Transcript for MuggleCast Episode #332, The Hollow Goblet
Show Intro
[Show music plays]
Andrew Sims: This is MuggleCast, the Harry Potter podcast discussing everything about J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. This week’s episode is brought to you by Casper Mattress.
[Ad break]
Andrew: Welcome to MuggleCast Episode 332. I’m Andrew.
Eric Scull: I’m Eric.
Micah Tannenbaum: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: Eric and I are together this week in Chicago.
Eric: Hey, let’s hold hands, Andrew.
Andrew: [laughs] We are sh… oh, he just touched me!
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Eric has opened up his home to me, and his landlord has opened up his home to us, for us to record in.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: It’s amazing.
Andrew: Because Eric’s roommate is moving out.
Micah: How did you get to keep the apartment? That’s what I want to know.
Eric: It was a series of Game of Thrones-ian Martin-ian tricks, and I…
Andrew: He killed her.
Eric: I plead the fifth.
Micah: Wow.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Eric, that is just unacceptable.
Eric: No, actually, what it was was she got married, and her husband and her did not want me as a roommate, so they moved out.
Andrew: That makes sense.
Eric: Yeah, that’s what it was.
Andrew: Not just because it’s you, just…
Eric: That’s me; the third wheel.
[Andrew and Micah laugh]
Micah: Do you at least get to keep the dog? Or is that going with…?
Eric: No! It’s not my dog, dude. [laughs]
Micah: Well, I enjoyed the time I spent with the dog a couple months ago. He kept me company while I was stuck trying to get back from Salt Lake City to New York.
Eric: That’s right. That’s right.
Andrew: I’m about to move out here next month, and Eric has been showing me the town, and he’ll have a new dog to hang out with.
Eric: Yeah, Brooklyn!
Andrew: Woohoo!
Eric: In Chicago.
Andrew: We were at Market Days here in Chicago last night, which if you hear the name Market Days, you’re like, “Oh, okay, some nice farmers’ market festival. You can go and pick up carrots and lettuce.”
Eric: Well, that’s pretty much what Market Days really is, except none of the men are wearing shirts.
Andrew: [laughs] Right, it’s essentially Chicago Pride 2.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: And so we went knowing what it was, of course, and we passed a booth… so all these… so it’s called Market Days because all these local vendors – and big brands – are out and pushing their stuff, and Eric came across… what was… do you remember the name of it? The book one?
Eric: No. I have the receipt for it, though.
Andrew: It’s a vendor who has all these old books, hardcover books, and she cuts out the center of them to make kind of a secret hiding place. It could be a secret hiding place, or it could be just… it’s just kind of a cool thing. So we see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows there, and we’re with, actually, a new friend of ours and a MuggleCast listener, V, and I’m like, “Oh, look, Deathly Hallows.” And I turned to V and I’m like, “Have you heard of that?”, jokingly, and he’s like, “Oh, well…” I was like, “Dude, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m trying to mess with you.” But then Eric spots Goblet of Fire.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. And apparently… this woman was very pleased; she said Harry Potter was doing very well at this festival. These were the last two copies of… she didn’t say if she had brought all seven Harry Potter books, but yes, her trade is she hollows out books, creates a nice little hiding spot, and she said that Harry Potter had done particularly well that day.
Micah: So wait, so she is responsible for defacing multiple copies of Harry Potter?
Eric: I had that same issue at first.
Andrew: Well, here’s the craziest part; this is what cracks me up. So Eric buys Goblet of Fire. And then we turn to Eric and we’re like, “So how much was that?” It was $26. [laughs] So Eric paid $26 for a defaced copy of Goblet of Fire.
Eric: The funniest part is we were talking about it this morning, about going to talk about it on this show, and I thought, “Well, I could justify the purchase because if it’s $26 for a hollowed-out Goblet of Fire, but it would fit right in on my bookshelf, and so I could covertly put my US passport, my social security card, my birth certificate, and it would just fit on my bookshelf with all my other Potter books. Nobody would think twice.” But now that I’m advertising, now that I’m broadcasting this on the podcast…
Micah: I was just going to say, you just told thousands of people the fact that should they ever be in Chicago and look to mug you, they should look for your passport and your social security card on your bookshelf.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Now and only now have I purchased a $26 thing that I can never use, because talking about it is the worst part.
Andrew: But I said to Eric, “You could still use it for something; just don’t put extremely important valuables in it.” And nobody’s going to rob you.
Eric: I don’t know.
Andrew: But I also thought, “Wow, isn’t that a smart idea? You can go to Goodwill, buy these books for five bucks, then take a knife to them, [laughs] and then sell them for five times the price.”
Eric: Well, no, I mean, the thing is… let’s not make a negative comment on this woman’s craftsmanship. I think…
Andrew: Oh, no, it’s good.
Eric: Because they weren’t just hollowed-out pages; they were actually… so in the hollow she then put… she felt-lined the sides.
Andrew: Ohh.
Eric: And it’s got little gems, and it’s shiny and stuff on the inside. So it’s really like a cloth that’s in the… but it’s still a hollowed-out square, so it’s not just like the pages are still there, and…
Andrew: Yeah, I get what you’re saying.
Eric: It’s a little bit more…
Micah: All right, you keep trying to justify it, Eric. You’re doing an amazing job here.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: No, I mean, I’m just joking, but I just find it interesting that cutting out most of the text and most of the story actually increases the book’s value and…
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Marketability. It’s fun. I mean, Etsy shop owners know this all the time with that stuff; there’s people who make the paper flowers out of Harry Potter book quotes, so when you’re looking at a bouquet of flowers, you can just slightly read down the petals, and it’s like, “Oh, name that chapter. Name that scene.” The coolest part about this book, though, was she didn’t cut out the first 20 or 30 pages or so, so you can still read Chapter 1 of Goblet of Fire. [laughs]
Andrew: So she hooks you in and…
Eric: Yeah, you hook in, and then you have to get another copy because this one is…
Andrew: [laughs] Buy another copy.
