Swift spent a large portion of the interview explaining how, in her post-Eras Tour life, she’s been “deep in a sourdough obsession.” She makes bread puns, she wraps up loaves for Travis to take to training camp, she texts her friends for feedback; she’s probably lurking on your sourdough blog. “All I really use the internet for is sourdough and when Travis shows me videos of otters,” Swift said. Fair! Healthy, some might even say. Until we get to the end of the interview.
“I just said, ‘Can I go on the podcast?'” Taylor said of asking to announce her new album on New Heights. “‘Brad Pitt did it, and I want to do it too.’”
Brad Pitt has also been credibly accused of abusing his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, and at least one of their six children—none of whom appear to speak to him anymore. But he’s been working with Matthew Hiltzik, a crisis-management publicist who previously represented Johnny Depp and Alec Baldwin, who seems to be doing a terrific job of getting that little detail scrubbed from our collective cultural consciousness.
Pitt was a guest on New Heights in July while doing press for F1: The Movie. Topics included Pitt never having “a gay experience” and the best food he’s ever eaten on set. So I definitely didn’t expect him to address the allegations Jolie made against him, but I certainly didn’t expect him to shrug it all off by essentially saying, “life being life, man.” But that’s what he did. At one point during the interview, Pitt talked about how much he loves the Kansas City Chiefs, and Travis apologized for losing the Super Bowl this year. But Pitt refused to accept his apology: “That’s what I mean about life. Life throws struggles your way,” Pitt said. “Sometimes everything goes quiet, it’s perfection, it’s sublime. Other periods, life throws these struggles at you and it’s how you deal with those and how you come back from those.”
At the time, I wrote: “Amazing insight. I’m just wondering if being accused of getting drunk and physically abusing your ex-wife and one of your children is an example of life ~throwing~ a struggle at you.”
Here’s a quick breakdown of the timeline:
Jolie first filed for divorce in 2016, days after Pitt got drunk on a plane and allegedly was abusive toward Jolie, and then their son Maddox when he tried to intervene. The divorce turned even more contentious in 2021, when Jolie sold her shares of Château Miraval to a Russian oligarch instead of Pitt, which he sued her over in 2022.
But, in April 2024, Jolie’s legal team stated in a separate filing that Jolie was going to sell him her shares, but he demanded she sign an NDA at the last second. Jolie further revealed in that filing that the plane incident wasn’t the first time Pitt got physical with her, but it was the first time “he turned his physical abuse on the children.” At the time, Jolie’s attorney accused Pitt of “unrelenting efforts to control and financially drain” Jolie, as well as “attempting to hide his history of abuse, control, and coverup.”
Pitt denied the abuse allegations and was never charged; their divorce was finalized in December. Earlier this year, two of Jolie and Pitt’s kids, Vivienne and Shiloh, both made moves to drop Pitt from their last name.
The Kelce brothers even inviting Pitt on their podcast validated an entire corner of the internet’s belief that women inherently lie and men are inherently innocent—or perhaps even worse, that men are entitled to do what they want to women. Then, hearing the most famous woman in the world, cheekily mentioning that she wanted to go on this podcast because Brad Pitt was on it? I could feel the tendrils of all the worst people on the internet slithering up my spine to yank me back into the cesspool of the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial.
Before any Swiftie tries and comes for me… I’ve been a Swiftie since before some of you were born. I had the Limewire version of “I’d Lie” on my iPod Nano in 2006 and the lyrics to “Stay Beautiful” in my AIM profile in 2007. I defended her so fiercely in 2017 that there’s at least one person I am no longer friends with. I saw Red in the rain at Gillette Stadium; I saw 1989 in Australia; I saw the Eras Tour four times. And since we’re three weeks apart in age, I’ve literally grown up with Swift—not only has her music coincided with all my biggest milestones and most painful heartbreaks, but hers were the albums that got me through or helped me celebrate. Throughout my young adulthood, I was sexually assaulted, had misogynistic bosses, and faced sexual discrimination, watching her contend with and combat those same issues on an international scale helped me make sense of what I was experiencing—and made me feel less like it was my fault. So to hear Swift casually fangirl over an (alleged) abuser, even for five seconds? I guarantee it made at least a few women feel more alone—which is the opposite of what she’s built her legacy upon.
“Give me constructive criticism all day,” Swift said on the podcast. “I will take it, it’ll fuel me. It’s helpful.” So here’s mine, Tay: Normally, my advice to anyone anywhere is to log off, but for you, I’ll say that it never hurts to use the internet to Google a man before saying he inspired you to do something.
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