Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #281, Fishy
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: This is MuggleCast, your Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts podcast covering everything about J.K. Rowling’s magical world. This week’s episode is brought to you by Audible.com. Audible is the leading provider of audiobooks, with more than 150,000 downloadable titles across all types of literature, including fiction, nonfiction, and periodicals. For a free audiobook of your choice, go to AudiblePodcast.com/MuggleCast. Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 281. Eric, Micah, and I are here this week as always. It’s our big tenth anniversary show, and we’re so pleased to have on this week Jamie. Welcome back, Jamie.
Jamie Lawrence: Wow. This is overwhelming. This is…
[Andrew and Jamie laugh]
Andrew: We were just talking before recording. You haven’t changed a bit. You truly haven’t.
Jamie: Yeah, you guys would say that, wouldn’t you?
Andrew: No, I mean it. We’ve been doing this ten years now, so people can really change in ten years, but you haven’t. I’m so happy.
Jamie: Well, that’s good. I’m going to take that as a compliment. I can’t believe – literally can’t believe, and I’m using that word properly, literally – that it’s been ten years.
Andrew: Yeah, I know. Me neither. I don’t know what the hell we’ve done the past ten years.
Jamie: So is that ten years since our first episode?
Andrew: Right, so our first episode was Friday, August 7, 2005 or… well, it was yesterday. Let me try that again. [laughs] It was on August 7, 2005, whatever day of the week that was, so yes, it has been a full ten years now.
Jamie: Amazing. I’m speechless. I’m actually speechless.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, because I was thinking about this a lot over the past week: I don’t think I’ve done anything for ten years, other than MuggleCast. I’ve breathed for ten years.
Jamie: Yeah, I mean, you’ve developed as a fine, upstanding member of the human race, Andrew.
Andrew: Debatable, debatable.
Jamie: True, true.
Andrew: But you know, like a job or even a friendship, other than you guys, of course. I think I only know… I’ve only been friends with one other person, and that’s maybe 11 years. [laughs]
Micah Tannenbaum: Laura?
Jamie: What does that say about you?
Andrew: [laughs] It says I’ve had no friends.
Jamie: Well, maybe you get to eight years or something, and you just cut them out. You’re like…
Andrew: Yeah, for some people, that’s what’s happened. [laughs]
Eric Scull: I will say, being a podcast and being ten is special, because 2005 was the year where podcasts really started coming out, and so it’s a badge of honor for us all, being a podcast that’s ten years old now, because not many podcasts have made it this far, and all of the newer podcasts be hatin’ because we’re so senior to them.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But no, I think it’s really just a mark of how everlasting Harry Potter is and how we’ve been able to stick through it all these years is a testament to the great crew we have in cohosts.
Jamie: And we like each other. Come on, guys.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Eric: Not just cohosts, but friends.
Jamie: Yeah, friends.
Micah: Well, I mean, if I’m being honest, we did just want somebody on from the UK, so you were able to fill that hole, Jamie.
[Andrew and Jamie laugh]
Micah: So thank you.
Jamie: I shouldn’t be so available. Sorry, guys. I’m busy. I’ve moved on.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: So we started this podcast, it was Ben, Kevin, and I, and we started it after asking around in the MuggleNet staff forums, “Is anybody interested in this?” And I was really inspired by a tech podcaster, Leo Laporte, who I still listen to, and we thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did a Harry Potter one as well?” And we had no idea what to expect. Would people…?
Micah: Is Leo coming on the show today?
Andrew: Is Leo coming on the show? No. That would be cool, though. I’m a big Leo fan.
Jamie: That would be cool. I remember. Now, see, I have a theory… and Andrew is pretty unflappable under pressure; he’s done a lot of big stuff.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Jamie: But there’s a list of three or four people where, when he sees them, or when he talks about them, he just… his eyes start vibrating and stuff and he can’t take it. One of them is Leo Laporte; the other one is Jon Stewart.
Andrew: [laughs] What?!
Jamie: For example – and I’m sure we talked about this on a previous podcast – when we saw him and Stephen King and J.K. Rowling at… where was that, guys?
Eric: Radio City Music Hall.
Jamie: Radio City, yeah. And Andrew didn’t realize John Stewart was coming in, and he came on, and I was just looking at Andrew because the reaction was brilliant. He was moving and his neck was twinging and he couldn’t believe it.
Andrew: [laughs] Come on.
Jamie: Yeah, it was, Andrew. You’re going to say it wasn’t now, aren’t you?
Andrew: No, I… well, maybe I was probably genuinely surprised that Jon Stewart was there, yeah, but I forgot all about that, actually.
Jamie: You were fan-boying.
Andrew: Okay. Well, all right. So yeah, Leo, and I would say Bruce Springsteen. It’s just those two.
Jamie: Oh, yeah.
Micah: What about Bono?
Andrew: Bono? Well, come on; it’s Bono. Of course. Anybody.
Micah: So those are the top four. We were able to fill in.
Eric: But then how about the Boss playing off Jon Stewart the other night, Andrew? You must have really…
Andrew: Oh, that was magical. I’ve watched it four times already. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, that was really cool.
Andrew: So where were we going with that? Oh, so I mean, it was just really amazing that people were interested in a Harry Potter podcast, and it’s a great year to actually be turning ten, because there’s really been this resurgence in podcasting. Do you still listen to podcasts, Jamie? Do you listen to any right now?
Jamie: Yeah, I do it kind of intermittently; I’ll get really involved in a topic, and then I’ll go around having a look at what the podcast is saying on it. But there’s one – and I won’t name it – that I was getting back into writing recently, really wanted to improve my writing, and I listened to one that was popular, and someone at work was raving about it, and it was basically someone talking for ages with loads of “um”s and loads of “uh”s, no music or editing or anything, and I just couldn’t take it, so I just turned it off.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: I like a well-produced podcast that’s easy to listen to, and that takes quite a lot of skill in the back end to make it easy to listen to.
Andrew: Yeah. Well, speaking of that, we rereleased our first episode the other day. We put it back in the feed to kind of commemorate ten years.
Jamie: How was it?
Andrew: Oh. I mean, at the time, it was good, and I’m still proud of it. It was our first episode.
Eric: It was fine.
Andrew: I mean, what can anybody expect from it? But listening to it back now, like if that was how we were today…
[Jamie laughs]
Andrew: Me in particular, I think I didn’t have much of a personality back then.
Eric: Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. I was relistening to Jamie’s and my first episode yesterday, which was Episode 3 – also released in August, but two weeks later – and I was completely unbearable. I cannot stand myself. But I think it was clear that this was the first time we were doing anything like that. It was certainly the first time I had ever done any kind of speaking, or ever been called on to answer a question that I was passionate about answering. So I just have to say, my insight from relistening to the beginning of MuggleCast is that the audience was forgiving, but the audience were also exactly like we were. It helped that the majority of them were our age and were growing up with Harry just as we were, and we really… I feel connected with the audience of our peers.
Andrew and Micah: Yes.
Micah: Absolutely.
Jamie: So what you’re saying is… go on, Micah.
Micah: No, because we even still hear it a lot today in other podcasts that we do, that they all started listening to us, or we were the people that really got them into podcasting in the first place.
Eric: We do hear that constantly. There are no…
Micah: And it’s always great to hear that they started with MuggleCast. And to me, podcasting, though, it’s… and we were just at a convention not that long ago, and we’re at a panel where we had a bunch of different podcasters from a bunch of different backgrounds talking about their shows, but to me, podcasting, in a way, still has to be organic content and not overly produced. I always see a lot of times people taking radio shows that they do and throwing them into podcast format and throwing them up on iTunes, and to me, that’s not a podcast. A podcast is what we’re doing here, where it’s for people who had previously never met each other before, who are gathering around a topic that interests them and making it into something that is enjoyable for other people to interact with. And that’s what’s been so great about this, is being able to interact with those listeners, to meet them in person, to get their feedback, and to just have a discussion that has spanned ten years. And some of it, I’m sure, has been pushing the envelope a bit at times as we came up with ideas of things to talk about, but somebody mentioned earlier just how podcasting has really caught a second wind in the last year or so, and just for Potter specifically, all this news that’s making headlines and the fact that we still have another theme park to open and three new movies on the horizon, I don’t think this podcast is going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
Jamie: Nice. I like that. That was like a monologue that deserves some special music behind it as well.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Well, Andrew can handle that in post-production.
Jamie: Yeah, Andrew, that’s your job. That’s your job, the post-production.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: But also, it’s hard to build a community of engaged people online, but from what I remember, we weren’t really focused on that at all. It was more about connecting with people and just having a chat and talking about something, like you say, Micah, interested everyone, so it kind of happened. Growth kind of happened organically as well, and that’s the best way to build an audience that like the same things that you do as well. It’s actually a great day for us to be doing this because I did a tour at the BBC studios in Bristol today, and I got to go on the green screen where they record the news and pretend like I was a news reader, so I was kind of practicing my audio podcasting skills on the set.
Andrew: You were warming up for tonight. [laughs]
Jamie: I was warming up, yeah. That’s a good day. Good day.