Micah: Well, what you can do now, though, is go to Cursed Child and take out the Goblet of Fire references and put them in there instead. How’s that?
Andrew and Eric: Yeah.
Andrew: There you go. That’s a great idea, yeah.
News
Andrew: All right, well, on today’s episode, we are going to be talking about how Harry Potter has changed pop culture. We’re going to have a main discussion on that, and we got some responses from our supporters on Patreon. First, one news item; bit of a slow news week. Forbes always does these lists of the highest paid this, the highest paid that, highest paid actors, blah, blah, blah. J.K. Rowling is the highest paid author of 2017. It’s the first time she’s been at the top of this list in a decade, since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out. So what catapulted her to number one?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Well, you were clear to name it – oh wait, no, you didn’t – on the Hypable article.
Andrew: I trolled the hell out of Cursed Child on this one. I wrote, “J.K. Rowling is 2017’s Highest Paid author, thanks to Fantastic Beasts and that other one.” [laughs] But yeah, so Cursed Child. I think Cursed Child was probably the one that really helped her get to number one, because with Fantastic Beasts, you didn’t need to buy the movie script. Of course, with Cursed Child, it being marketed as the eighth story, everybody wanted to buy it at their midnight release parties. I do wonder how much percentage-wise… I bet Fantastic Beasts was maybe 10%, the script, and then Cursed Child was other 90%, but…
Eric: I just find it so interesting because she didn’t write the play, so she shouldn’t even be credited as an author on that play. And how is this money working, where it’s coming to her, making her the richest author…
Andrew: Right. [laughs]
Eric: … when in fact, it’s John Tiffany and Jack Thorne who should be on this list?
Andrew: Wouldn’t that be funny if they were number one and J.K. Rowling wasn’t?
Eric: Yeah, I mean, that would make sense, unless it’s under somehow the umbrella of J.K. Rowling, and then that’s also how the… but she actually wrote the script for Fantastic Beasts, so selling the book form of the Fantastic Beasts scripts makes all the sense to credit her. But with the Cursed Child, how does that money still go to her? I don’t know.
Micah: Yeah, I’m calling fake news on this article. I don’t think it’s accurate.
Andrew: Why?
Micah: Well, for exactly what Eric just said; she’s not the author of Cursed Child, so she shouldn’t be credited with the sales of it.
Eric: Maybe J.K. Rowling wrote Cursed Child under the pseudonyms John Tiffany and Jack Thorne.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Maybe in fact she just hired actors to pretend that they’re them, and it’s another Cormoran Strike series sort of thing.
Andrew: “Hey, James Patterson, are you the number one highest paid author this year?” “Oh, no, it was Jack Thorne and John Tiffany.” “Who the hell is that?”
Micah: Well, is this list just for new releases?
Andrew: Yeah, so James Patterson… so J.K. Rowling was number one at $95 million. James Patterson was number two at $87 million. Jeff Kinney, this guy… what a life this guy has. He writes these Diary of a Wimpy Kid books…
Eric: Oh, yeah.
Andrew: … and they’re just insanely popular with middle schoolers, so he’s at number three with $21 million. Then Dan Brown, Stephen King, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, Paula Hawkins… E.L. James, which is interesting because I don’t think she published any new books this year. And then tied for 10 are Danielle Steele and Rick Riordan, the author of Percy Jackson.
Eric: Ooh.
Andrew: So yeah. I mean, this could be the last time she’s ever at number one again, unless she writes another play, or writes that encyclopedia…
Eric: Or has other people to write the play for her.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Or they’re Robert Galbraith novels, though I don’t think they come close to the sales of anything Potter.
Eric: Probably not.
Andrew: Right, right.
MuggleCast’s 12th Birthday
Andrew: So you had in here birthday gifts? What…?
Eric: Birthday gifts? Oh, birthday gifts! Well, we got birthday gifts. The MuggleCast…
Micah: I thought you were talking about for me.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: No, we neglected to mention on the last episode of MuggleCast that the very day that that same episode of MuggleCast was airing was our actual 12th birthday.
Andrew: Yes!
Eric: So August 7, 2017 was the 12th birthday for MuggleCast, and even though we may have overlooked it, our listeners sure did not. And I went to – you guys know because I texted you – I went to the MuggleCast P.O. box on… it was Monday, because I got the text message saying my packages had arrived. And I was like, “Who? What? Who ordered packages? What’s going on there?” And sure enough, our listeners gave us so many really, really awesome presents for our birthday, so we got birthday presents. So I just want to shout out to Sophie, who wrote a very lovely thank you letter. Believe it or not, we got beer.
Andrew: We did. Not just any beer.
Micah: Did you try it? The Pukwudgie beer?
Eric: Not yet, not yet. We’re going to try the Pukwudgie beer.
Micah: Please do.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Or bring it to Orlando.
Andrew: We would’ve had them right now, but it’s a little early still, and I’m still hungover from Market Days.
Eric: Yeah. So our friend Kenny M., who’s a MuggleCast listener, patron as well, got the idea from Shannon, another Patreon listener, who was mentioning this brewery in Massachusetts called Down the Road, and they serve the Pukwudgie American Pale Ale. And so when I went to the P.O. Box and opened this box, [laughs] there were just four beers just in the box, shipped priority mail to us.
