know, Alfred Lord Tennyson's flower in the crannied wall, it's like eight lines long. Damn, I had that. Sonnets by Shakespeare, 14 lines, give it to me. You know, so I started memorizing these poems. And it, you know, so I'm going to say that, and I had a fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Martin, who would teach us,

mnemonic devices for memorizing. Yes. And so we would memorize all the explorers, all the presidents, all the capitals. I'll never forget the first one she taught us. In 1500, Pedro Cabal explored Brazil, right? And she said, just imagine the two zeros in 1500 being a shotgun barrel. And when you pull the trigger, it goes cabal. Oh, my gosh.

And I never forgot it, right? She's a genius. Mrs. Martin. I'm telling you, you know, so there are always these mnemonic devices, and so I don't know, I just started memorizing. Yes, you had somebody teach you how to memorize things, and then you had an opportunity,

and then now you just have a headful of poetry. Well, and, you know, Mrs. Martin told me something that I've also never forgotten. She said, once you memorize something, it's part of you forever. Mm-hmm. You know, and then, of course, I read Bramberry's Fahrenheit 4.51, and he has his characters memorize novels.

Yeah. And, you know, to, I mean, I've read novels several times, and some of them I can practically repeat. Yeah. I mean, I can repeat passes, but they become part of you. Yeah, for sure. You know, and owning them, it's kind of a wonderful thing, you know, and so, I don't know, I guess I just always loved reading. Yeah. You know.

Yeah, he came by it honestly at a very young age. Well, and I like being surprised. I'll tell you one more story. So when I was in ninth grade, I had a ninth grade English teacher who told me I had read too much junk. I read too much of this science fiction and all that stuff. And she gave me pride and prejudice. Okay. And I read pride and prejudice.

I mean cover to cover. And it was the worst book I ever read. Because it's about girls who go out. Yeah. And they go dancing and they go to balls and they have teas and they go dancing and they go walking and they have teas. And I knew who she was going to get married to at the end of the first chapter. And it was awful. It was punishment for a 13 year old.

Yeah, for sure. I reread that novel when I was in graduate school and it was the funniest novel I had read up to that moment. Yeah. It is so full of fascinating characters and terrific language and stunning humor. I love, oh my gosh, Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey is hilarious, you know. Yeah. I didn't stop reading Jane Austen until I finished all her books. Yeah.

You know, I don't know. It's just great teachers have helped me understand that literature is fun, important, entertaining. relatable. Relatable. I feel like a lot of times we don't think of, we don't think of like these, you know, 1800s women as being relatable to anything that we go through.

But it is kind of all the same, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, there's different costumes. The human condition. Yeah, that's right. It's different costumes. That's good. Okay.

Last one. And I do want to address this because after, when I was, when I was editing the So Long London episode, I was like, oh, we both just like glazed right over that. And then I think we got, I don't know, 100 comments calling it out. So Kelly, Kelly on TikTok wants to know,

can Uncle Jerry talk about the use of kept calm and carried the weight of the rift in so long London? So we totally glazed over the... Yeah, kind of ran by it. Keep calm and carry on. That's like the second line or something. Yeah, it's very early, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, keep calm, carry on.

Yeah. So it's British phrase from World War II. So she's clearly channeling that. Yeah. That's a joke channeling it. Oh, okay. Okay. Got it.

Got it. The Tim's River. Sorry, I didn't get it at first. Yeah, so I think people just wanted to say, like everybody, I guess, that's probably an accessible reference that a lot of people have picked up on, whereas none of us picked up on the fairy lights, the Ignees, Fautus. None of us knew that except for you. and so I think people are like wait why aren't you talking about this one that I did understand from the beginning yeah that's kind of why I didn't talk about it yeah I mean I think that's what kind of thought too but then people were saying like maybe this maybe it

the keep calm and carry on like you have to have your stiff upper lip stiff um dear stiff upper lip as a British person and how she kind of carries that through yeah if you don't mind me elaborating I wondered when I read it if the line carried the weight was also a reference to a song by the Beatles. Oh, okay. You would carry that weight. Okay. And, of course, the rift is the separation between the two of them.

You know, so the rift, it's almost as though they're boat, ships, and they're coming apart, and she has to be the bridge between them, or they're a landmass coming apart, right? Okay, yeah. So a rift is that separation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a nice line. I'm sorry we didn't.

I know. I was like, people are kind of mad at us. Sorry, there was a lot to talk about in that one. Yeah, you know, that is something worth mentioning. There are times when we just, it's almost as though in some of the songs, So Long London was a dense song. Yeah. You know, and some of them are pretty dense.

and you just can't hit everything. Yeah. Yeah. We want to have a podcast that's interesting, but also runs less than three hours. Yeah, exactly. We'll be here all day if we want to talk about every... But it's a good call.

I mean, I like having people ask, well, what about this line? I mean, I love close readers. Yeah, the comment section is a little bit of a goldmined. And we did get an idea for this. Patreon that I keep talking about starting now you haven't started yet is to take you in an episode through a specific comment section and let you kind of respond to people and their theories and their ideas and just kind of have a little bit more of a conversation and I do love that so we'll get

there eventually yes you know I mean I'm not going to say I always learn more from my students than I thought, something like that. Pretty cliched. But the truth is when you get a really good class, especially if it's a graduate class, you know, I had the opportunity to teach a graduate course in bibliography. I taught seniors English class in 18th century British novels. Those are giant things.

You have to be a dedicated reader. And I have to say when you get in an environment like that, probably an environment where people read and study the lines. As a collaborative group of learners, we are much smarter than any one of us individually. Absolutely. So, yeah, I'm going to miss stuff. Maybe even Angela will miss things. And collectively, we're much smarter than either one of us.

So I appreciate the comments. Yeah, me too. I'm having a lot of fun with it. That's kind of all we got. Okay. Done. That was fun. Yeah.

That's really fun. So if we want to do this again, you'll just keep sending your questions. This was, as you know, we did all too well last week, and that was beefy. And I just wanted to give us a little break. You know, take a few less hours of Uncle Jerry's retired life. You know, can I also say I read a lot of history?

Yeah. And in particular, I read a lot of medieval literature. And so I read a lot of 13, 14, 15, century British literature that's written in dialects of Middle English that's kind of difficult to read, but man, I love that stuff. I mean, I don't know, I just, I love reading a lot of different things. Yeah. So I want to say thank you to Angela. I know I've said it before, but really thank you for leading me down this path to reading a pop writer. Yeah, something different. Yeah, as someone, I said last week that I walked into the living room last night

and told my wife, this is just so good, you know, and it's just so interesting to have fresh material to look at. Yeah. So, yeah. I appreciate you guys watching and listening. Yes, me too. And the conversations have all been very fun in the comments, so please keep those coming.

Yeah, and we'll just keep trekking along. Okay. All right. I think in the next couple of weeks, we're going to do a couple of albums we haven't hit. So very exciting. I'm ready. Okay, so make sure you're following us everywhere.

You know the drill now. TikTok, Instagram, at Swiftian ScholarPod. You can follow me at Angela Wyatt McDow on Instagram, and you can follow Uncle Jerry down to the Bleak House. Rereading Bleak House. Anywhere Dickens is, you can find him. Okay, we'll be back next week. Thank you all.

Bye.