Andrew: Yeah, I think… and getting back to… I mentioned I was inspired by Leo’s podcast, This Week in Tech. It’s always been laid back and not highly produced, and I like that, and I like that we do that here. I don’t either really like the highly-produced podcasts; I like these casual conversations. And over the years, one of the things we’ve heard the most – and we were almost touching on this a couple minutes ago – is that people consider us their Harry Potter friends. When we hear from people, one of the things I hear most often is, “You guys are like my Harry Potter friends. I listen to you, and I feel like I’m sitting in on a conversation about Harry Potter,” and that’s exactly what we want to do. It’s a laid back conversation, and people really connected with that. And you’ll hear people called in; we asked for people to leave their voicemails, and we’re going to play them at the end of the show. I’m really excited about that to kind of turn the mic around, so to speak, because we haven’t done voicemails in a while, and they have some really nice things to say.
Micah: One of the other great things to hear from the people who’ve listened to the show is that we really provided an escape, I think, for a lot of people. That’s something that we’ve heard through emails and through voicemails and through social media over the course of the last ten years, is whether people were going through a difficult time or having a difficult day or just wanted to get away from what was going on, we were what they turned to, what they listened to, because they knew that they were going to enjoy themselves. They were going to laugh and… it’s powerful stories.
Eric: Well, we built an entire section about it. Chicken Soup for the MuggleCast Soul was a thing that we read week in, week out on this show, and it was a barrage of those stories. And you have to realize, listeners, just how special that was, to be able to fuel a segment like that, and the fact that we continue to have it, continue to hear it through this…
Micah: Absolutely.
Eric: And I know we’ll be getting into favorite moments later, but I mean, the fact that we were able to do something for so long that meant so much to so many people is a gift that I think we all respect and appreciate and realize how special it is.
Andrew: So we have a bunch of stuff like that planned for today. It’s going to be a nontraditional show. And like I said, Jamie, we’re glad you’re here. We have a message from Laura we are going to play in just a moment; she wanted to say hello to everybody, even though she couldn’t be here. But before we do that, it’s time for me to remind you that today’s episode is brought to you by Audible.com.
[Ad break]
Message from Laura
Andrew: We have a message from Laura. She wanted to be on the show today, but she’s traveling, but she recorded this message.
Eric: Isn’t she busy autographing Millennial postcards? I saw her post on Facebook today. [laughs]
Andrew: Yes, you’re referring to my other podcast, Millennial at MillennialShow.com. That’s exactly right, Eric. Thank you.
Eric: Okay. That’s why she can’t be on MuggleCast?
Micah: Shameless plug.
Andrew: Yep, exactly. Jamie, check it out.
Jamie: Just am.
Andrew: All right, here is a message from Laura.
[Audio clip plays]
Laura: Hey, guys. This is Laura. I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to be with you all to celebrate MuggleCast’s ten year anniversary, but I wanted to make sure to say a few words to convey how much this show has meant to me over the years. So when I was 16, I never would have imagined I would become involved with a project so far-reaching and so meaningful to tens of thousands of people around the world. I’m so thankful to our listeners for their support over the years. Thank you for caring about what we have to say and for giving us a platform where we were able to say it. I know I’ve said this before, but I’m a natural introvert, so all those years of involvement on MuggleCast really helped me to develop my voice, and since then, I’ve actually joined Andrew and a few other MuggleCast alums in developing other shows.
Jamie: Yeah, thanks for the invite.
[Andrew laughs]
Laura: I don’t think many people can say they’re lucky enough to meet some of their best friends by spending countless hours producing a show about Harry Potter, and even though it’s been many moons since I was involved with MuggleCast, I haven’t forgotten all the amazing opportunities and experiences I got to share with my friends because of this show. I also have to say that it’s incredible to see MuggleCast going ten years strong. I don’t know if this is still the show slogan, guys, but it really does go to show that no theory is safe. It also speaks to the quality of the fandom that this show is a part of. Harry Potter fans are absolutely, without a doubt, the best fans in the world.
Jamie: Amen.
Laura: So thanks, everyone, for sticking with us all these years. And I’d especially like to give a shout-out to my fellow original cohosts, Andrew, Micah, Eric, Jamie, Kevin, and Ben. The show was and is fantastic, and I’m excited to see where it’ll be in another ten years. Take care. I love all of you. Bye-bye.
[Audio clip ends]
Andrew: Love you too, Laura. So there we go.
Jamie: That was nice.
Micah: We don’t even need a show. She covered everything.
Andrew: [laughs] Laura is right, though. I was an introvert as well. I mean, I still am. I was at a party last night; I absolutely hated it.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But I’m just naturally introverted. But I love doing this podcast, and I did develop my voice that way.
Jamie: I am too. I’m comfortable with that. I’m a comfortable introvert.
Andrew: [laughs] What does that mean?
Jamie: It means I’m comfortable with myself. I’ve grown into myself, Andrew. I’m proud of myself.
Andrew: I see. [laughs] Okay, sorry for questioning you. Oh my gosh.
Micah: There you go.
Jamie: I’m proud of myself!
Micah: I agree. I would echo what Jamie said, too. And I think maybe with the exception of Eric and Ben, we’re all a bit introverted. I think Eric is much more of an extrovert, much more of an outspoken individual. He can speak to that himself.
Eric: To my detriment, yeah.
Andrew: He can spiel about that.
Eric: Hah.
British Joke of the Day
Andrew: So Jamie, since you’re back, we obviously had to ask you to come up with a British Joke of the Day. This is, of course, the segment you would always do back in the MuggleCast heyday a few years ago. [laughs] Eight years ago, nine, ten… so please, entertain us.
Jamie: Oh, well, you know there’s eight, nine, ten years of expectations, and this has to be a good one.
[Micah laughs]
Jamie: And anyway, look, I won’t jinx it. So here goes, everyone. What do you call a fish who performs brain surgery?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Is there significance to the fact that you elongated the pronunciation of “brain”?
Jamie: No, there is not. I was just having a moment of panic that this joke is going to bomb.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I’m sorry for calling you out on your introverted panic.
Jamie: That’s no problem at all. We’re all friends here.
Andrew: I don’t know, what? What is the fish called?
Jamie: A neuro-sturgeon.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: [laughs] I don’t get it.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: What? A neuro-sturgeon?
Micah: Some things never change.
Jamie: Some things don’t ever change. That reminds me, that reminds me – this is a show where we’re going back in time – that reminds me where we were driving through someplace, can’t remember where…
Andrew: [laughs] I know exactly what you’re going to… is this going to be the Thai story?
Jamie: Yeah, yeah, it is.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: Andrew points to a restaurant. “Do you know what, guys? I don’t think I’ve ever had Thai food.” [pronounces it “thigh food”]
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: I was like, “What?”
[Micah laughs]
Jamie: “Thigh food.” Brilliant. Still remembering that.
Andrew: Yeah, that was in LA. And in addition to being introverted, I also did not live a life outside of my virtual one in The Sims Online and on MuggleNet, so I did not know what Thai food was, nor had I ever heard the word. [laughs]
Jamie: You’re forgiven, then. It’s fine. So neurosurgeon, right? A person who does brain surgery. And sturgeon is a fish, so it’s neuro-sturgeon.
Andrew: Oh, okay. Okay.
Jamie: Pretty simple, really.
Andrew: Well, I mean, you have to know that sturgeon is a fish. I didn’t know that.
Jamie: Yeah, pretty rare.
Andrew: All I know about fish is what appeared in Pixar’s Finding Nemo, so if it wasn’t in there, forget it. [laughs]
Jamie: I should have made a joke on that, then. Popular fish.
Favorite moments
Andrew: All right, so again, with it being the anniversary show, we wanted to do a lot of looking back, so I thought we could take turns just recalling some of our favorite moments from the show over the past ten years. We’ve done a lot, obviously. Mine, of course, one of them – and this is also one of the listeners’ favorites – was the 12-hour live show we did. [laughs] This was easily the biggest project, I think, besides Pickle Pack that we ever took on with this podcast. I don’t even know… can anybody remember why we did it?
Jamie: Was it…? I remember us just chatting and trying to come up with a challenge, wasn’t it? But I remember being the guy who was like, “Hey guys, why stop at 12? Why don’t we do 24? 36?”
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: And then someone was like, “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work, Jamie.”
Andrew: So I’m looking on the website now. We did this back in September 2007. It was Episodes 109-113.
Jamie: Wow. That’s a range, isn’t it?
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: That’s how we got so high in our episode count so quickly. [laughs] We had just done a single live show.
Jamie: Oh, yeah. Were we all on for 12 hours?
Andrew and Micah: No.
Andrew: I think that’s one of the reasons that it worked. I’m looking at the show notes now. “Andrew, Jamie, and Laura entertain you for the first two hours. Pickle Pack reopening soon for a limited time. Dan on Broadway?” [laughs]
Jamie: What, those were the show notes?
Andrew: Yeah. [laughs]
Jamie: Wow.
Micah: Sounds like a hell of a show.
Andrew: I vaguely remember calling Pizza Hut on the air or something, and ordering a pizza at one point or something like that. [laughs]
Jamie: Nice.
Micah: You definitely called me at one point. I remember being at a wedding when this was going on, in Nantucket.