Andrew: And he totally lied when the post person said, “Is there anything liquid, fragile, hazardous?” [laughs]
Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah. I don’t know how they did it.
Andrew: But good, good for breaking the rule.
Eric: But also, we heard from Becky, Bernard, and Kevin, and she thanked us. She thanked us, sent me some sweets, sent Micah a replacement Ravenclaw book…
Andrew: So nice.
Eric: … and pledged to re-donate to Millennial and MuggleCast Patreons. “PS: Bernard and Kevin are my cats.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: So thank you, Becky.
Andrew: Yeah, she was really thoughtful sending you a new book, Micah.
Micah: Yeah, no, I have to say thank you. It’s going to go right on my shelf. I’m going to throw the other one in the garbage, or I’m going to burn it…
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: … or maybe I’ll hollow out the middle and I’ll try and sell it down in the town square for 30 bucks.
Eric: Oh my God.
Andrew: I hear they’re a good place to put your social security number.
Micah: Yeah. But that is very nice; thank you very much.
Eric: Yes. And we want to thank all of our listeners who thought of us around this time, birthday. Very, very special. And our final shout-out has to go to Cherise, who we had on last week’s episode, actually. According to her, she says, “Congrats on podcasting for 12 years. I had started work on these guys -“ we’ll let you know what that means “- a couple of days before I got the email from Andrew, so it is pure chance that I was working on them before then, but I hope you guys like them. Thanks again for the amazing experience. Keep up the great job.” She sent us fully knitted Dobby the house-elf…
Andrew: Three of them.
Eric: … or rather Dobbies the house-elf, and they’re completely… I don’t know how she did it. They’re completely knitted, and they’re wearing tea cozies, which are also completely knitted, and come off, so you can undress Dobby if you want to.
Andrew: Yeah, she did a great job with this.
Eric: But it’s really insanely funny and hilarious. And we haven’t tweeted this out yet, but they look amazing. She sent little signs for them to hold; they’re double-sided. One says, “I support SPEW,” and the other side says, “Dobby is a free elf.” But she sent us each our own knitted Dobby the house-elf!
Andrew: Thank you so much, Cherise. By the way, what cracks me up is Eric always opens the gifts from the P.O. Box at the UPS store, which… [laughs] He always sends us pictures of the stuff and we see the UPS store in the background, and I’m just thinking, why do you do that? Are you trying to show off for the employees?
Eric: No, well, the employees there know me. It’s super funny; one of them is also a Harry Potter fan, and so she’s really interested when I get a package, what’s in it. But no, there’s a very cool little shelf thing that I can just open the package there. And you know this about me; I have no chill. I can’t take a box the half a mile to my home.
Andrew: All right. Well, we can’t wait to have those Dobbies.
Micah: I think you’re trying to impress her, honestly, Eric. I think that’s what it is.
Andrew: I think so too, Micah. I think he’s trying to show off a little bit. That’s okay. That’s cool. Thank you, everybody. We really do appreciate it. It’s awesome to continue doing MuggleCast 12 years down the line now. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.
Micah: And my birthday is only in a few days, so if you feel like sending more stuff, please do.
Andrew: You’re also turning 12, right?
Micah: Yeah, that’s right.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: I’m just joking. I’m just joking. No need to send anything.
Eric: Oh, your birthday is not in a couple days?
Micah: No, no, it is, but when I said about sending stuff, you don’t… nobody needs to do that.
Andrew: [laughs] Okay.
Main Discussion: How Harry Potter changed pop culture
Andrew: On today’s episode, we are going to be talking about pop culture, how Harry Potter has influenced pop culture and the Internet. We have some interesting things to talk about there, but first we have to take a moment to tell you about this week’s sponsor, Casper Mattresses.
[Ad break]
Andrew: So on today’s episode… by the way, I slept on Eric’s mattress last night. Not a Casper mattress, but a comfortable one.
Eric: Oh, okay.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: That’s all right. Good. I’m glad you slept well.
Andrew: We spooned and everything, Micah. It was great.
Eric: I took the couch.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: Maybe you can do the same in Orlando.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Oh, great. Micah wants the second double bed to himself. That’s how that works.
Andrew: No, no, Eric and I can sleep together in Orlando.
Eric: Hashtag MuggleNet Live.
Andrew: We can share a bed.
Eric: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.
Andrew: No, here.
Eric: Oh.
Andrew: You don’t have to go sleep on the couch.
Eric: No, the couch is great, though. I never get an opportunity to sleep on my couch.
Andrew: That’s CasperCouches.com.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: So we want to talk about how Harry Potter has changed pop culture. Where do we want to start here? There’s so many angles we can go. I guess… let’s just start off with the bare bones: What has Harry Potter explicitly changed about pop culture? Not necessarily the Internet; we’ll get to that.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, I’ve noticed – as I’m sure we all have – just in growing prevalence, nerds are normal. Nerds are normal. And while Harry Potter can’t take the entire credit for that, the pop culture and the way that we relate to fantasy novels, movies, books, film, TV – everything – has changed completely since… in the 20 years since Harry Potter has been around, so that’s a huge trend. And you could definitely view it through the lens of Harry Potter and how… I mean, Harry Potter simultaneously made books cool again, and also gave rise to some of the most well-trafficked fansites and fan podcasts and fan productions on the Internet. It’s kind of cool.
Micah: Yeah, and just to go along those lines, a couple of comments that our patrons made. We asked this question over on Patreon, and I’m summarizing a little bit, but to go off of what you said, Eric, Becca Watson used the phrase “normalizing nerd culture,” which I thought was interesting. And then Roger, who notes that he’s one of our older listeners, he’s a journalist who’s been covering Harry Potter from 1998, and two things stand out to him: “Harry Potter made reading cool,” as you mentioned, “as it may never have been since Dickens.” That’s going back a little bit.
