The combination of the kind of the kind of scavenger hunting Easter egg element of it with this idea that you know me so well because you are my biggest fans created this like kind of very strange weird moment of Taylor Swift fandom. Brittany Spanos is a pop music journalist and senior writer with Rolling Stone magazine who's taught a course at NYU called

Topics in Recorded Music, Taylor Swift,

which analyzes the quote,

culture and politics of teen girlhood in pop music,

fandom, media studies, whiteness, and power as it relates to her image.

Whether you love her, hate her, or couldn't care less about her,

Taylor Swift is the most talked about celebrity in the

celebrity in the world right now and for our purposes today we are talking about conspiracy theories that come from within the hardcore

swifty fan base and the ones that come from outside often from the right-wing

media as we heard about in our recent episode on the conspiracy theory that Elvis Presley faked his death,

believers claimed that the truth could be found in signs and symbols left for fans.

And this made me think about the Easter eggs that Taylor Swift inserts into her work little

puzzles for obsessive swifties to interpret that provide answers about her upcoming music or her meaning behind certain lyrics.

But many who follow her every move have taken her occasional use of secret messages

and expanded it into a false universe,

claiming that she is communicating covertly

about personal matters that she almost certainly is not like her unspoken gay relationships.

Brittany will take me your relatively ignorant host to decode the Easter eggs of Taylor

Swift both real and imagined and we will also discuss the rampant conspiracy theories that have been bubbling up lately

around this teenage country star turned massive pop icon,

and what it is specifically that makes her a perfect

villain for these sensationalized fabrications. I'm your host Chelsea Weber Smith and this is American Hysteria.

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