Andrew: Oh, how convenient. “Oh, I can’t be on, guys. Sorry. I’ve got a wedding.”
Eric: I think I was headed to work or something in a movie theater. I called. I think I remember talking for like, 30 minutes. But it seemed like there were people who stuck out for the whole thing, who listened to the whole thing.
Micah: And by that, do you mean they just left it up on their computer screen and fell asleep, or…?
Eric: It’s impossible to say. I don’t think the numbers really support either way. [laughs] But no, no, people listened to the entire thing. There were listeners who were very actively engaged. And I think it was over a livestream, right? Or UStream? One of those things.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah.
Eric: And the chat was always very active. We’ve always had very active chatters. I remember back in the beginning of MuggleCast, the fan chatroom that we had. It was just on AOL Instant Messenger, on AIM; at any point you could go into a chat room. It was just called MuggleCast, I think, and there would be people discussing Harry Potter. It was a real big moment, I think, and in just chatting, in general chat rooms, the fact that that was always there as a really good resource. And yeah, but in general, on the live show there were a lot of people who actively listened to that, and that was really cool.
Andrew: Jamie, I see that was one of your favorite moments, too. What about the 12-hour show did you like so much?
Jamie: It was just cool, wasn’t it? Doing something a bit different. You properly felt like a radio DJ doing a 12-hour stint. I mean, I seem to remember us doing it for longer, or I remember coming back… I swear I came back a bit later or something. Maybe I didn’t. But anyway, I just thought it’s just a cool project, isn’t it? And I think people liked it. People did stay with us. I remember that, and that felt good.
Andrew: People still ask us to do another one of those. I don’t think… I don’t know. That would be a huge undertaking to do that again. [laughs]
Jamie: It’d be good, though. We could do a charity one. A 12-hour charity episode.
Andrew: Yeah. If J.K. Rowling releases the Harry Potter encyclopedia, that’ll be our 12-hour live show.
Jamie: That’s a good one. I like that.
Andrew: [laughs] We’ll page through it live on the air for 12 hours.
Micah: And J.K. Rowling is mandated to attend.
Andrew and Jamie: Yeah.
Jamie: Definitely.
Andrew: By the way, Jamie, are you very active on Twitter at all?
Jamie: So I am a bit. I’ve noticed… are you going to talk about all the sort of arguments she’s had with people on there?
Andrew: Well, I just wanted to mention that right before we started recording, I saw her tweeting to people, so I tweeted her from the MuggleCast account; I asked her to call in and leave a voicemail. So we’re still waiting to see if she does that. [laughs]
Jamie: Let’s hope she does. That would be cool. Ten years. Andrew, were you very clear that this was ten years of us paying homage to something she created?
Andrew: Yes!
Eric: [laughs] Jamie, I think he even used hashtag #MuggleCast10, which is our hashtag.
Jamie: Aww.
Andrew: I wrote, “Jo! We’re about to record our tenth anniversary episode. Call our hotline and leave us a message.” And I put the number.
Jamie: Well, she better do.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: I mean, honestly, what better thing does she have to do on a Saturday evening?
Jamie: Exactly, exactly.
Micah: That’s what I’m saying.
Andrew: Well, she was tweeting, so she’s got time.
Micah: Absolutely.
Andrew: You know, it’s funny. I really enjoy trolling her on Twitter. I do that a lot, Jamie.
Micah: Well, hold on a second. Jamie, are you aware of the fact that Andrew actually received a response from J.K. Rowling on Twitter?
Jamie: I am not, so tell me about that. What was the context? What happened?
Andrew: Well, she was tweeting about saving the BBC and people were tweeting her their favorite BBC shows, and I decided that I wanted to get her attention, so I would say my favorite BBC show is the adaptation of her book, The Casual Vacancy. [laughs] Even though I’ve never seen the TV show and I’ve never read the book either.
Jamie: What a kiss-ass.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Jamie: But go on.
Andrew: Exactly, exactly. So I said that, and then she retweeted it, and she added, “*blushes*,” so I made her blush.
Jamie: Or maybe it was the fact that you were Andrew Sims, international podcaster extraordinaire.
Andrew: Yeah, but isn’t it funny how I’ve been doing MuggleNet since 2004 and I’ve never interacted with her, and then my first interaction is about the freaking Casual Vacancy?
Eric: It’s a lie. It’s a big lie.
Jamie: Which you haven’t even seen, yeah.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: We’ve really exhausted all other options in trying to get Jo’s attention. There’s no other way to do it. [laughs]
Andrew: Right, yeah. We can go write to her publicist, but they’ll go, “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Rowling is very busy right now. I’m sorry we can’t do that.” [laughs]
Jamie: So you had to go that route. Well, you still got a reply.
Andrew: Yep, exactly.
Jamie: Now you can say you guys are friends.
Andrew: Yeah! Well, I updated my Twitter bio. I put, “Made J.K. Rowling blush once,” and it’s true. [laughs]
Jamie: Nice.
Andrew: Anyway, continuing on with our favorite moments. Micah, what was one of your favorite moments?
[pause]
Andrew: Hello?
Micah: Probably… hello. Hi, Andrew.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: Had to think about it.
Micah: Yeah, you’ve got to… well, it’s not like we had a couple days to plan for this or anything. But I would say Episode 200. I mean, that was a really amazing opportunity to be able to interview David Heyman and talk to him about all the work that he had done on the films, and I think at the time we were still waiting on Deathly Hallows, so it was just a great conversation. And there’s that moment that gets referenced many times on the show when we actually asked David to participate in the Dueling Club, one of the segments that we’ve done on the show many times, and…
Eric: He whooped your ass.
Micah: He did whoop my ass. I believe the quote was, when I chose Bellatrix and he chose Snape, “Are you ready to admit defeat?” or something to that effect.
Eric: Yeah, “You want to admit defeat now?”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: He got really into it. He was really game for it.
Micah: I think that just speaks to the culture of that particular group of people who are responsible for making the films. And just the fact that he was so gracious with his time; he had spent somewhere close to 45 minutes or an hour with us when I think it was initially pitched as 20 or 25 minutes.
Eric: I think so too, yeah.
Micah: And he just sat there talking about the series, something that really changed his life. He had mentioned that if he had come to London – or come back to London after living in the States for a while – just a few weeks later, he never would have seen the manuscript for the first film. So I think that being able to do something like that and speak with somebody outside of J.K. Rowling, obviously, who was so integral in what we’re podcasting about, was really cool.
Andrew: Yeah, for sure.
Eric: That was released… by the way, that was Episode 200, which was titled…
Micah: I said that.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, yeah. “Admit Defeat,” it was titled.
Andrew: It was June 2010.
Micah: Jamie, it was Episode 200, in case you want to go listen later on.
Jamie: Aw, thanks, guys. I wasn’t sure. Let me just check. 200?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: It’s weird that the 200th episode was five years ago. That seems really strange.
Eric: Yeah, that is weird. We kind of decreased in… but that was one of my top experiences, just knowing what we did for 200, knowing what we did for 100. Episode 100 was the big live show.
Andrew: Tell us about that.
[pause]
Micah: I think a train is going by.
Andrew: Oh. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, it was. I cut it out of the show. Thanks, guys. It’s me doing your post-production work for you. Hang on, there’s another one.
[Andrew imitates a train noise]
Jamie: This must be compelling for everyone listening in.
Eric: Why don’t you guys talk about…?
Andrew: This is why J.K. Rowling doesn’t come on this show. She knows she’s just going to get cut off by trains.
Jamie: We’re all over the place.
Andrew: Eric, it’s okay. We can’t even hear the trains. I know you muted, but it’s fine.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. So London for Book 7 was our big 100th episode, Episodes 100 and 101, which was the day after, after we’d read parts of Book 7. Just that entire experience, that trip to… to be able to podcast from Waterstones, the live podcast where the ceiling was caving in on us due to the excitement of the fans above…
Jamie: Wow, that was cool.
Eric: Right? I mean, it’s just everything about it, playing “The Final Countdown” after the episode left, getting the book, meeting Jamie’s dad… that was a highlight for me.
Jamie: Hah, yeah. That was cool.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And just how distraught you were, Jamie. Man, you were in tears.
Jamie: Aww.
Eric: We all wanted to be as sad and as visibly upset as you were, and we felt it. We all felt that coming together: What will happen next?
Jamie: That was an emotional evening, that was.
Eric: But there was an Episode 101. There was an Episode 102. There was 200. This is 281.
Micah: Was there an Episode 200? I had no idea.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: There was an Episode 200, and David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter films, came on for us. But really, if I had to pick a favorite moment, it would be all of them. It would be being able to do this with all of you. Some of you may know I got the show logo tattooed on my right arm.
Andrew: I forgot about that.
Eric: But I didn’t do it…
Jamie: I didn’t know that! How did I not know that?