[Eric laughs]
Micah: And second, “The idea of mass fandom around a book series and all its spinoffs was unprecedented.” He has two kids, 26 and 22, who have aged out of Potter, but he still follows it keenly, and was surprised every week that MuggleCasters find something fresh and insightful to talk about.
Eric: Aw.
Andrew: Thanks. Yeah, well, on the point of reading, I think that’s one of the things you hear most from people who started reading Harry Potter, that Harry Potter helped them develop a genuine love of reading, which they probably never would have otherwise. Because when you were in elementary school or middle school, you had to read books, and of course… look, obviously, there’s a ton of amazing books out there that kids should read and enjoy, but Harry Potter just struck something in all of us that inspired us to continue reading beyond Harry Potter.
Eric: Yeah, it’s almost like a how-to on good literature, Harry Potter is. You get a couple really well-rounded characters, some humor, a really good sense of how to write and construct a novel, and it pays off leaps and bounds. And then a little bit of fantasy, too; little bit of escapism thrown in there, but with some real stakes and heart, I think, is what it is. I think Harry Potter, it was very clear that the author cared about what she was writing, and in turn, we cared about it. And that was a really good way for pop culture Internet to start off the Internet age, was with a book series that is so well-loved.
Andrew: Yeah. A couple of people who are listening live are wondering how that guy’s kids aged out of Harry Potter. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, I was laughing about that, actually. I’m 29; I could run laps around his kids.
Andrew: I definitely know people who were more into Harry Potter ten years ago than they were now. I mean, of course; that’s natural when you grow up. Things change, your interests change, your priorities in life change, so you’re not tracking the latest news or listening to a Harry Potter podcast every week.
Eric: We had five or six other cohosts, I think, that would all fit into this category. [laughs]
Andrew: Yeah. Well, that’s actually… I’m just thinking about Jamie. Jamie still loves Harry Potter to death, of course, and he knows how much Harry Potter has done for him, but he’s not checking MuggleNet for the latest news anymore. [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: And yeah, because you just… like I said, your priorities in life change. So I get that.
Micah: Yeah. Leave Roger alone, okay?
Andrew: [laughs] Come on, Roger, get your kids back into it. I wonder, though, if Roger’s kids saw Fantastic Beasts, because why wouldn’t you want to go see a new Wizarding World movie?
Eric: I am so surprised by how many people I talk to that haven’t seen the new Fantastic Beasts. I can’t believe it.
Andrew: Really?
Eric: Yeah, people who are genuinely… I’ll have a conversation with them about Harry Potter and how much they like it, and I’ll be like, “Well, you know the Fantastic Beasts movie,” because I’m talking about it, and they’re like, “Oh, I haven’t seen that yet.” Or they’ll ask what MuggleCast talks about these days, and I’ll say, “Oh, you know the Fantastic Beasts film?” And they’re like, “Ah, I still haven’t seen that.”
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Like, how do you…? Get on it! You got the memo. You know it’s the Harry Potter world, written by the same author.
Andrew: Yeah, people… but still, it’s sort of like Lord of the Rings versus The Hobbit. If you love The Lord of the Rings, you’re not necessarily dying to see The Hobbit, I don’t think.
Eric: Sure.
Andrew: Movie-wise, I’m talking about. I guess that may not be always true. But I feel like… in the case of my sister, she’s seen all the Harry Potter movies, but has not seen Fantastic Beasts.
Eric: I think we get desensitized, too, to our own impressions when pop culture… when something becomes so marketable as Harry Potter, we… you ever watch TV and realize after you’re watching a show on TV for an hour that you didn’t even really barely notice the commercials?
Andrew: Right.
Eric: Those commercials are all designed to get your attention, but we just tune it out. I feel like people have gotten that way with new Harry Potter stuff, and maybe we’ll talk about that a little later, about how the Internet freaks out.
Micah: You think so, though? I would disagree with that, because I don’t think it’s to the point of being overwhelming. I don’t think it’s constantly in the news, at least. And we all podcast; we all pay attention to it. I don’t think it is out there beating you over the head like some other things are.
Eric: Well, I mean, anytime… all it takes is a couple of clickbait articles that aren’t as promising as they sound for me to turn off and want to turn off all of Harry Potter ever. Every time Jo sneezes, somebody misinterprets it as a big reveal, and Buzzfeed has it, and HuffPost has it, and all of a sudden the Daily Mail is reporting it, and it’s going out into print publications in the real world about J.K. Rowling’s misquotation.
Andrew: Well, but you forget that’s how she actually accidentally revealed that Dumbledore was gay. She sneezed that reveal. [laughs]
Eric: No, she flat out… give her some credit.
Andrew: [fake sneeze] “Dumbledoresgay.”
Eric: Give her some credit. She was…
Andrew: [laughs] Kidding. I’m kidding.
Eric: The first thing she asked was, “How old are you?” to that kid. Yeah, but I just think… yeah, it’s pretty sensationalized, the popularity of Harry Potter. It might be difficult for some people to grasp how extensive… how something could actually exist and be as relevant and awesome as it was 20-25 years ago, so maybe that also gives people an aversion and they try and turn off. But in addition to that, Harry Potter, how it changes and how we’re continually interacting with it is… I guess it is an endurance trial for some of us.
Andrew: Cody also said he honestly thinks that Potter helped make our generation very liberal.
Eric: They did a study on that, didn’t they? Recently?
Andrew: Yeah, I was just going to say, I don’t have the data in front of me, but there have been studies showing that people who have read Harry Potter understand compassion.
