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Is Taylor Swift your Roman Empire? To celebrate the Ides of March, we are telling you all about how the Rep Era is tied to the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and more! This special evergreen episode is bonus material outside of our weekly episode so please enjoy!
Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube [Our handle: @tspodnetwork]
For more of TSPN, visit our website at www.tspodnetwork.com
Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube [Our handle: @tspodnetwork]
For more of TSPN, visit our website at www.tspodnetwork.com
Creators & Guests
Host
Anna
Host
Jessi
What is TSPN | Taylor Swift Fan Published Podcast?
We are Jessi & Anna, 2 SwiftTokers who spend our free time down the rabbit holes of Taylor Swift’s art, analyzing lyrics, recognizing patterns, and hunting for Easter eggs. Our main goal is to be informative, insightful, and reflective about Taylor’s art and her impact on pop culture. This is designed to be a fun, stress-free podcast where you can come hang with us weekly as we talk all things Taylor.
This podcast is an independent and unauthorized fan publication. The podcast & its assets are in no way affiliated with or endorsed by the artist or any of the people mentioned or depicted in its content.
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Hey lovers, welcome to TSPN. I am very excited about this episode and so is Anna. This is our first evergreen episode. It's extra content for you guys and we have something really cool to discuss. Yes, so we are dropping this on March 15th. So while we call it evergreen, we are dropping it intentionally on the Ides of March. Um, but if you listen to this in six months, hopefully it's still applicable. And we're going to get into what the Ides of March means and how it relates to Taylor because Jesse and I over maybe a few months ago, I would say, um, we kind of picked up a stone and didn't realize we were uncovering a bunch and it just kept going and going and going, and I am now fully committed. that the reputation era is Cleopatra, ancient Egypt, pre the Roman Empire, Julius Caesar. I mean, there's so much that it's like, how did we not see it before? Yes, it's really cool. It's really exciting. Some of this stuff is going to blow your guys' minds. So before we get into... What Anna wants to talk about how it relates to Taylor. I'm going to tell you exactly what the Ides of March is. Yes. Cause a lot of people don't know. Um, I grew up knowing about the Ides of March because my best friend has a birthday on the Ides of March. So she'd always like fill me in. Oh, it's the Ides of March and it's unlucky that, and this and that, but it's a very, it's a very interesting thing. So the Ides of March. is basically the 74th day in the Roman calendar. So corresponding to the 15th of March this month. Also in the ancient Roman calendar, each month had an Ides. So there's an Ides, not just an Ides of March, there's an Ides in every month. March, May, July, and October, the Ides is on the 15th. But every other month, it's on the 13th, which means Taylor was born on the Ides. Of course it fucking is. Like when you started saying it, I was like, I know where she's going with this. Um, Taylor was born on the Ides. Okay. So the Ides of December. So it has to be important to her. You know, she knows this information. You know, now the reason, okay. So the reason. we talk about the Ides of March is because it was marked by several religious observations and was a deadline for setting debts in Rome. So in 44 BC, it became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar. That's why the Ides of March, 15th of March, is so much more talked about than the other Ides is because that marks the date that Julius Caesar was assassinated. So this made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history. Now in 44 BC, when it became notorious, I was kind of thinking of 44 BC, four plus four is eight. Is there something hidden in folklore about the Ides of March? I'm wondering. Eighth album. If anyone will find it, the lovers will find it. True. That's true. Um, The Ides of March, the assassination of Julius Caesar has been depicted in drawings, paintings, all throughout history. So basically with going back to the Ides being like a deadline for setting debts in Rome, it's just basically, I don't know what to equate that to. It's tax day. It's April 15th in the United States. Or sometimes it's, yeah. That's what I was thinking, except. For us, it's once a year, but for them, it was every month. Oh, okay. So the debts weren't just March. Got it. Yep, yep. It was the 15th of March, May, October. It was when your bills were due. Right, or like tenants paid to farm and stuff like that. The word ides derives from a Latin word that means to divide, which I thought was interesting. