The thought that Taylor Swift would “break the internet” by sitting down for her much hyped appearance on New Heights was NOT an understatement.
An incredible 1.2 million people were tuned in concurrently to watch the stream of the podcast premiere that debuted at 7 p.m. ET. But at some point around 8:45 p.m. ET, the premiere stream faded to black and appeared to stop with Jason Kelce and Taylor Swift in the middle of a discussion around her new album, The Life of a Showgirl.
Up until that point, Swift and the Kelces had covered everything from Taylor Swift buying back her music and the Eras Tour to just how integral Andy Reid was to setting them up. We learned how invested Swift is into football now and even how the pair deal with the insane media attention they face. Maybe the most fascinating tidbit was that Swift entered her very first Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears through the general admission gates while wearing a hat and a mask with nobody even noticing her.
But apparently, all the hype, attention, and eyeballs were too much for even the tech giants at YouTube to handle. The New Heights X account posted this message shortly after the live feed went down.
Shoutout all the 92%ers and swifties for actually helping us break the internet https://t.co/5cLK4skkjp
— New Heights (@newheightshow) August 14, 2025
Reactions came pouring in from all over social media as internet myth and legend became reality. And believe it or not, it was another huge celebrity athlete in Caitlin Clark whose own words proved prophetic about the the power of the Taylor Swift New Heights appearance.
Swifties so powerful we broke the internet. https://t.co/dIaL1YorLb
— Caitlin Clark (@CaitlinClark22) August 14, 2025
It’s easy to see why there was so many people watching in real-time given Swift’s popularity all over the world. Everyone from Awful Announcing to CNN to Today was covering this live like it was a major sporting event or a presidential election night.
And after all, this was Swift’s first real podcast appearance and the first time for her fans to see her have a lengthy sitdown interview in this format. It’s not a stretch to say that we’ve never seen her like this, and especially the way she naturally related to both Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce was a whole new window into her life and career.
As of 9:45 p.m. ET, only the archived one hour, 45 minute video version remains on the New Heights podcast feed to be replayed. How much more can be left in the episode? Who knows! It could be wrapping up, it could have another segment or two, it could go on to surpass the entire runtime of Game of Thrones.
But to actually cause a YouTube stream to crash? That’s truly impressive. Maybe AI isn’t ready to take over the world just yet. But if it does, we will have the Swifties to count on to save us.
About Matt Yoder