Finding Life’s Meaning in Epiphany

Finding Life’s Meaning in Epiphany

August 13, 2026 · 1h 3m · Season 1 · Episode 52

About this episode

The episode explores the themes of Taylor Swift's song 'epiphany' and its connections to war and the pandemic through literary analysis.

We are tackling one of the most underrated tracks from Taylor Swift’s folklore album, epiphany. The poem compares past war tragedies to 2020’s pandemic, and Uncle Jerry uses the poem to teach us about Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory. *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: Wilfred Owen Siegfried Sassoon The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner – Randall Jarrell The Angels at Hamburg – Randall Jarrell Vignette poems Rhapsody on a Windy Night – T. S. Eliot Trochees Iambs The Song of Hiawatha – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory *Death in the Afternoon – Ernest Hemingway Caesura Parallelism Synecdoche *The Things They Carried: The Classic Work of American Literature on War, Memory, and Storytelling –Tim O'Brien *Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor E. Frankl Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent – John Milton The Swiftie and The Scholar Grading Matrix Follow Us: Patreon ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠ ⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ Threads ⁠Angela’s Instagram⁠ Uncle Jerry’s Instagram Angela’s YouTube Channel

People in this episode

Hosts: Angela McDow, Dr. Jerry Coats

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: folklore, epiphany, Death in the Afternoon, The Things They Carried: The Classic Work of American Literature on War, Memory, and Storytelling, Sonnet 19: When I consider how my light is spent, The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, The Angels at Hamburg, Rhapsody on a Windy Night

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