Eric: And dictatorship. There was legitimately a study. One of the universities did a study that said Harry Potter readers specifically understand the dangers of dictators and are less likely to vote Trump.
Andrew: Really?
Eric: Yeah, that really came out before the election.
Andrew: Yeah, I mean, if you think about that… one of my favorite pieces – I guess you can call it art – is that statue in the Ministry of Magic, where you see the statue that says “Magic is Might,” I believe it was? And somebody’s standing on top of it and all the Muggles are suppressed underneath the stone, and that just really spoke to me. That’s at the Harry Potter Studio Tour, by the way. But yeah, I would agree; I do find that most people I know… it could just be my bubble, but I do know most Harry Potter fans are liberal, politically speaking. We do have a friend, Kevin, who is a Republican. [laughs] Still loves Harry Potter.
Eric: That guy’s an anomaly in general.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: This was Time Magazine, by the way. Time Magazine on July 20, 2016. Headline, “Harry Potter Readers More Likely to Dislike Donald Trump: Study.” “The study, which will be published in the political science and politics journal called PS…” It was University of Pennsylvania. Hey, shout out to Pennsylvania. “… said that readers might see parallels between Trump’s political style and the books’ villain, Lord Voldemort.” That’s the other thing about these books, okay? Because there’s so much in them that as you grow with them, there’s more things that you can take out upon further reading, and pop culture… that’s new to culture, to have something that’s so multifaceted, I think, at least. You know how many movies or even TV shows were aiming so high that not just to hook viewers or readers on the first go round, but every subsequent go round? Harry Potter does that. And I’m not sure there was art in pop culture before then that was really designed or capable of handling that bandwidth.
Andrew and Micah: Yeah.
Micah: And I would just say liberal, too, could be interpreted as accepting. I think generally, the fan community as a whole is extremely accepting of all kinds of people, and I think that is pretty commonplace when you’re bringing together people around a common cause, regardless of what their backgrounds may be, and I think the Potter community as a whole has sort of been a beacon for that.
Eric: Definitely.
Andrew: There’s one more we highlighted here; JY noted that Harry Potter was a gateway fandom. That’s borrowing from the term “gateway drug.” If maybe you joined the Harry Potter fandom and you really liked the community, so you were like, “Oh, well, are there communities for other passions I have?” Whether it’s Star Wars or something very obscure, you can really find on the Internet – and I guess this will transition into the Internet side of this discussion – the Internet, you can find a fandom, a community for anything, especially on Tumblr. “F yeah: insert fandom here.”
Micah: Yeah, and fandoms existed prior to, even online, but I think – which we’ll get into – Potter really caught the wave of the Internet unlike any other fandom before it. And before we move on, I wanted to pull up this episode – I finally found it – Episode 162, because we were just talking about politics, and we spent an entire episode drawing several comparisons between the politics of the real world and the wizarding world, and we talked about everything from racism to ethnic cleansing to Nazism to corruption, and biased media and educational reform. So if people want to take a look back – maybe I’ll even go listen to that episode again – it’s probably pretty timely, given everything going on in today’s society. That was Episode 162.
Eric: That’s almost exactly half our podcast ago.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: 166 would have been half our podcast to go, so that’s crazy.
Andrew: So like Micah said – Micah, I like that term you used – Harry Potter “rode the wave” of the Internet. The Internet was coming up at the same time that Harry Potter was. Fandoms like Star Wars were around before the Internet, so they weren’t necessarily… they weren’t growing simultaneously. Harry Potter really helped develop the idea of a fansite, which we’re going to talk a lot more about a little later. But so since the Internet and Harry Potter were coming up at the same time, it’s a little hard to say how Harry Potter exactly impacted the Internet.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: But it is fair to say that the Internet has directly impacted Harry Potter. We all know each other thanks to the Internet. A lot of people… MuggleCast exists thanks to the Internet. All the websites do. Since Harry Potter – and this goes back to earlier in the discussion – it wasn’t necessarily cool at first.
Eric: Right.
Andrew: It took a while. In order to find fellow Harry Potter fans, you had to look on the Internet. And for a lot of us… I’m 28 right now; when I first started looking on the Internet for Harry Potter stuff, I was finding fansites like MuggleNet, and I think there’s one called Harry Potter Fan Zone. Some very obscure ones that I used to absolutely adore. I used to think their designs and just the communities were so cool. I made my own Harry Potter fansite before I got involved with MuggleNet; the first one was called Harry Potter’s House, and then I forgot to renew the domain.
Eric: Aww.
Andrew: So I had to change the name.
Micah: What’d you change it to?
Andrew: The Potter Profile. TPP.
Micah: Oh, okay. That sounds cool, though, actually.
Andrew: Yeah, it was more adult. I was growing up; I was like, 15, so I was like, “Okay, it’s time to mature.”
[Everyone laughs]
Eric: Oh, gosh.
Andrew: But so people use the Internet to meet each other, and that’s how we all met every single cohost of MuggleCast.
Eric: Met each other, yeah. Because I mean, this podcast would not exist, could not have existed… every host was in a different state. No two hosts were in…
Micah: Or country.
Eric: Or country! Exactly.
Micah: I would say that that’s another huge piece of it, too, is the Internet allowing an international community of people to come together, I think, unlike previous fandoms that may have existed. Not to say that that opportunity wasn’t there, but you had a lot of people who were growing up too. I think that’s a huge part of it, is that all of us were growing up with the Internet and learning at the same time, so all this was new and was different. I mean, I noted here that, to set the stage, when we first started this podcast 12 years ago, Facebook was just a year old, Twitter was a year from existing, and obviously things like Instagram and Snapchat were a pipe dream. iPhones did not exist. So think of how far we’ve come in that period of time, and the ability for Potter as a fan community to align with all those things, to take advantage of all those things, I think really helped propel it. The books were their own success, but I think it was just magnified so many times over by these tools, these resources.