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So let's go into, Anna, what you have uncovered with this. Okay, so yes, obviously the Julius Caesar and some of what we're gonna talk about relates to the Roman Empire. And it's so ironic because there was the TikTok trend that started where women would ask, or men would ask their partner. How many times do you think about the Roman empire or how often do you think about it? And so many answered like multiple times a day. And you're like, what? Wait, what? Um, so what? Did you ever ask your husband that question? Yeah, he's like, he's like, he wanted clarifying questions on what I meant by Roman empire. I don't even think he really understood the bounds of it. And I didn't either. Um, but we've watched documentaries now and with my background in political science and my passion for politics, I now think about the Roman Empire pretty fucking often if I'm being real. Really? I see. I don't know much about it. And when I asked Eric, my husband, he said he never thought about it. So I don't know. It's weird. Yeah. It's interesting. I think Joe Rogan, the podcast talks about it a lot. So I think there's some, you know, ties there to why men. I would think about it a lot, but for me, the rise and the fall of the Roman Empire, it got too big. A lot of people were living in debt and beyond their means. The average person was very, very poor. Um, and the government got too big. And so to be quite honest, like not to be like dark in our happy little podcast, but it makes me worry about the United States government and just kind of like how much can you sustain over hundreds of years of growth before, um, big, big tumbles happen. So, um, so without further ado, is that a Shakespeare quote? Cause we're going to talk about Shakespeare today. Ooh, without further ado, I don't know. I don't know. I feel, it feels Shakespearean. I did want to say this is where that trend of what's your Roman empire. This is my Roman empire. Like when people say that, that's where that came from. Exactly. And a lot of us, our Roman empire is Taylor Swift. Yes. 100%. Yeah. Like we think about Taylor Swift multiple times a day, like literal, little things in our lives. We're like, yep. Um, and my husband probably thinks about Taylor Swift more than the Roman Empire because he'll even quote lyrics that, you know, come up in normal conversation. So, um, yeah, same. Exactly. Oh, and we are doing, we will be doing a mini series on how to get your partner to turn into a Swifty. Yes. So stay tuned for that. That could be another mini episode. I don't know if it's a whole series as much as just a quick episode, kind of going through stuff. And if you guys have any tips that you found, definitely start messaging them to us. Um, we did share on our last episode, we're probably going to close our messaging within the Tik Tok app, just from glitchiness of us both being logged in. So YouTube comments, uh, we both have personal Tik Toks you can message and or our Instagram, so make sure to go follow that in case Tik Tok is no more. Um, So yeah, without further ado, let's talk about our Roman empire, which is Taylor Swift and how she relates to the Roman empire. So the story actually begins before the Roman empire was the empire. It's actually around the time that it rose. So before the Roman empire, we had what was called the Roman Republic, and it was essentially, um, a series of nations tied together. One of them being Egypt. Egypt was a state tied governmentally to the Roman Republic. And so Julius Caesar was a leader of the Roman army. And he obviously being assassinated on the 15th of March in 44 BC is how it gets tied to the Ides of March. Have we done the math? How many years ago was that? I don't understand BC really in years. I think you just, I think you- I think you just add the 44 to this year because it's like a A, D, and B, C. I don't know. We'll look it up. If it's not girl math, then it's not math to me. Yeah. Okay, so when Julius Caesar was killed, he said a famous line which was, et tu brutay? Excuse me if I'm saying that wrong. That is how my Midwestern American ass is going to say it. Et tu brutay? Um, so it's a Latin phrase. It means, and you Brutus or you also Brutus. There's a bunch of variations, right? Because Latin is a very, very old language. Um, and we don't know if Julius Caesar said this at his death. It was actually a quote and a Shakespearean, um, play. Get this, Jesse, get this. So the quote appears in act three, scene one. 13. Mm-hmm. 31. Yeah. Inverse 13. Yeah. Act three, scene one, a William Shakespeare play, Julius Caesar, where it is spoken by the Roman dictator. So I guess he reached dictator status by the time he was killed, but in the earlier days and what we're going to talk about today, he was a little bit younger. But at the moment of his assassination, he realized that his friend Marcus Brutus, Marcus Brutus, what a name. He, he hadn't recognized him as being one of the assassins, which I think really ties to the themes of rep. And some of the things that happened in Taylor's life at the time, she had friends who backstabbed her. You were, what is the line? Your enemies become, your friends become your enemies. What's the line? Your nemeses will defeat. That's, that's a good one. Um, all of my friends turned into, all of my enemies started out friends. Ooh, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. What is that from? Enemies started. Let me check. Look at us. We can fucking quote the songs. Like we know the, we know the