Details about The Swiftie and The Scholar, a podcast by Angela McDow

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https://www.threads.com/@swiftieandscholarpod
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https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/anaphora
8 shares
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/synecdoche
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https://www.instagram.com/swiftieandscholarpod
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https://www.instagram.com/angelawyattmcdow
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Empathy from Experience in Patient Zero

Season 1 · Episode 64

Thursday, November 5, 2026 • Duration 01:52:14

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!

*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:

Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory

Apophasis

*Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Canterbury Tales Prologue – Geoffrey Chaucer

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

Follow Us:

Uncle Jerry’s Instagram

Angela’s YouTube Channel

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The Illusion of Liberation in Babylon

Season 1 · Episode 63

Thursday, October 29, 2026 • Duration 01:54:02

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.

*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)

Art Becomes Memory in Tim McGraw

Season 1 · Episode 62

Thursday, October 22, 2026 • Duration 01:30:24

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.

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

BONUS: Interview with Sarah Anderson, Author of Fallow

Season 1

Tuesday, October 20, 2026 • Duration 53:41

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.

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

Folklore as a Unified Literary Work | Wrapping Up Folklore: Part 2

Season 1 · Episode 61

Thursday, October 15, 2026 • Duration 01:45:49

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!

*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

Wrapping Up Folklore: Part 1

Season 1 · Episode 60

Thursday, October 8, 2026 • Duration 01:09:08

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!

*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

The Despair and Persistence of This is Me Trying

Season 1 · Episode 59

Thursday, October 1, 2026 • Duration 01:09:24

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.

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)

Why I Write – Joan Didion

Simile

The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix

The Secretive Destruction of Illicit Affairs

Season 1 · Episode 58

Thursday, September 24, 2026 • Duration 01:14:25

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.

*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 Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Aphorism

Assonance

Alliteration

*The Pleasure of the Text – Roland Barthes

The Paradox and Parallelism of Peace

Season 1 · Episode 57

Thursday, September 17, 2026 • Duration 57:52

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.

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

Time’s Mystic Meandering in Invisible String

Season 1 · Episode 55

Thursday, September 10, 2026 • Duration 01:51:10

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.

JOIN US ON REDDIT!

*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