The Hope of it All
The musician will appear on Wednesday, Aug. 13 after New Heights and Taylor Nation first began hinting at the upcoming episode
Taylor Swift isn’t letting August slip away without a little surprise. The musician will appear on the New Heights podcast hosted by her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, and his brother Jason Kelce on Wednesday, Aug. 13.
The brothers shared the announcement on Instagram Monday evening, with a clip of the pop superstar admiring Travis’ sweater and remarking, “It’s such a nice color on you.” The Chiefs player quips, “It’s the color of your eyes, sweetie. It’s why we match so well.” The brief video ends with Swift exclaiming, “We’re about to do a f-king podcast!”
Swifties kicked into investigation mode on Monday morning when New Heights first began teasing the special guest appearance. When the Kelce brothers shared the thumbnail promoting their next podcast episode, in which Jason is wearing Swift merch, fans noticed that the orange background of the image was distinct. Usually, their preview images place the blacked-out silhouette of their guest against a yellow backdrop. This orange, coincidentally, called back to the same color highlighted in a new 12-slide post from Taylor Nation, an official branch of Swift’s marketing team.
“Thinking about when she said ‘See you next era… ,’” Taylor Nation captioned the carousel of images from the Eras Tour. Swifties also noticed that the New Heights thumbnail matched the silhouette of Swift from her Variety “Directors on Directors” appearance, which notably premiered on Dec. 12, 2022, and supported her work on the Grammy Award-winning All Too Well: The Short Film (released on Nov. 12, 2021).
With this announcement arriving on Aug. 12, 2025, who can fault Swifties for believing it could have even the slightest thing to do with the next full-length LP — which will be, as you have probably inferred, album number 12 — from Swift? They haven’t had much to dissect since the Eras Tour concluded, apart from the handwritten letter the musician shared earlier this year when she revealed that she had become the proud owner of her entire catalog of music. She extended the word “this” in the first paragraph of the note. Want to guess how many times the letter “i” was written? (Hint: More than 11, less than 13.)