Eric: Oh, you don’t know? Yeah, there’s pictures. I was in Portland, Oregon, where apparently it’s the safest place to ever get a tattoo without worrying about hepatitis.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Eric: So I was like, “Okay, might as well.” But I had to pick something that I wouldn’t mind living with the rest of my life, and there was a big thing. The artist took me aside and was like, “Listen, man, your kids are going to… as long as your kids know you, you’re going to have this tattoo.” And I didn’t even have kids; I was like, “I’m not even going to have kids for years.” He’s like, “I know, but when they grow up, they will know you, and you will always have this tattoo.” And I’m thinking, “Oh, great, got to pick a design that’s going to mean something to me.” And I picked the mic bolt, the microphone lightning, because the experiences that I’ve had through this podcast… and that’s a big, big thing. I certainly… you guys talked about being introverts, and I was otherwise. But I have to say, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t still refine… I mean, I use this. This was the opportunity that came when I was 17. I was a bit older than some of the other hosts of this podcast, but I still… it was the first speaking opportunity to talk about things that I was extremely passionate about, but otherwise would have had no… I mean, it was a mess at first. I really was able to refine the way I think about things, the way I talk about things, and to be greeted by such a community, but also to have you guys reel me in and cohost. And I just remember Episode 4, just taking the piss out of me for talking so much, like I’m doing now.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But really, just you guys were the best friends to be doing this with from the earliest stages. And the mutual support, the mutual growth that we all experienced, as evidenced by where we’ve been, and the first hundred episodes, especially, but even since then, it’s a constantly evolving process that I’m thrilled to be a part of. So certainly those big episodes, but every little one in between is still, in a way, my favorite.
Andrew: Oh, well, that was very nicely said.
Micah: In saying that, you made me remember, too, the… I think, Eric, you, myself, and Laura did an episode just prior to Episode 100.
Eric: We interviewed Andrew. Or maybe that was 199. Never mind.
Andrew: Oh, yeah!
Micah: That might have been 199.
Micah: But we had gotten the deluxe edition cover for Deathly Hallows with the dragon.
Eric: Oh, this is where I got it way wrong. We opened up Fantastic Beasts and picked the dragon that it was.
Micah: And we probably talked for 90 minutes about the Antipodean Opaleye…
Eric: Opaleye, yeah.
Micah: … and its significance to what was going to happen in the final book. But it’s just things like that, the fact that we were able to talk 90 minutes breaking apart the cover of the deluxe edition and then…
Eric: I maintain that Jo cheated on that one. Can we all agree? Jamie, do you know about this episode? This Antipodean Opaleye? So the Gringotts dragon, the one that’s underneath Gringotts and is chained to the pole because they’re clearly torturing it, hasn’t seen daylight in hundreds of years, or however old it is. That’s the reason why it’s actually… I think it’s blind. I think it’s actually just blind.
Jamie: Yeah, definitely, it was. She said that, though. She said it’s got milky eyes.
Eric: Yeah, but that’s the thing, because we took that as a cue. For Fantastic Beasts, the description of the Antipodean Opaleye is that it has white eyes, that its pupils are white or whatever. So we thought it was obviously that specific species of dragon, but it turns out it was another species entirely; it’s just it’s been blind due to the thing. So we were dead wrong for about 90 minutes, but…
Jamie: Well, you’ve realized your errors now, haven’t you? So it’s fine. [laughs]
Eric: But it was fun. It was all fun. It was always fun.
Micah: I know you also just mentioned the London show, but just all the live shows that we were able to do in general, I think. I wasn’t able to go to all of them, but some that stand out: just New York City, the first time that we were all together, for the most part, to be able to do a show around… what was it? Goblet of Fire at the time?
Eric: Yeah, the premiere.
Micah: And all of us… I think the only time, or one of the only times that we were all together, was out in Los Angeles for the Podcast Awards, and we did a show out there as well. And I think of Enlightening 2007 in Philadelphia. That was probably one of the coolest venues outside of maybe the Wizarding World that we’ve done a podcast at.
Andrew: Yeah.
The biggest questions we never asked
Andrew: So we wanted to do something else special for this episode, which is – Eric and Micah, I guess, came up with this idea – the big questions we never asked. So we went on Twitter and we said, “What are some questions that have been lurking around the Harry Potter fandom for a while, but we never asked them here on the podcast?” We got some interesting ones. I don’t think these are the biggest questions we never asked, [laughs] but there’s some good questions here. This comes from Seriously Emma: “Why were the Weasleys the only Hogwarts students Harry ever saw at Platform Nine and Three Quarters?”
Jamie: I don’t know. I think I’ve definitely read there are other people there, but I think she just talks about that because they’re the ones that he’s looking out for. They’re his friends.
Andrew: Yeah, I don’t think there was any deeper reasoning behind it, other than that. That was just the setting that they were put in. I don’t know.
Jamie: I don’t know. That reminds me, just when you said deeper setting there, a thing just went off in my brain of the deepest setting thing I remember from the books, which was that… you guys know Order of the Phoenix when the ward was the Dai Llewellyn something? I can’t remember what it was…
Eric: Dangerous Dai Llewellyn ward.
Jamie: That’s it. That’s it. And if you took the first word of each part of that, it spelled out “Creature, dangerous, die, serious.” And so if you saw that, and I can’t remember… I think I read that in… what was the book called that Galadriel wrote?
Eric: The Ultimate Unofficial Guide to the Mysteries of Harry Potter.
Jamie: That was the one. It was in there, and I thought that was unbelievable. Tangent, sorry. Let’s move on.
Andrew: No, that was great. Actually, speaking of Order of the Phoenix, Pablo wrote in, “What’s that spell Dumbledore attempts to use against Voldy in the Ministry?”
Jamie: Great scene. Great scene.
Andrew: Great scene. Not so great in the movie, though.
Jamie: Well, yeah, I know what you mean. Special effected it up.
Andrew: The music stops, and Voldemort is making weird noises, and Dumbledore… I don’t know. The water thing didn’t… that’s in the book, but it’s just not… it didn’t look good to me.
Micah: No.
Eric: I feel like there are a lot of spells that they use against each other. But based on this link to Wikipedia – I’m just going to read straight from this book summary – it says, “After Voldemort missed Dumbledore, Dumbledore then sent a powerful spell at Voldemort, one which the Dark Lord was forced to block with a silver shield; the spell did not harm the shield, but made a deep gong-like sound as it was deflected. Voldemort realized that the nature of the spell was not meant to kill him, and, surprised, tried once again to kill Dumbledore.”
Andrew: Yeah, so Dumbledore intentionally did not kill him, so it wasn’t Avada Kedavra.
Eric: Right.
Jamie: But he wouldn’t use that spell, I don’t think.
Eric: Yeah, that’s very possible. I think… hmm.
Andrew: Why did Dumbledore want to keep him alive? Because Harry had to do it?
Jamie: Well, yeah, partly, but also because he’s not… oh, actually, I don’t know. I want to say he’s not a killer…
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Jamie: But I think if push came to shove, if you could kill Voldemort, you’d probably do it.
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: Well, he had him right there. But yeah, that was a great scene. My favorite book, too.
Eric: I think it may point to the fact that Dumbledore knows more about Voldemort than he’s letting on, right?
Jamie: I agree, yeah.
Eric: Even in Book 6, when he’s like, “I’ve just figured this out, Harry, about the Horcruxes,” he knew beforehand, and so he would have known it was a futile attempt.
Andrew: Yeah. So I like that question, but I guess we just don’t know. That would have to be…
Jamie: Well, I think…
Andrew: Hmm?
Jamie: No, I was going to say I think the point to make here is that there’s some higher thing. There are these things that Jo puts in her writing like that, which just makes you think. I think Eric is right; it just points to the fact that Dumbledore knows more. As to what the spell was actually going to do, we can only speculate over whether it was going to make Voldemort look inwards or something that wasn’t going to kill him. But I think the main point is for him to think that Dumbledore isn’t looking to kill him, and that’s the surprise.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: Not very helpful, though, to the Ministry. I mean, he’s right there in the Ministry; they’re face to face. [laughs] Just get rid of him! Bye!
Eric: But there is so much of that higher magic, though, that really went unanswered throughout the whole book series that I’m hoping will be in the Fantastic Beasts movie. The cave scene is a classic example as well of when Dumbledore has to discern what it is you’re supposed to do to… first of all, you have to cut yourself to get in, then where he feels for the boat chain and pulls that, and he’s working on the potion. He’s humming to himself, according to Harry; Harry’s analysis is that there’s some sort of musical element involved, too. Just that higher magic that Harry didn’t come close to learning, they didn’t come close to teaching it at Hogwarts, but yet there’s no mention of a secondary school or a tertiary school in Harry Potter. It’s like, what is that magic that is the higher level of magic? It’s the plane that Dumbledore and Voldemort are operating on when they’re attacking each other.
Micah: Yeah, but can’t you just accept the fact that he is operating on a plane that’s so much higher than anybody else? And maybe the things that he ends up casting, the spells that he ends up casting, are in ways his own creation. It doesn’t have to be a spell that’s widely known by others in the wizarding world. Let’s say he’s just that good.
Jamie: I agree. I’m comfortable with that.
Eric: But people become that good…
Micah: Well, I’m sure he practiced.