Eric: Yeah. I mean, even looking back at MuggleCast history… and this has to be what tracks the most. One of the most fun things I can imagine somebody now getting out of early MuggleCast is our announcements for each of those pieces of technology, or as they slowly get mentioned. Who’s the first person to mention an iPhone on an episode of…? I mean, I’m sure it’s Andrew.
Andrew: Probably me.
Eric: It’s probably Andrew, yeah. Or Kevin, right? Where he’s like, “In the future, there will be phones…”
Andrew: “I saw the leaked plans.”
Eric: [laughs] But anyway, it’s just… it’s a time… what’s the word, where you put it in the ground?
Andrew: Time capsule?
Eric: Capsule, thank you… of technology and how it’s growing up with us. Things like Pottermore and the announcement, there had never been something like that. Or J.K. Rowling’s website; there had never been interaction between a huge world global celebrity and her direct readership before. That cut through all the levels of red tape that usually exists between celebrity and fan, in a really frankly warm and hardy way. And looking at our own podcast history, too, all the little bits of technology that existed… we had at one point… there were fan listings and forums that were old phpBB forums. The podcast itself… I don’t know if… we all had MySpace accounts, right? Did you have any Xangas?
Andrew: I had a MySpace.
Eric: I mean, growing up, that was part of what you did and part of your identity. And there’s people who roleplay Harry Potter on MySpace or chat rooms or any other… there’s flash animation. Do you guys remember TheFifthDistrict.com was…? They had that “Badger, badger, badger, mushroom, mushroom.”
Andrew: I never heard of that.
Eric: Oh, well, somebody did a Harry Potter version, which was “Potter, Potter, Weasley.” And I mean, it’s just… whatever it was, whether it was early YouTube videos or Frapper maps, where you could track where the listeners were or where you were coming from…
Micah: Yeah, I remember that.
Andrew: Oh yeah, we were like, “Follow us on Frapper.” That was cool.
Eric: That’s probably still a thing. We’ve got to look up and see if we still have a Frapper map.
Andrew: I’m looking.
Eric: There’s probably 6.5 billion people who said that with an… or no E.
Andrew: No E?
Eric: Yeah, F-R-A-P-P-R. That was a huge Internet thing back then.
Micah: Or even think about how we record this show? I mean, yeah, we still use shitty Skype, but…
[silence]
Micah: … the evolution of how people…
Andrew: It literally broke up as you said that.
Eric: It was breaking up as you said that. It was the funniest thing.
Micah: Yeah, of course it was. Of course it was. They’re listening to us. The whole connection is going to drop in the next five minutes, or five seconds, I should say. But just the evolution of how people listen to us then versus now. You can only get us, what, on an iPod or on iTunes back in 2005, versus today, there’s so many different ways that you could listen to us.
Eric: Well, and that was cutting edge. A podcast in the iTunes directory was cutting edge. That was the latest version of iTunes had that before we started.
Micah: And we got a shout-out, didn’t we, during one of the Apple Talks?
Eric: Yeah, it’s on YouTube. You’ve got to look it up. “MuggleCast Steve Jobs.” Just Google… Just YouTube it. “MuggleCast Steve Jobs.” It’s on there.
Andrew: [imitating Steve Jobs] “There’s even podcasts for Harry Potter! Can you believe it?”
Eric: And we’re right there, right at the top. MuggleCast. Andrew Sims, Ben Schoen, Kevin Steck. All there.
Andrew: But Harry Potter really didn’t influence podcasting, I don’t think. Harry Potter definitely fit naturally in with podcasting, but Harry Potter definitely influenced fansites. And after Harry Potter, there was Twilight; there was The Hunger Games; there was Divergent; there was 50 Shades of Grey. [laughs] And particularly with Twilight, there were so many fansites for Twilight, and it was heavily inspired by what the fandom over in the Harry Potter community was doing. I know one of the biggest Twilight fansites, the Twilight Lexicon; Laura and Jen, who founded it, they were big, big MuggleNet followers, and so when they saw Twilight coming up, they knew that this was something that they should do for that fandom. And so looking at the lasting legacy of Harry Potter online, definitely fansites, forums, fanfiction communities… all this… Harry Potter was just so deep that you could create fansites and whatnot and have them be very successful.
Eric: It provided a template.
Micah: People are going to mention Lord of the Rings. People are going to mention Star Wars. You brought them up before, Andrew. But I think the key with Potter was that the story was still being told, right? Yeah, the movies were being created, but to me, it was really rallying around the books and the story and the fact that you could spend all this time online, looking around, discussing with people, theorizing what was going to happen next. I don’t think that existed in the same way for Lord of the Rings or Star Wars, because it had already been written. It was already final; you already knew what was going to happen. And in this case, you didn’t.
Eric: Right, as being a mystery. And what I think you mean is there wasn’t an Internet when Star Wars was still coming out, so there was not this global community able to get… I mean, maybe they did it through magazines; the early Star Trek and Star Wars fans had magazine publications and fan publications. But in terms of the web, I mean, Harry Potter was the first presence on the web that was the first massive presence on the web. It set a template for how you do fan stuff on the web, and there’s plenty of other examples of it influencing the publishing industry. Like you said, all those other books that got greenlit afterwards may have never been had it not been for the success of Harry Potter…
Andrew: Yeah, it’s true.