lines of the poems without knowing what song it is. Oh, it's fucking, it's the archer. It's the archer. Don't you love that song? How was Julius Caesar killed? Are you going to talk about that? I believe he was stabbed, but I don't know. I don't know. Cause if he was shot with a bow and arrow, I will fall out of this chair. Okay. Let's look, hold on. Stabbed to death by senators. dozens of them. All right, so yeah, so all of my enemies started out friends. So Julius Caesar was stabbed by his friend. So let's talk about why this relates to Taylor. So I first want to say that there is an interview that Taylor did. in the like 2020 folklore evermore era, right? The one where she's in front of that painting, which tell us about that interview real quick. That's my favorite interview. Um, I've gone back to it several times on Tik TOK. I have probably played it close to 30 times because there's something new every time I watch it and it's full of Easter eggs. It's where she is. being interviewed, I think the day after Evermore is released with Zane Lowe. Um, she's sitting in front of this like Egyptian painting, which I'm sure you're going to talk about and they're behind her is like, um, it almost looks like a religious statue, like the Fatima. I think it was Fatima or Madonna. Um, and then there's a fan, like a, a fan sitting there, um, like a, like a handheld. old style. If you're not, if you're not watching on YouTube, uh, the ones that you would, that she wore to the Grammys. Yes. So in this particular interview, the very, um, iconic phone ring happens at like, I think I clocked it to it's in, it's in one of my tech talks at like 30 minutes, 13 seconds. Like it's very deliberate. And she's like, I have a home phone. Oh, that's something I just learned today. Like it's, it's very Easter eggy, right? And it happens right. Is she's talking about Ivy? Um, so yeah, I have a lot of tech talks on that, but there's, there's a lot in that interview. Yeah. It's jam packed. And have you watched it since the torture poets announcement to see if there's anything new? Okay. I need to. Yeah, definitely. So it's an Apple music interview with Zane low. Um, and if whenever you watch it, she's wearing like, I think like a brown or gold sweater and you'll notice with the background that Jesse just described, if you're watching the right one, um, you can always, once the phone rings, you know, you're on the right one. Um, but yeah, she did a lot of zoom interviews during the COVID times that I feel like were really calculated and packed with eggs because what else was she doing during COVID? Well, and that's the interview where she talks about Joe being William Bowery and that they love to write sad songs together, which is how we know you're losing me is about Joe, because how long can we be a sad song? You know, that comes straight from that interview. And the painting behind her, the Egyptian painting behind her took me forever to find out what it was. And I'm sure you're going to talk about that. Yeah, you had a follower reach out, right? Did you get a clue? Yeah. Yes. Yep, so it is a giant painting. You don't see the whole thing in the interview. You only get a little corner, which is why, God bless the followers and all of you guys who are out there sleuthing with us, because it is a collective effort. And so this painting is of the pyramids before they built the Sphinx. in Egypt. Okay. And so the Sphinx is like the big lion thing for people who don't know the you would recognize it. I'm assuming if you took a history course at any point in your life, you would recognize this. So, um, when Jesse said that to me, I instinctively was like pyramids Egypt. Like I don't, I don't know anything. Like I, that's not coming out. Like that's dead in my brain. And you were kind of the same way, right? You didn't have any ties to Egypt. No, I knew it meant something, but I didn't know what. And I knew that painting was significant for some reason because she's sitting in front of it like it's a damn mural. Yes. Yeah. It's huge. It is huge. Yeah. And, um, and yeah, so like, you know, Jesse and I will hear something and we're like, Ooh, this or that, you know, and it's just, we were completely lost. And it took like a week or two, and then all of a sudden the, the clues of Egypt really started. And so. I know you have a video on it, I do too, of some of the smaller things like in the cats behind the scenes. So cats, the movie, the Egyptian theater is part of that movie and there's some little things but not until we started thinking about the Roman Empire and what you had found was that in the rep room, which is the room that basically sequestered people before they got to meet Taylor after the rep tour shows. It was kind of like a hangout room that they popped up backstage. There was a poster of Cleopatra the movie. When Jesse sent that to me, were you even thinking about Egypt or you were just like clock Cleopatra as a clue? Just, I think it was just the Cleopatra, the, the snakes maybe with it. Yeah. And like Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and all of that. Burton to my Taylor. Yeah. And then the Etubrute in the music video was that. Look what you made me