Eric: … so Voldemort has to know what that magic is to be able to deflect it, and certainly Aurors…
Jamie: No, I don’t think that’s true at all. I don’t think he needs to know what it is; he just needs to recognize specific qualities about it, maybe, which are easy to deflect. If you understand the way something is made, perhaps he doesn’t need to know exactly what the spell is; he just needs to try his best block or something. And I guess that’s why some people lose in duels, because they make errors and they block a B spell – which needs to be blocked with a B defense – with an A defense or something. I’m simplifying it, but it’s all heavily nuanced. I think that’s why it’s so cool, because you just don’t get it. Circumstantial knowledge.
Andrew: So next question is from Spencer. “Why weren’t the Dursleys punished for their abuse towards Harry?”
Jamie: I’ve got a theory on this one. I think that Jo is so now pushing child welfare across the world, that perhaps she had a bee in her bonnet about the fact that so many children were suffering abuse and the childcare system was failing them, and that was one of her ways of showing it. And also, it was very secretive abuse. It wasn’t really something that was going to get flagged up to a person in authority. And they kind of did get punished by the story, but it’s a fair point. They should have…
Andrew: Well, I mean, the only person who could have reported it was probably Harry, or maybe a member of the Weasley family, I guess, if Harry told them about it. But Harry had bigger problems to deal with. And I mean, really, once he got that Hogwarts letter, and once he started going to Hogwarts, he wasn’t really abused after that, right? But yes, as a child, definitely.
Eric: I mean, they sent him socks.
Micah: Well, it was far more mental abuse than anything else.
Andrew and Jamie: Yeah.
Micah: But I mean, look, we all grew up in the ’80s. That’s… look, life was tough.
Andrew: [laughs] What does that mean? “We all grew up under a cupboard.”
[Micah laughs]
Eric: I didn’t grow up in the ’80s.
Jamie: I got a bedroom. I didn’t sleep under the stairs.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Jamie, you’re one of the lucky ones.
Micah: I’m just joking. But I think that… why weren’t they punished? I think the point that was just made about them being punished throughout the story… I think that Dudley, to me, if you’re looking from the outside, right? Petunia and Vernon treat Dudley just fine. I mean, some would say that they really spoiled their child, and raised a horrible child because they just didn’t know any better. But it’s hard to know. I mean, was the abuse ever even reported? I mean, that’s the thing.
Andrew: Right, I don’t think it was. It wasn’t.
Micah: Or who would have been able to witness it? Especially think about Aunt Marge. I mean, she was probably worse to Harry than most.
Jamie: She was, yeah.
Micah: So if you were banking on other family members coming in and trying to help Harry out, I mean, there just wasn’t anybody there to be able to help him.
Andrew: I think Jamie nailed it, too. She may have been trying to bring awareness to the issue, and that was her way of doing it.
Jamie and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And magic was the great equalizer for Harry. I mean, once they knew that… they always knew that there was this chance that he was going to become a wizard, and they tried to keep him from becoming that, but once that finally came through, the tables were switched, and he gained at least a little bit of an upper hand, and that grew throughout the course of the story.
Andrew: And by the way, jumping back to my point one more moment, part of the awareness was it going unreported, not even just the abuse happening.
Jamie: Exactly, yeah.
Andrew: All right, moving on. One more question; this is from Christina. “Why didn’t other international wizards come to help battle Voldy? He was trying to take on the whole world of magic, after all.” That’s a good point.
Jamie: It is a good point. Some did, didn’t they? But I think that it’s an international relations thing, really, isn’t it? Some countries just don’t want to get involved, or they ignore the issue.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Jamie: Let’s talk academically about this.
Andrew: I was just going to guess from a storytelling perspective, there’s not room to do that. There was already so much going on during… I assume she’s talking about during the Battle of Hogwarts?
Micah: And even then, that could be a timing thing, right? I mean, think about how quickly that happened. You don’t have time to call in reinforcements, necessarily. But I mean, just remembering…
Jamie: Wait, wait. Sorry, wait, sorry. This isn’t… we are talking about a world where people can disappear from one place and reappear at a new place automatically.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: They don’t need to catch a flight from O’Hare to Heathrow and then get the train up to Scotland.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Andrew: That’s a good point.
Jamie: I think you could call in reinforcements if you wanted to.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: You could, you could. So you know what? Blame Dumbledore for not, I mean, really kind of rallying…
Eric: Well, he died about a year before the Battle of Hogwarts.
Jamie: Come on, guys. Get your facts right.
Micah: Well, to the point, you’ve got to plan. No, no, you’ve got to plan. He had the opportunity to plan. He knew what was eventually going to happen. He was such a factor in the end game, even though he wasn’t around.
Eric: But Dumbledore can only do so much to stress, what, international magical cooperation, right? That’s his year four thing.
Micah: Okay, but let’s also look at the fact of the corruption that was taking place in the Ministry.
Eric: Yes.
Micah: And if anybody was going to help prepare for this fight and reaching out to have others join in the battle against Voldemort, it would have been the Ministry.
Eric: Yeah, presumably other countries will have their own Ministries that can…
Jamie: They do. She definitely said that.
Micah: But wasn’t Fleur and Viktor…? They were there at the final battle.
Eric: They also married… I mean, maybe not Viktor, but I mean, Fleur married into the family that Harry’s best friend…
Jamie: But they were key characters as well, so they had to come back to complete their stories.
Micah: But I would also argue that the international community wasn’t widely developed outside of the Quidditch World Cup. I mean, so are you just going to say all of a sudden, “Here comes the US Navy, and…” [laughs] Well, not the Navy, but the Air Force or whatever. And so it would just be really, really weird, I think. And looking at characters like Madame Maxime, right? She understood, but how many of Beauxbatons really understood? How much of Durmstrang having Karkaroff as their head really would go and fight on the side of Harry, as opposed to Voldemort, knowing who Karkaroff was? There’s no guarantee that there would have been others out there that would have rallied that quickly to the cause.
Eric: For me, it’s just about sort of assessing the threat of Voldemort. He was bent on world domination or whatever, but really, he was confined at the time to Britain, and I think it’s really about trying to… considering the Ministry of Magic worked against people’s awareness to the threat…
[Train passes by]
Eric: Excuse me.
Andrew: [laughs] Eric, I promise you it’s okay to talk through the train. It’s okay.
Eric: I prefer not to.
Jamie: Hogwarts Express in the background.
Andrew: [laughs] Yeah, that’s what you should call it.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. I really feel like there was a lot of misinformation and people… the threat that Voldemort posed was not just fully accepted by international communities. It’s like, “Oh, he’s there in Britain. He’s kind of contained.” Just knowing… he didn’t spread all of his Horcruxes in other countries; they were all in Britain, all within a very small geographic location, too. So there was really no need to expand the books into the other countries so much, and I think it’s just a consequence of the story being told in a smaller country that there’s not a wider… I’m trying not to be offensive here, but the story came and went in Britain.
Micah: You’re not.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: And so it’s… and due to the fact that the wizarding community makes up a much smaller portion of people on the planet to begin with, then you have questions raised about what that would even look like, other people from other countries coming, other wizards trying to fight.
Andrew: And there was just not enough room for it in the book too. I mean, that’s my reason.
Micah: Look, if anybody could have written it, right?
Eric: Yeah, I will agree with that.
Micah: If it would have been her, she would have written in a very… “All of a sudden, here comes the Chinese, the Australians,” whoever, right? But even now, the last couple of weeks, we learned the Salem Witches Institute isn’t where kids in America go to study. It’s somewhere else.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: It was a joke. So let’s move on. I do like this idea for a segment, though; we should do it more regularly. I think this is a good way to…
Jamie: It’s a great segment. Great segment.
Andrew: Yeah! Excellent.
Listeners’ favorite moments
Andrew: All right, so it’s time now for some favorite moments from you the listener. We went on Twitter, Twitter.com/MuggleCast, and Facebook.com/MuggleCast. What is your favorite moment from the show? I see Chris here said his favorite moment was the BobFail.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Now, I honestly… I forget this. [laughs]
Eric: BobFail 2009? You don’t remember?
Andrew: No.
Jamie: I didn’t remember this one, guys.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: What’s the short version? Because I actually Googled “BobFail MuggleCast,” and it’s on Know Your Meme. [laughs]
Eric: Oh my God. There was a guy in the news, his name was Bob, and he said something disparaging towards Harry Potter fans, and during a live show, you specifically, Andrew, called him out on it. I believe…
Andrew: Yeah, because he screwed up the spelling of one of the books, according to KnowYourMeme.com.
Eric: It was something horrible. It was an egregious… it was a newbie error. It was a rookie mistake. Not that this guy… I think this guy was saying something disparaging about Harry Potter fans. But yeah, we called him out on it. It was this big thing on… we just happened to be doing a live show at the time. Can’t remember what for. I have only a vague recollection at best about it. But yeah, it was a big jump on this person kind of thing. It’s like all the things we couldn’t do to Laura Mallory because we were afraid, we did to this poor Bob guy somewhere, and made a meme out of it.
Andrew: SopranoSwag33 said, “Anything with Micah.”
[Eric laughs]
Jamie: Wow, who put this agenda together?