Eric: … as well as the rights holders themselves. I mean, Warner Bros. sued the early fansite webmasters. Cease and desist letters were sent to 12- and 13-year-olds in 1999, telling them that they were violating copyright by having a Harry Potter fansite, and it was a huge learning curve. Those rules, those laws, hadn’t been written yet to protect and to understand what fair use was. All of this stuff exists now, largely because of people interacting with new media in new ways – including Harry Potter – at the dawn of the Internet.
Andrew: Yeah, and I know Melissa from the Leaky Cauldron likes to bring this up: The Harry Potter fansites, particularly Leaky and MuggleNet, were the first ones to actually get set visits, to visit the movie sets, and that was just kind of unheard of back then as well. And I know one of our listeners emailed in, Sofia, about the creators and the consumers starting to work together more. This is a perfect example of that. The studios, after suing, [laughs] finally realized that they can actually be helpful, and now… there hasn’t been a “new Harry Potter,” in a few years. Divergent kind of was; Twilight kind of was. And I just mean there’s an online community with fansites, and these studios today work with these fansites now because they know hardcore communities are in there.
Eric: Your name is in The Hunger Games, isn’t it? Or is it Divergent?
Andrew: Oh, yeah, the Divergent movie. Yeah, because for Hypable, I got invited to the Divergent set, actually, here in Chicago. So what they did was there’s this ranking board in the movie, and Tris looks at it at one point and there’s a bunch of names like “Tris” to see how their training is going, how many points they’ve scored, or whatever. And then the extra names… so they have the characters like “Peter” and “Tris” and all these others, and then there’s the fansite people’s names like me. I’m actually ranked pretty high on that list, and I’m pleased about it.
Micah: Nice.
Eric: [laughs] Somebody knows you and gave you a high score.
Micah: See, but that’s just an amazing example of the fact that they now are more collaborative in terms of working with fan communities and fan websites, because they know that the more that they do that, just, I think the more success that they’re going to have. And they’re reaching their core fan through these sites.
Eric: Yeah. Well, and it was proven that websites don’t hinder but rather help Harry Potter fans. The three years between books, the two or three years between books, the fandom… I mean, I know Harry Potter is great and all, but it really could have died if you didn’t have those people or these resources where you could constantly talk about it and think about it and do more. I think that we directly contributed to keeping the fire stoked for Harry Potter for each book and each movie.
Andrew: And I think right now you see this happening with Game of Thrones, because you don’t know what’s coming on the TV show, so there’s all this theorizing out there that you haven’t seen in a while. And I say Game of Thrones… obviously, there’s theorizing for lots of TV shows, but Game of Thrones, it’s so popular. It is Harry Potter-level for television. That’s just…
Micah: Yeah, it could be argued to be one of the most popular television shows in history, and to be the biggest thing that’s facing them is the fact that George R.R. Martin has yet to release the sixth book, never mind the seventh and final one… they have a lot of challenges in my mind that they’re facing with these last two seasons this year and next year, but that’s for another time. But you mentioned earlier, though, the set visits; how about the fact that both Emerson and Melissa were invited to go to J.K. Rowling’s home and interview her not long after Half-Blood Prince was released?
Eric: I’m still so shocked.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: No, I mean, think about that. That doesn’t happen if those websites don’t exist, and then obviously, those websites don’t exist without the Internet. So you just think about going back to the point that was made about being able to have those direct lines of communication, or maybe they’re somewhat indirect in a way, but it’s the same kind of thing with Jo and her website very early on, and now social media being able to connect directly with her, with those that were in the films, the community has become so much closer because of the Internet and because of social media.
Andrew: Yeah, and by working closely with the fansites, you will get interviews like Emerson and Melissa talking to J.K. Rowling. That’s something that you wouldn’t get with a Katie Couric on The Today Show or Lester Holt on the nightly news. You get a genuine interview with genuinely interesting questions that the real fans actually want asked.
Eric: Absolutely.
Andrew: And that’s why I would love to have J.K. Rowling on MuggleCast. Come on over, girl.
[Micah laughs]
Eric: We’ll ask her the hard questions, like is Lavender Brown alive or dead?
Andrew: I am so confident when I say this: We would have the best interview with J.K. Rowling ever.
Eric: I think so too.
Andrew: I’m not joking. It would be fantastic. We would ask the best questions that people have always wanted answered; it would just be the greatest thing. And I bet that’s why she doesn’t do it, because she knows it’d be so good that she would just be exposed. It’d be the Battle of Hogwarts; it would all end there.
[Eric and Micah laugh]
Andrew: There’d be no more questions left for her.
Eric: That is the boldest statement I think has ever been made on MuggleCast.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Yeah, I mean, look, I want to know once and for all what is the name of Aberforth’s goat? I think we need to put it to rest.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Which one? You know there’s more than one. They have a shorter lifespan than Aberforth.
Micah: Hey, look. There’s one, and then there’s the rest. I mean, come on.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Micah: No, but I think those are the types of interviews that an author like J.K. Rowling, and the cast and the crew, they want to do them. Because Evanna mentioned it when she was on the show a couple weeks ago; it just feels more natural. It feels like you’re having a conversation, as opposed to getting the same damn questions thrown at you over and over and over again. It’s a conversation you’re having with people who enjoy what you’ve done just as much as you do.
Andrew: With all this said about fansites, for how beneficial they’ve been for the communities, I actually do think that fansites as we know them are on their way out, and that’s all thanks to social media. Back in the day, you had to go to MuggleNet to get the latest Harry Potter news. Now you just like and follow pages on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and we all operate within these apps now to get our latest news.
Eric: Social media has really killed the fansite. We were there to see it start…
Andrew: Grow and die.