do. Yeah. But that, so we didn't really have those ties yet because we didn't think about how Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. So at this point, Jesse sends this to me and it's just the Cleopatra poster. And so we'd already thought, oh, there's nothing to do with pyramids, except for some ancillary stuff. Now we've got Cleopatra. And so I started Googling and looking up Cleopatra and come to find out she has a long standing history of, um, different She's one of the most famous people in history. Let's just say it that way. She is one of the most written about, painted, talked about women in all of history. And she had love affairs, let's call them, with both Mark Antony, who is another Roman general, army person at the time, and Julia Caesar. And when I saw Julius Caesar, I was like, holy shit at two Brutae. Because like you said, that is in the look what you made me do music video, the scene where it opens up, you know, when she's on the throne at the top of the stairs and that beautiful red gown with all the snakes, as the camera is panning up the stairs, there are columns in the very far peripheral view and one of them on the black column in gold writing says at two Brutae that music video is gonna, I'm going to talk about it a lot here. Um, so as well, there was a direct TV commercial, I think it was that she did during the rep era where it's unrelated content in the commercial, um, but there was a pillow on a couch that said at two Brute. So Taylor was referencing Cleopatra and she was referencing Julius Caesar's death, both during the rep era. That movie, the Cleopatra movie that the poster, and let me also say this was the only poster in the rep room. Like it wasn't on a wall of a bunch of other stuff. It was hanging dead center above a couch. Um, that movie stars Elizabeth Taylor in Richard Burton. It came out in 1963. And so what's that reference, Jesse? Yeah. So that that's referenced in ready for it. You know, you can be my jailer Burton to his Taylor. Like, I mean, She's referencing her and Joe jailer. Yep. And you know, what's interesting is that, um, recently we had the, it was maybe an Instagram story with Kelly Teller and that big old ring. We still don't know what that's about. So Kelly Teller gave gifted Taylor for her birthday, that ring. And it's got, it was an Opal surrounded by, um, Sapphires. And it was, so it's. Essentially it's Travis Kelsey's birthstone in the middle of the Opal and then her blue toe pass around that around the Opal and Taylor takes this video of it and says, I feel like Elizabeth Taylor. Yeah. And when, when she like that whole scene with the two of them, like it was a self-filmed video that was posted, but just, it was kind of awkward. I'm being honest. It was like weird. When Taylor said, oh, this is a gift. This isn't a gift for this Taylor. This is a gift for Elizabeth Taylor. Isn't that what? I think that was an Easter egg. Yeah, so the reference of Elizabeth Taylor recently, of course I'm like, ah, something's coming. So back to the rep room. So you have the Cleopatra poster, and we are gonna talk way more in depth about Cleopatra's life and significance there. But below the poster, there is a pillow. on the center of the couch in the rep room and it has a single right eye. So it is just one eye. I believe it's probably Taylor's eye. And there's actually, I believe, Ready For It's music video, the cover art on YouTube. And there's several other instances where Taylor has used that imagery of the single eye. And so in ancient Egypt, there are two symbols of the eyes. And so the eye of Ra is going to be a right eye and the eye of Horace is a left eye. And so the eye of Ra, that stands for, it's like related to the sun. And it's when the powers come from instilling fear and violence. So thinking about the rep era, Taylor was very much in that, it's very much in that reign of really instilling fear, violence, just really coming at it hard. And it's oftentimes accompanied by like a teardrop or a cobra in the symbolism. Whereas the eye of Horus, which is your left eye is related to the moon. And it has protective powers that come from deflecting malevolent forces. And there is a TikTok that Taylor posted during the midnight's era that is to like draw a cat eye sharp enough to kill a man. And it starts with her left. eye. So, Midnight's relating to the moon and deflecting bad evil forces versus in the rep era where she's using her right eye and she's violence and being the force. So since the Midnight's era, we've seen her a lot more with crescent moons, crystals, the eye, the eye jewelry. Is that tying into all this, you think? Yeah, potentially. I think the moon's definitely, I can't speak about like the eye jewelry, just because that actually I would have to do more research, but it could be. It's like the protective eye and she wears it all the time. It's like a, it's like, um, a bracelet, but I also think she has a necklace too. Yeah. Well, and whether that's actually like rooted from ancient Egypt or is more of like an astrology thing, we'd have to look up, but I do think, um, you know, she loves this kind of stuff. She loves looking up. kind of niche historical things like this. And