Andrew: [laughs] But then this person added, “Actually, when Micah re-followed Rowling.” That was definitely one of my favorite moments. So Jamie and people who don’t know, Micah was refusing to follow J.K. Rowling for the longest time because – and rightfully so – she was boring on Twitter! She wasn’t doing anything. And then, what was…? It was a monumental episode. Micah, what was it? Which one did you…? It was our return, right? Our return to monthly episodes?
Eric: Yeah, like five episodes ago. It was not long ago.
Andrew: Yeah, so he re-followed J.K. Rowling, and it just felt right.
Eric: All was well with the world.
Andrew: All was well. [laughs] Any comments about that, Micah?
Micah: I’m still following her.
Andrew: Okay.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: But there’s a but. I’m waiting for the but, like, “Oh, I reserve the right to unfollow her again if she continues… if she returns to being uninteresting.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: That’s my Micah impression, by the way. I can’t believe we’ve gotten 281 episodes without my Micah impression on this show.
Jamie: Too fast. Too fast.
Andrew: [laughs] Roxanne says, “Going to a couple LeakyMugs in LA and bringing home this poster after one of them.” So yeah, we did a joint podcast with our friends at PotterCast over the years. Those were a while ago. We haven’t done one of those in a while.
Jamie: Are they still going?
Andrew: Um… I don’t think so.
Jamie: Is the Leaky Cauldron still going?
Andrew: [laughs] I don’t know. Why don’t you go to the website and find out?
Jamie: I’m going to! I’m going to right now!
Eric: The Leaky Cauldron was rebranded LeakyNews.org.
Andrew: No.
Eric: It wasn’t?
Andrew: Well, I can go to TheLeakyCauldron.org right now, and it’s called TheLeakyCauldron.org.
Eric: Oh, really? It doesn’t redirect to Leaky News?
Andrew: No.
Jamie: Wow, we really know our stuff. This must sound very impressive.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Okay, it’s a non-MuggleCast question.
Jamie: Yeah, true, true.
Andrew: [laughs] So yeah, those joint podcasts were fun. All the live podcasts we did were a lot of fun.
Jamie: But I’ve got a question about this poster that I’ve just seen. I really like this poster. But we’ve called it the Leaky Mug, and the mug isn’t leaking. It’s fully, fully put together.
Eric: But it’s cracked. It’s cracked.
Andrew: It’s cracked at the bottom.
Jamie: Oh, yeah, it’s cracked! I just saw that.
Micah: It’s cracked with a lightning bolt.
Eric: You’re meant to believe that you’re looking at a leaky mug, which we had the smarts to not put liquid into. [laughs]
Jamie: So why is it not called the Cracked Mug?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Because they’re not TheCrackCauldron.org.
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: I feel like that was taken at some point. The early drug entrepreneurs owned the website.
Andrew: [in a stoner voice] “Welcome to the Crack Cauldron. We’ve got crackpot theories about Harry Potter…”
[Jamie laughs]
Eric: There you go. You tied it in.
Andrew: “… while we smoke crack.”
Jamie: That sounded alarmingly good.
Andrew: [laughs] I wonder if J.K. Rowling would go on the Crack Cauldron podcast. The Crack Mug.
Jamie: She’d be up for that. She’d be well up for that.
Andrew: [laughs] That’s all we’ve got to do. CrackCast.
Eric: I do like this design, though. I really… do you guys know who designed this? Was it someone we know?
Andrew: I think it was Kelly.
Eric: Kelly Egan?
Andrew: Yep.
Eric: Shout-out to her. She did a lot of art for us in the early stages.
Andrew: So more of these are from Facebook. Kat said, “Ah, the memories. This was my gateway podcast.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Speaking of drugs.
Eric: Speaking of crack!
Jamie: Speaking of drugs! Perfect!
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: “I love the bit where we heard Jamie, I think it was, singing ‘Everytime We Touch’ in Vegas.” That was a true Jamie classic moment.
Jamie: Man, that was insane. I’ve got a photo somewhere from that. Yeah, I think I blacked out for a couple of minutes during that or something.
Andrew: It’s true.
Jamie: I think I hit my head on the ceiling at some point. [laughs]
Eric: I think you did too, actually.
Micah: No, Jamie, the ceiling hit you.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. Classic Chuck Norris. Yeah, that was cool. I’ll tell you what, that was a nice hotel room as well.
Andrew: Jamie was obsessed with Cascada’s “Everytime We Touch,” and he bounced up – and I mean bounced – up and down on the bed.
Eric: Isn’t there a photo of him midair?
Jamie: Yeah, my eyes look wild.
Andrew: If you go deep in the Facebook, you can probably find it.
Jamie: I think it’s on there. I think it’s on there. And I remember we were at… it was that trip, but it wasn’t at that hotel. It was the one we were at before that, the Aladdin one, and we were outside when it was really hot near the pool, and that song came on, and I was like, “Oh, wow. This has come full circle here.”
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: But Andrew, you and Ben weren’t there because that was the time you guys were sleeping till like 11:00 a.m., and I was like, “Why don’t you come out? It’s hot and the pool’s nice.”
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: I think we all had a couple of arguments over that.
Andrew: I found the photo, Jamie. We’ll have to put that on MuggleCast’s post.
Jamie: Put it in the show notes.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so moving along, Russell said, “Jamie’s jokes.” Glad we got one in earlier.
Eric: Got a new one for you, Russell.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: Yeah. Hopefully you enjoyed this one, and you got it, unlike Andrew.
Andrew: Hopefully you’re up on your fish. Your fishes.
[Eric and Jamie laugh]
Andrew: Mallory says, “Finally meeting you all at Infinitus 2010.” Yeah, the Harry Potter conferences were very good. Carrie said, “Mine was your tour after Deathly Hallows. I got to meet you all in Pittsburgh.” Sarah said, “Don’t Let It Be July. Jamie’s underwear ending up in Andrew’s sister’s dresser.” Wow, I forgot about that. [laughs]
Jamie: I did.
[Micah laughs]
Jamie: How did that happen?
Andrew: Probably because we were doing your laundry at my house, and your underwear somehow got tossed into my sister’s laundry bin or something, and that was that.
Jamie: Mystery. Mystery. We’ll move on quickly.
Andrew: [laughs] Keaton said, “This was my gateway podcast, too. Thanks, guys. Random like.” I don’t know what that means. Oh, but his favorite or her favorite moment is “Andrew’s idea for an Astronomy Tower of Terror at Universal.”
Jamie: That is clever, Andrew.
Andrew: Thank you. I still stand by that idea.
Eric: Definitely.
Jamie: That would be good. That would be good.
Eric: Jamie, you haven’t been to Universal, have you?
Jamie: Oh, I have a long time ago with my family.
Andrew: With Wizarding World?
Eric: Was it since the Wizarding World?
Jamie: Oh, no, no.
Eric: Oh, you must see it.
Jamie: I know, I know, I know. I also haven’t been to the experience here either at Leavesden.
Eric: Oh, man, the Studio Tour.
Andrew: Oh, you’ve got to go to that.
Jamie: I know. I know, I know, I know.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: Rachel says, “The one that sticks out in my mind is when Andrew saying ‘Good Morning Hogwarts School’ to the tune of ‘Good Morning Baltimore.'”
Jamie: I remember, Andrew! You went through that craze of really liking Hairspray. It was all you could talk about. I remember that.
Andrew: Yep, yep. Yeah, that was an important summer for my sexuality, I feel.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: [singing] “Good morning, Hogwarts School!” Jasmine said, “Oh my God, when David Heyman destroyed Micah in Dueling Club.” There you go. Kara said, “That time Andrew accidentally said the F word, and he started a show out apologizing, and Matt goes, ‘Wait, what’s the F word? Is it fecal matter?'” [laughs] Okay.
Jamie: Weird.
Andrew: Gabriella says, “I love the show you did for the release of Deathly Hallows. I couldn’t go, but I loved listening to it from home. Wow, I can’t believe it’s been ten years! I remember the old days helped me go through so many things. It would be an extremely long post. To sum it up, you’re amazing. I love the show, and I’m so glad you continue to do it.” Thank you, Gabriella. There’s a really long one here. Did we want to read this, Micah?
Eric: It’s the last one. Let’s do it.
Andrew: Okay. Who wants to read it? Somebody else.
Jamie: Eric, shoot.
Eric: Not me. It mentions me. Don’t… not me.
Micah: Well, doesn’t it mention all of us?
Jamie: Micah, shoot.
Micah: All right, I’ll go. Jamie, let’s split it down the middle. All right.
Jamie: Or we could take a word each.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: Let’s try that.
Andrew: [imitating Jamie] “But…” [imitating Micah] “seriously…” [imitating Jamie] “MuggleCast…” No, go ahead.
Micah: Yep. All right, we also heard from Amanda Walters over on Facebook, and she said,
“MuggleCast, has it really only been ten years? It feels so much longer that you have been a part of my life. I can still remember listening to you all for the first time, a 17-year-old going through the final year of high school, about to find their place in the world, and that place was hard to find. There were times I wondered if it was worth looking for, but Harry Potter kept me going. through it all, I was never alone; I had you to talk to. Back in the days when I didn’t own an iPod and would download the show and burn it to a CD to play in my Discman.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Wow.