so, yeah, so those are the two eyes. Okay, so Cleopatra was the queen of Egypt. She ruled for just about 22 years. So that's pretty great. She was the rightful heir to the throne. So her father, she inherited it from her father. She had a younger brother who she married. Not sure how I feel about that, but that's weird. Okay. So she married a younger brother, probably because I don't know, keep it in the family. Um, the bloodlines. Yeah. And it was interesting that you meant you mentioned debts because her dad actually accrued a ton of debt to the Romans over at the time. So just kind of an interesting fact. So she was ruling with her brother and she was much older, I believe. And so he wanted her exiled. So she got kicked out of the country. Yeah. Exiled. Okay. So she was exiled out of Egypt and in order to find her way back, she swindled her way in with Julius Caesar, who had a lot of power within the Roman Republic. And I believe he was married. I don't know all the details of this because there's so much you can go down, but it wasn't like love forever, right? So what happened was Julius Caesar had an enemy who basically went to Egypt and Cleopatra's brother who was ruling Egypt at the time just beheaded the guy. I'm going to make this like real short and sweet. He beheaded the guy, Julius Caesar comes up and is like, yo bro, I would have killed him, but like that's not cool for you to kill him. So now I got to figure out what to do with you. And so they talked about like annexing Egypt. Cleopatra told him, you know what, why don't you make me queen? So brother is out of the throne. Cleopatra is reclaiming her throne, which I think really ties in with Taylor, especially during the rep era. Because if you think about speak now with castles crumbling, which we now have, we didn't have this during the rep era. But even in 1989, she talks about the bricks from her castle that crumbled. So Well, and I think that when she was making Reputation, I think she was in a very lost place. So she knew that was her last album with Big Machine Records. She was not going to renew her contract. There was discourse between her and the label and the label had Scott Borsetta. It was also when she met Joe and they were very much in like that honeymoon phase and you get a lot of that on the album. But then you get a lot of like anxiety about, okay. Like I'm going to go to a new label and you know, I don't even know she knew who she was going to sign with yet. And she didn't and her work, she thought she was going to be able to buy back her work. Well, and think about how Cleopatra could go anywhere but home. Yes. You know, she didn't know who she was when she didn't rule the throne. And what's interesting too is she has two reputations amongst historians. very much like Taylor. So she is either, uh, basically a swindling slut. Let's call her now that Taylor has a song called slut. Um, who basically convinced these helpless men, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, just kidding. Cause they were obviously very autonomous rulers. Um, but she used her sexual power to convince them to do things. to manipulate them essentially to get her to have more power. Or she is seen as being a scholar and one of the brightest rulers of Egyptian history. She was one of the few who actually learned more than one language. I think she knew eight plus languages. And at the time, Egypt was very advanced. So relating back to Taylor, they had libraries. and a few things that the ancient Egyptians invented, among many things, but I'm gonna list off things that feel tailor-like. Clocks, calendars, mathematics, writing, black ink, which we know is now very tortured poets. The latest variant, the black dog one, not the latest, but the black dog one is ink black. And then yeah, libraries, books. writing, like all of these things that are very core came out of ancient Egypt. What about astronomy and astrology? Was that the Egyptians or was that a different, was that somebody else? Let me look this up because I feel like the invention of like time in the clock would be the sundial. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. We need a guest on here that is into astronomy and in specifically knows Taylor's astronomy. Girl, yeah. We'll leave this in the episode. If any of you guys are like true astronomers, please drop us an inbox. I want to know about me. I want to know about Taylor. I want to know. I love it. I just don't understand it. So if there are people out there that... have good knowledge of astrology and astronomy, please let us know. Okay, I'm doing one more search and then we can get back. So Egyptians made an enormous contribution to the development of humankind. They're known for their impressive achievements in architecture, art, and science. The most important sciences of that included algebra, geometry, and astronomy, which are widely applied in early Egyptian daily lives. So yeah, yeah. Why were ancient people so much interested in the night sky? What was the connection between the pyramids and astronomy? There's a loaded fucking question. What are the Egyptian contributions to astronomy? So there's an article. This is from cosmonova.org if you wanted to look it up. But yeah, we won't get too far into that. But to answer your question, it does seem astronomy is part of play here. So anyway, they were pretty fantastic people. So she was a very smart woman and there's actually no obvious like pictures of her and paintings stuff like that. So there are some sculptures and I believe coins that had her face on it and by the traditional sense of beauty she was not actually probably the most beautiful woman which I think is interesting because obviously there are plenty of movies and shows and it's she's very much depicted as this. stunning beauty. And I think that comes from the fact that she did gain power by swindling men. So she must have been sexy, right? That's interesting because I did think like you hear Cleopatra, you think one of the most beautiful women of all time, but no one's really seen her. Yeah. Well, and conventional beauty changes. Like obviously this was a long time ago, but based on what we would deem today's standards of beauty, And that's where it's interesting that when she is cast, that it's not always, um, it's not always going to be period of the time. Well, and it doesn't help to that, you know, Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most beautiful women in the world played her, you know? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Even like more recent paintings that would have come about even hundreds of years ago from today, you know, the, the depiction of her is very slutty or, or beautiful. She's not just sitting there reading a book typically. So, um, so anyway, so she gets back to the throne. Her brother is gone now. Now she's back to the throne and she falls in love with another Roman general. His name is Mark Antony. Um, and he, isn't that what JLo's ex-husband's name was? Okay. I just had that epiphany as I was saying it. So not to be confused with Jennifer Lopez's and Mark Antony's a musician on his own as well. But this is the Roman general, Mark Antony. So they fell in love and I believe they actually had kids and then he married somebody else at some point. So like their love story spans many years. But he as well was exiled and had to flee. And so he flees to Egypt where Cleopatra is a ruler and they just kind of feared what was gonna happen. Like, are they going to come for him? Are they going to come for both of them? And so Cleopatra started testing poisons on prisoners to try and figure out a poison just to keep on hand in case they were captured. Because she was not going to be captured, she was going to take her own life instead of being captured. I guess we could have trigger warning to this episode. So we are going to talk very, very vaguely about that. Um, and what's interesting about the poison in prisoners is there's actually a famous painting. If you look up like Cleopatra poisons prisoner painting, um, where she's kind of lounging and I think she has like a cheetah. There's lots of cheetahs. We'll talk about the big cats because obviously with my tiger print wallpaper that I keep behind me, I love a good big cat. Um, but she is laying there and they're taking the prisoners to be poisoned. And I believe there's a couple of prisoners that are lying there. And it really reminded me of in the Look What You Made Me Do music video, there's the scene where she's got all like the little robots and she's standing on the podium and there's like the hot pink neon. And then it flashes to her as the only one who is like alive, I guess. And then all of the models who are like the little robot models in the Look What You Made Me Do music video are all on the floor presumptively dead. And it's like, did she poison them? I don't know. Like I've never, do you, have you ever understood that scene of the look what you made me do music video? No. And for those who don't know this music video, Taylor has said she had a spreadsheet and there's thousands of Easter eggs that will take us decades to figure out. Same with Bejeweled. Yeah. I didn't realize she said about Bejeweled. She said they have a PDF. They had to keep a PDF of all the Easter eggs they were doing. Yep. Makes sense. So, when Mark Antony and Cleopatra were approaching their death and they had to decide to take their own lives, I actually think it was kind of a Macbeth-like death where one thought the other was dead and whatever. It is rumored that she either drank poison or that she encouraged a snake to bite her. Yeah, so it's potential that she died by snake bite, which I think again is very rep coded. Other things about the Egyptians, so all over the rep tour you've got those giant snakes that were on the stage. Those are Egyptian cobras. We've got her basically her... Rep tour outfits were very Egyptian dress coated for what we know about Egyptian dress. Black with gold, the geometry, like very, if you guys look up like ancient Egyptian dress, do like black and gold in your search and just kind of compare that to what you would see on the rep tour, not necessarily the rep era, but the rep tour. The throne and look what you made me do, right? She pans up to the top. Look up. pictures of Cleopatra. Well, images depicted of her. Obviously we don't have actual pictures, but very