Micah: “You were my friends keeping me company through regular hospital stays, and you were the voices that inspired me to find more Harry Potter friends. Soon I was in Harry Potter meetup groups, ones I would one day go on to lead. As life settled into a regular nine to five day, I could always count on you to keep me awkwardly laughing on public transport. I did eventually get an iPod and promptly filled it with MuggleCast. Then the day came that I found I could thank at least one of you in person; MuggleCast was coming down under, and I did. I attended MuggleCast Down Under, Eric’s solo Aussie appearance. Seeing Eric in solo shows seemed to become the norm, as after years of listening to you all talk about different exciting events in America, I made the trip myself to Ascendio 2012. Eric would be there holding another solo show, and I was proud to help as official ‘slideshow button pusher.'”
Eric: Yes. She was excellent at that, by the way.
Micah: “In 2014, I would finally be assured that other MuggleCasters were not a figment of my imagination when I was able to meet Micah at LeakyCon. Coaching them through the ridiculous line for Gringotts was amusing. It was well worth waiting for.” And by the way, yes, she did an amazing cosplay as Bellatrix Lestrange, so to have Bellatrix with us as we went on the Gringotts ride for the first time…
Jamie: That’s cool. That’s cool.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: It was very, very cool.
“MuggleCast and I have been on an amazing journey together. We’ve grown, evolved, and flourished. The journey will never be done. Even as you grow quieter, there are memories and friends I’ll be forever grateful for. Thank you to everyone ever involved, people who submitted mail and Chicken Soup for the MuggleCast Soul, every editor and transcriber, but particularly thanks to Andrew, Micah, Eric, Laura, Jamie, Matt, Ben, Elysa, Kevin, and anyone else that ever graces the show, guest or otherwise. Lots of love to you all; looking forward to the future to come. Happy Birthday, MuggleCast.”
Andrew: Thank you, Amanda. That was really sweet.
Jamie: That was very nice. I liked that one. Thank you, Amanda. And thanks for allowing me to read half. I enjoyed that as well.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: Yeah, I was waiting for when Jamie was going to jump in.
Jamie: I was waiting for my turn.
Micah: Go ahead, Jamie.
[Andrew and Jamie laugh]
Eric: I will say, to be fair, Jamie joined me down under because he did a Make the Connection recorded segment – do you remember this, Jamie? – and I’ve got to tell you, the Melbournites really loved it.
Jamie: Really? Were they good? Were they on the money with it?
Eric: Yes. They racked their brains trying to make those ridiculous connections.
Jamie: Well, look, that was actually going to be one of my favorite moments as well that I was going to say, coming up with just ludicrous ones and seeing everyone struggle. There was an element of enjoyment there, guys. I’m not afraid to admit it.
[Everyone laughs]
Micah: But Jamie, you also mentioned Chuck Norris earlier. Didn’t we have a segment on the show with…?
Eric: Dumbledore Norris jokes, right?
Jamie: Yeah, Dumbledore facts. I enjoyed those a lot as well.
News
Andrew: So quickly to wrap up the show… of course, this has been a nontraditional show, but there have been a couple news items. Fantastic Beasts is going to be filming very, very, very soon, it seems like. There are sets going up at Leavesden; the cast has been coming together. Colin Farrell has joined the series as a character named Graves.
Eric: [whispers] Yes.
Andrew: And as usual with all these castings, we don’t really know anything about these characters, but pretty significant. Colin Farrell is a very well-known actor. He’s in True Detective right now, which wraps up on Sunday.
Eric: I’m really excited about Colin Farrell joining this. But again, this is difficult because we don’t know anything about the movie, but I think him adding to it is a good thing, can only be a good thing, because he’s a good actor.
Andrew: I’m picturing him as a Hagrid type. [laughs] Obviously not in size, but I don’t know. He just seems like he could play a grumbly, smoky wizard to me.
Eric: It’s really funny you say that; I can’t help but think of the movie that he’s in with Brendan Gleeson, who of course played Mad-Eye, called In Bruges. And Ralph Fiennes is also in it. Have any of you guys seen In Bruges?
Jamie: I haven’t. I’ve heard good things about it, though.
Eric: It’s incredible, but it’s also incredibly dark. It’s just the most dry, dark comedy you’ll ever find, but it’s incredibly funny. And if you want to see Harry Potter cast members acting alongside Colin Farrell, which is a good connection now that he’s been cast in Fantastic Beasts, highly recommend it. Both Ralph Fiennes and Brendan Gleeson do a great job in that. So does Colin Farrell.
Jamie: I’ll catch that, then.
Eric: Yeah, it’s probably my favorite Colin Farrell thing.
Andrew: Two other brief mentions: Somebody else got picked up named Jenn Murray, and Ezra Miller…
Eric: Ooh!
Andrew: … who actually costarred in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is very good, opposite Emma Watson, so kind of a little Harry Potter connection there. And then we talked about that open casting call on the last episode; they were looking for a young girl…
Eric: Yes.
Andrew: … and now she has been found. Again, though, the character’s name is Modesty, and the role went to a girl named Faith Wood-Blagrove.
Jamie: Hey, I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you who – is it Jenn Murray? – looks like. Who does she look like who’s been in Harry Potter?
Andrew: Evanna Lynch?
Jamie: Yeah!
Andrew: Yeah, she does a little bit, doesn’t she? I can see that.
Jamie: I think she really does. I think she really looks like her.
Andrew: Yeah, especially in that picture.
Eric: Well, maybe she’s… knowing that there’s a connection between Luna Lovegood and Newt Scamander; she ends up marrying his, what, grandson?
Andrew: Right, right.
Eric: I don’t know. Maybe there is a connection.
Jamie: Hey, I’ve got an unconnected question, because I’m viewing all these stories on Hypable, Andrew. When are you going to get infinite scroll? This is annoying. I’m scrolling down; I can’t even get to the next article.
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: Ohh.
Jamie: What is this old website?
Andrew: [laughs] We actually did try to set that up, but it wasn’t working too well, so… sorry.
Jamie: Get on it.
Andrew: Guess you’re going to have to go back to the home page like we’re living in the ’90s.
Jamie: Ahh, that’s disappointing.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I will say it feels good to actually have this little bit of discussion on current news, because we’re getting casting information for an upcoming Harry Potter film, which we know nothing about.
Andrew: Right.
Eric: It feels, in a way, like coming full circle, knowing that after ten years of Harry Potter podcasting, we’re getting back to some of it.
Jamie: There’s still news.
Eric: And some of the same types of news. I mean, movie casting… pretty soon we’ll have a trailer or… I mean, not pretty soon; it’s still got to film.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: But it’s just… all of that is coming, and it’s going… you’ll still have members of our generation who grew up with Harry for the first time, but then you’ll have a whole new generation as well of kids born in the ’90s on the Internet now, who are going to also be picking up our podcast. So I don’t know; it’s a really good place to be at ten years into the game, I think.
Andrew: Yeah, and I mentioned I was at a party last night, that I didn’t actually hate. I was kidding.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: But I was talking with a bunch of people who, of course, are big Harry Potter fans, and somebody a couple years older than me was showing me pictures; he’s about to get a Harry Potter tattoo. And just everybody was still talking about Harry Potter so passionately. I broke the news to somebody that Dumbledore was over 110 years old when he died. [laughs] People just still have really great conversations about Harry Potter, and people are still so passionate, so it’ll be really interesting to see what happens with Fantastic Beasts and how that all plays out. I’m still hesitant to get really excited, because of course, nothing will be able to match what the Harry Potter series was. I’m trying to picture a scenario in which Fantastic Beasts is going to have this epic villain, and these epic themes. I mean, we’ll see. We hope so, and we have faith in J.K. Rowling. She’s the screenwriter.
Jamie: It’ll be good. It’ll be good, but I think it’s dangerous for us to… I think it’s a healthy thing you’re doing, not trying to judge it in comparison to the books and the films, because it’s just going to be different, isn’t it? Good, but different.
Andrew: Yeah, yeah. So on that note, thank you, everybody, for listening. Special shout-out to, of course, all of the hosts over the past ten years.
Micah: Did you get voicemails or…?
Andrew: We did. We’re going to play them.
Micah: Oh, okay, they’re not questions. They’re just…
Andrew: Right, they’re messages, yeah. Thank you so much, everybody who’s listened over the past ten years. Of course, this isn’t a goodbye or anything; we’re still releasing a new episode every month. Jamie, thanks so much for coming on. It was so good to hear from you.
Jamie: This was fun.
Andrew: Oh, good.
Jamie: Should we do this again sometime?
Micah: Yes.
Andrew: Yeah, maybe!
Jamie: Oh, maybe. [laughs]
Andrew: I was kind of unsure if you were even alive.
Eric: Don’t call us. We’ll call you.
Jamie: Oh, well, so you weren’t sure if I was alive. Well, thanks for checking. The first thing I hear is, “Can you come on a show?”
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: He’s just using you for your voice. That’s what it is.
Andrew: Exactly.
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m fine. Thanks for checking.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: I enjoyed that a lot. Let’s do that again.
Andrew: Jamie, by the way – we should have mentioned this – is engaged now, so congratulations to you, Jamie.
Eric: Congratulations.
Jamie: Thank you very much.