Cleopatra-esque. They loved cats. The ancient Egyptians idolized the cat and they had pet cheetahs, which we know in Look What You Made Me Do when she gets in that car accident in the gold Maserati. She has a cheetah and then later in the music video, while the store behind her is exploding, she is walking her pet cheetah on a leash like the ancient Egyptians would have done. Yeah. Wow. That's a lot. Yep. And just a couple more. So the final things are the very first scene that we get in anything in Reputation. So we've got the Look What You Made Me Do music video where she comes out of the grave. She is literally a mummy. And so, and actually I compared that to the like cover of that movie, The Mummy, that came out probably in the nineties, early two thousands. And the, just the concaveness of her face and just the way that they depicted her as a dead body coming out of the grave is very close to what that movie depicted The Mummy. And then in that first scene, so she's in the graveyard, she lays in her grave, her like six foot down grave, she puts her arms over her chest and then the camera clicks. and she is in a bathtub of jewels. And what do we know about Egyptians? The jewels. They were buried with their jewels. Mm-hmm. Yep. And that makes me think of like, you know, you wear, what is the line? Tears ricochet. You wear the jewels I gave you as you bury me. Yeah. And do we end, Cleopatra would have... presumptively been buried with many, many jewels. Yeah, they don't know where she's at. They can't find her. Yeah, her tomb is missing. The problem is one of the cities during that time has sunken underwater. So in ancient Egyptian, a lot of that, like, I mean, you got to think thousands of years, the world has, you know, changed a lot. And so some of these cities did sink into the ocean. They didn't have modern geology apparently to, you know, because I'm sure there's plenty of places in the world that we avoid building on due to its instability and the water tables under the earth. So yes, and there's actually a recent, so whenever ancient Egyptians were buried, they would have had this like card, it would have been like a single stone, probably the size of a half of a sheet of paper. And they would have etched in. the symbols for what was inside of the tomb. It was kind of like a label. Let's call it a modern day label. It's like a headstone. Kind of, but it's not visible. It's kind of like, because the tombs a lot of times were hard to find. And so Vid is believed that her little card has been found. And this is recent news that I just saw come out because you know that I love this shit. Now I've seen documentaries and whatnot. So it's potential that in the next few years, because these things, you don't just find it and you're like, oh, just kidding guys, it was over here. They got to start burying it up and finding more evidence that there's something there and then they'll excavate the site. Wow, that's interesting. I didn't know Cleopatra wasn't found. Nope, she wasn't. She has not been found. Although do you know who has been found? Is Kinkhiney Tutte? Yes. That's all I really know. King Tut. Let's talk about him. So he is, um, thought to have set off curses reopening his tomb. I actually think that's what that mummy movie was about is when they reopened the tomb, unleashed curses. Yeah. So in 1923, his tomb was opened on February 16th, which if you were following the one 12 theory was a date that we had marked. And so I was convinced that 216 was rep because of a lot of this stuff. Wow. He didn't live long. King Tut didn't. No, he died. Um, he was like teenager, wasn't he? When he died, he became a King very, very young. And then he died. I think he, because they, how do I say this? They married and had children with. several family members to keep the bloodline intact. King Tut actually had a lot of like defects. Oh yeah. Well, I mean Cleopatra married her brother. Yeah. So I think that he, he was born with defects to where he died young. Yeah, girl. I only got brain capacity for like one or two Egyptian people at this point. So I had no clue. I didn't even looked into King Tut. Oh yeah. I don't think, I don't even think it's significant to this, but It could be, and that's where we wanted to do this episode. Just, it's kind of a celebration of obviously the Ides of March and some of the things that we've been researching that not necessarily have come to fruition. But I think there's no denying that this is tied by the sole fact that the rep room had the Cleopatra poster and it was the only poster in the room. Um, and again, tour visuals, the Egyptian Cobra, we've got Et tu Brutais, like those are undeniable. It's not like, oh, she wore this color and it happened to be what we think Egyptian dress looked like. Like some of that stuff is obviously a little bit more, you know, stretchy, but she, she told us that Cleopatra is a thing. So I think that the eyes, we talked about the different eyes, there's, there's a lot there and guys, there's probably more. So let us know. I mean, we're not by any means like professors. So if there's something that you guys think relates, let us know in the comments for sure. We'll look at, we read every comment. I was wondering, do we know like birth and death dates for Cleopatra? I don't think they're exact, but let me pull them. Guys, while I pull this online, if you go to Cleopatra's Wikipedia, her main language I believe is what it's called. You'll see it. It's like right next to her name on the Wikipedia page. This is one of the like eight languages that she spoke. And if you look at it and you compare it to the word reputation on the man wall, which a lot of people have speculated doesn't even say reputation. I did some looking up of some different of the ancient letters, like the ancient Greek letters and stuff. I can't. figure out if it's a one-to-one, but if you want to go down that rabbit hole, be my guest and let us know because I do think looking at the way that it looks, it's very possible that the man wall, the reputation was written in some type of ancient Egyptian language. Yeah, we don't know her. So her birth is unknown. It was early 69 or late 70 BC. So like probably a range there. And then she passed at, they're guessing obviously the age of 39 on August 10th of 30 BC. Okay. And I looked up Elizabeth Taylor and she was born February 27th, 1932 and died March 23rd, 2011. So if that rings any bells for anybody. Yeah. Cause the Elizabeth Taylor thing was brought up recently in a kind of unrelated rep situation. So there's something there. Definitely. Yeah, and just for context too, Elizabeth Taylor obviously plays Cleopatra, Richard Burton, who was Elizabeth Taylor's real-life lover for a long time. He plays Mark Antony in the movie, who is thought to be Cleopatra's longtime love. I think she, if I'm just going to make up narrative here, I think she just was playing Julius Caesar for the throne and then she fell in love with Mark Antony. Burton to this tailor. Every love unknown in comparison is a failure. I forget their names now. I'm so very tamed now. Never be the same now. So now, uh uh, see how this is gonna go. I, like the single I. See? I and C. Oh my gosh. Today years old. That's crazy. All right, lovers, we hope that you enjoyed our first evergreen episode on the Ides of March and the Pyramids and Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor. We wish you all a happy St. Patrick's Day. I have said before that if you are a small business or an Etsy shop and you would like to send us something to feature for you, we can add your link into our website at TS pod. network.com and you can click the link and go to the Etsy shop. But I had somebody send me this piano box. Her name is Taylor of all names and you guys check this out. So for those of you that are listening, this is a little wooden box that's stained and then she has hand painted the flowers all over it. And it's like a little jewelry box. It's got a little latch and you can put anything in there. She sent me some stickers, which was really cool, but it can hold jewelry. It can hold friendship bracelets. Let's throw an image of it on our Instagram. How about that? Let's do it. We'll post it on Instagram. You know, I love stuff like that though. This is giving, hey, I don't want to scream and shout that I'm the biggest Swifty to all my friends and family, but I want tailor-coated merch or decor in my home. Actually, if you are watching on YouTube or if you've ever watched us, I have books behind me that I chose special. construction paper from like Joanne fabric that represented each era to me. And then I grabbed like $3 books from the clearance section at a used bookstore. And I just kind of bounded the books with the, with the new paper. So to me, that's another example of like, it's Taylor coated and like, I know it's Taylor coated, but it doesn't necessarily scream Taylor Swift. I mean, obviously the lavender haze painting does, so I'm not worried about it, but I do know for a lot of people, like you want things in your home that, that remind you of Taylor, but don't have to be like Taylor Swift merchandise with her face on it. So I think the box and probably a lot of other stuff that we'll start to gather on the page of our site, that's the shop, the pod site. Well the site is our website, but the page is called shop the pod. Um, we'll continue to add stuff like that for you guys. Yes. So Taylor's link will be on there. Um, her handle on Twitter is P G H Swiftie with the I E and that's on Twitter. Um, and her shop on Etsy is Cornelia Street, just the S T craft. Co. Awesome. Well, by the time you guys are listening to this, it is either I'd some March. It is St. Patrick's day or you caught us six months later because this episode is evergreen. So we appreciate you for listening. We are so grateful for everything that all of you guys have done for us thus far. Don't forget to be following us on the socials and subscribe to our YouTube. And if you are on a podcast network that allows you to give a star rating, punch the five star button, please. That helps us grow a ton. That is how a lot of those programs like Spotify and Apple Music recommend podcasts to people who are listening to related content. So a small gesture goes really, really far. So Um, let us know your thoughts in the YouTube comments, send us feedback on our website and as always, we love you guys. Bye.