Micah: Yeah, you’re going to buy a house, I heard?
Jamie: Yep. It’s all happening.
Andrew: Congratulations on the house.
Jamie: So adult, isn’t it?
Andrew: You have an extra room there for the MuggleCast studio, right?
Jamie: Absolutely. I need to get the soundproofing and the popping screens and the mics, and then I just need an invite.
Andrew: [laughs] You know you’re always welcomed on the show.
Jamie: I’ll take you up on that.
Andrew: Okay, good. All right. And anything else to say, guys?
[pause]
Andrew: No? Okay.
Eric: Here’s to another ten.
Jamie: I agree. I think… here’s to another ten. It feels so natural, from my point of view, to be back on. Even though I haven’t been on for ages, it feels really… just being on it has… I’ve remembered stuff that we talked about when we were going through the high times of it, so it’s amazing to be back, and it brings up all these memories. So thanks, everyone, for listening, now and in the past, and hopefully into the future. It’s great to be back. I really mean that.
Andrew: I think one of the reasons we still do this is because it still works really well. As you just said, it felt very natural, and this podcast does, and I can’t say that for every podcast I’ve done. [laughs] So all right. Well, thank you again, everybody, so much. It means the world to us that you’ve been listening for ten years and that we’ve been there for you guys, being your Harry Potter friends. We will always all be Harry Potter friends, and it’s just beautiful. So now we’ll listen to some great messages from listeners to close out the show.
Jamie: But wait, are we not doing the famous ending?
Andrew: No, I was just about to.
Jamie: Oh, right. Okay. Sorry, I got worried there.
[Andrew laughs]
Jamie: I thought things had moved on.
Andrew: No, no, no. We’ve changed. You don’t like the show anymore, do you, now that we don’t do that outro? So I’m Andrew Sims.
Eric: I’m Eric Scull.
Micah: I’m Micah Tannenbaum.
Jamie: And I’m Jamie Lawrence.
Andrew: Beautiful. Look at that.
Jamie: That felt great.
Andrew: We’ll see everybody next time for Episode 282. Goodbye!
Eric, Jamie, and Micah: Bye.
Listener Voicemails
[“Harry’s Wondrous World” plays]
Caller 1: Hey, MuggleCast. My name is Amy, and I’m calling from New England. And I just wanted to say, first of all, congratulations, and my memory of the show is I was really young when you guys first started, so I didn’t actually listen, but I remember one of my best friends did, and she’d always tell me what you guys had talked about on the show. So I was in eighth grade when I started really listening every week. I remember that was the year my grandma passed away also, so it was really nice to just be able to go listen to some old episodes, and every week have a new one, just because it was something I loved so much, and you guys always made me laugh. So now I’m a freshman in college, so it’s been about six years, so MuggleCast all the way through high school. And on all my rereads of the books and listening to your show, it definitely reminded me why I loved Harry Potter in the first place. So thanks for being such an awesome show, and I can’t wait to hear more from you guys. Bye.
Caller 2: Hello, this is Christina from Texas. I wanted to congratulate you all on ten years of MuggleCast. I’ve listened since the beginning, and it’s really changed how I read literature, so much so that I study now literature in college, and getting a master’s degree in English literature. Thank you for all the great memories and just being given the chance to listen all these years, and hopefully there’ll be many more. Thank you.
Caller 3: Hi, MuggleCast. My name is Amy, and this is the tenth year of me listening to MuggleCast. I’ve been listening to MuggleCast since I was eight years old, so that means I just turned 18. But Harry Potter has meant so much to me. I was always that kid in the back of the room who was reading. I learned how to read at a very, very young age. I was reading Harry Potter when I was five or six, and it just is a really, really amazing, amazing series for me, and I’ve really grown up with it, and it’s just helped me throughout my entire schooling career and just through everything. And listening all the time to MuggleCast just made me feel not so much alone, because I was always that little girl who was reading really advanced books for my age. And yeah, it just was great. So thank you, MuggleCast, and thank you, Harry Potter.
Caller 4: Hey, my name is Neely from Puerto Rico. I love your show. These ten years have been awesome being part of you, being part of Harry Potter fandom. I love the show, and I’ll spend ten more years. Have a good day.
Caller 5: Hey, MuggleCasters. My name is Jasmine, and I’m calling from British Columbia, Canada. I was really late to the Harry Potter fandom, and didn’t listen to my first episode of MuggleCast until 2010. I never would have realized how complex the books are without MuggleCast and their infamous Chapter by Chapter segment. Whenever I have a bad day, I always pull on my headphones and listen to an old episode, which instantly makes me feel better. MuggleCast has also led me to other amazing podcasts as well. I will always hold MuggleCast and really look forward to the upcoming episodes with Fantastic Beasts getting underway. Thanks so much, and happy great ten years of podcasting. Thanks so much!
Caller 6: Hey guys, this is Emily from Montana. I just wanted to say thank you. You guys are the reason that I understand that there is a Harry Potter fandom. I felt alone until I really, really started listening to you guys and understood that there are people out there just as crazy about the series as I am, and thank you so much for ten years. You guys are amazing.
Caller 7: Hi, this is Holly from McDonough, Georgia, just calling to say how much I love MuggleCast and how much you guys have meant to me throughout the past eight years that I have listened to the program. I would like to say that y’all totally got me through the hard times of medical school. Thanks, guys.
Caller 8: Hi, it’s Brittany from Florida. I always enjoyed listening to you guys during the summers, while I was working at a greenhouse, also while I did my workouts and on my road trips. I’ll be at the Harry Potter park this weekend, actually, so I’m super hyped about Harry Potter at the moment. I’ve gone through all of your episodes twice now, so I just want to say thanks for everything. Been a great ten years.
Caller 9: Hey, MuggleCast. It’s Catherine from Atlanta, Georgia, and I just wanted to say congrats on ten years. I’ve been here with you for most of them – all of them, really – but so long that I remember downloading those first probably 50 or so episodes on my dial-up Internet, so that was an adventure in itself to download an hour-long – sometimes more – podcast on dial-up Internet. So have a great day, bye.
Caller 10: Hi, MuggleCasters. My name is Sarah, and I’m from the San Francisco Bay area. I started listening to MuggleCast actually five years ago this month, so that’s pretty cool. It was the summer after I turned 11, and my sister and I traveled to the Wizarding World, and she introduced me to MuggleCast on the flight over, and I’ve loved it ever since. You guys are amazing. I’ve definitely grown up with Harry Potter. Since I’m now 16, I was young when all of the books and most of the movies came out, and I had much older siblings who went to most of the midnight premieres of the books and movies, and I actually went to the last two movie midnight premieres, which is cool. I think Harry Potter is such a special story and fandom that is like no other, and I think that’s why it holds such a special place in my heart. I fell in love with the story and the characters from a young age, and it was one of the things that shaped my childhood. Ask any of my friends what my favorite book series is, and they’ll know right away. Thank you, MuggleCast, for your dedication and love of Harry Potter and for your wonderful personalities. Happy tenth anniversary. Thanks, guys.
Caller 11: Hey, guys, it’s Joe from Massachusetts calling. This is pretty weird. It’s been ten years, and I’ve been listening since I was 13, I believe, back in 2007, so yeah, it’s been eight years of me listening to MuggleCast. I’m going to be turning 21 next month, so that’s pretty crazy. And I’m still a huge Harry Potter fan to this day. It’s just weird that you guys have still kept the podcast going this long. Even if all the original members aren’t still recording every episode, we know that you guys still love doing what you do. And Eric and Micah actually introduced me to Game of Thrones through Game of Owns, and I listen to that too, so thanks, guys. Congratulations on ten years, and Happy Birthday, MuggleCast.
Caller 12: Hi, guys. My name’s Kara, and I’m from Reading, Pennsylvania. Like many others, MuggleCast led me to my involvement with MuggleNet, and I’m proud to be an editor for Alohomora. I’ve always wanted you guys to know what an impact you had on my life as a teenager. During the summer of 2007, my mom died after a long battle of cancer. I was only 17, and felt really alone, but I remember that I could always count on MuggleCast to cheer me up and make me laugh. You all became like friends to me during the darkest point of my life, and I’ll be forever grateful. You guys should be so proud to have created such an amazing show and impacted the fandom in such a meaningful way. Congrats on ten years, and as long as you keep recording, I’ll keep listening. Thank you so much for everything.
Caller 13: Hey, MuggleCast. My name is Katie, from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. I just wanted to say that I love you guys, have loved you for ten years. You guys are my favorite podcast, and I want to congratulate you guys on ten years. Thanks.
Caller 14: Hi, this is Grace from Asheville, North Carolina. I’m just calling to say that I just want to extend a really big thank you and a heartfelt congrats on the ten years. And MuggleCast was always the best friend that I needed when I was a teenager, and now that I’m a young adult, it’s one of the best memories of my life. So thank you, guys, for always being there.
Caller 15: Hey, MuggleCast, I’m Kelly from Massachusetts. And MuggleCast for me has been a way to think intellectually about Harry Potter, and has shown me that I’m not the only crazy Harry Potter nerd in the world. So thank you guys for the ten years that you helped me with this. I hope for ten more. Bye!