Eric: … grow, and die.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: It’s like a…
Andrew: [in an old man voice] That’s how old we are.
Eric: [in an old man voice] A character in the Harry Potter books. [back to normal voice] But really, that’s been the great thing, is to see what’s next, and also to ride that wave, too. Struggle to figure out…
Micah: What’s social media going to do?
Eric: Yeah, how to stay relevant.
Micah: I agree with that. I also think, though, that there’s a bit of nostalgia, thinking back to J.K. Rowling’s website, and really, fansites being used for things like book release dates, like book titles. I remember going onto J.K. Rowling’s website and trying to figure out what the title was going to be. I think it was for Half-Blood Prince. Is that possible? Yeah, I think you had to solve a puzzle. She always did an amazing job of making you do all these little puzzles and find these clues in order to get titles and things like that. But I think about trailers. Trailers were exclusively released on fansites.
Andrew: Mm… no.
Eric: Certain ones, yeah. Certain ones.
Micah: Well, initially. Not exclusively. They were initially put out, right? I mean, much like giving it to a media outlet, they gave it to a fansite.
Eric: There was that one where they gave everyone a letter or something of the… whether it was the Fantastic Beasts film, but like, 12 fansites participated in this. Hypable had one; MuggleNet had one. It was a piece of puzzle that only when viewed together… it was one of the Cormoran Strike books titles or something like that. I mean, they gave those…
Andrew: Are you talking about Pottermore? I think you’re talking about Pottermore.
Eric: No, you know what I’m talking about? I actually just remembered: The Kazu Kibuishi book covers…
Andrew: Ahh.
Eric: … were released exclusively at certain fan events.
Andrew: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Eric: Or key websites had the ability to reveal what the book covers were. I mean, something as small as a book cover…
Micah: But Pottermore too, though. Andrew, to your point, Pottermore was a collaboration of fansites being given bits of information, and you had to go to all of them to figure out exactly what it was.
Andrew: And Pottermore, when they were launching, they worked closely with the fansites to give them previews before they announced it. I got a preview, and I had to sign an NDA so I wouldn’t say anything about it before it was actually released. And by having the fansites on their side, then they’re just creating a more positive message out there for the fans, especially when… because the studios are inviting you to the set visits, to the junkets, to please you, so you’re going to write positively about what they’re doing. It is manipulation…
[Micah laughs]
Andrew: … but at the same time, you get to really… you can do a good job reporting stuff that a typical website, say ComingSoon.net or one of these others where it isn’t genuine fans, they’re not writing something as thoughtful, as passionate as you are from this ad or from an interview. And same thing goes for coming up with questions.
Micah: Right.
Andrew: So one thing we wanted to ask ourselves is all this talk of fansites, and they are kind of failing, but let’s say…
Eric: Is this the fun segment time?
Andrew: This is the hypothetical question…
Eric: Hypothetical question game.
Andrew: If you were to make a fansite about something today, in the year 2017, what would it be? And the rule is it would be the only site out there for what you’re creating it for, so let’s say it’s the only Harry Potter fansite. And it wouldn’t be popular, because as we were just saying, fansites are kind of dead right now.
Eric: Oh, no, it would be popular.
Andrew: It would?
Eric: What did we say? Yeah, yeah.
Andrew: Okay.
Eric: If you could create today the most massively successful fansite for a topic, what would it be? Right?
Andrew: Yeah. Well, okay. Well, yeah. I mean, I’ll say mine would be a Bruce Springsteen fansite. [laughs] But I would also do it if it wasn’t going to be popular, because if you’re really passionate about something…
Eric: Welcome to Bruce’s House.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: You’ve got to get that domain.
Andrew: Yeah, BrucesHouse.com.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Andrew: No, I would still want to do it because I’m passionate about it. Like, when Emerson started MuggleNet, he didn’t do it because he thought it’d be super popular; he just did it because he was passionate about it.
Eric: It’s amazing to analyze what made MuggleNet MuggleNet, too. I think it was just the name, right? Just a catchy kind of…
Andrew: It’s a great name.
Eric: Net.com, some people… that confuses people.
Andrew: Oh, yeah. People still…
Eric: Nobody to this day capitalizes the N, except for everyone who’s ever contributed to it.
Andrew: Not even Emerson does on his own website. Can’t believe it.
Eric: Not even… [laughs] We discovered that the other day.
Andrew: Well, and people would usually call it Muggle.net? I would get emails referring to us as Muggle.net; I’d be like, [in a nasally voice] “Uh, no, excuse me, it’s MuggleNet.com.”
Eric: Yeah, that was me. But Bruce Springsteen… are there not Bruce Springsteen…?
Andrew: There are.
Eric: Well, what are they called? What are they…? Tell us.
Andrew: Well, there’s one called Backstreets.com; that’s the big one, and they still have a phpBB forum.
Eric: Whoa.
Andrew: And I still visit it daily.
Eric: You guys, listeners, he’s going on it right now.
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Welcome back, Andrew. You have been… the headline is “The Promised Land.”
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a song.
Eric: And he goes to the Backstreets forums, and he’s on the Promised Land.
Andrew: PhpBB is the system that all forums have been built in. MuggleNet’s forum, COS forums, was built on phpBB.
Eric: The MuggleCast fan forums were on there.
Andrew: And I mean, forums… speaking of fansites dying, forums are another thing that’s died because people just talk on social media now, but there are still some forums that are alive.
Eric: Isn’t Reddit just like a big different way of…?
Andrew: Yeah. I know the Britney Spears site, Breathe Heavy, they have a very popular forum too.
Eric: Her website might be more popular than she is right now.
Andrew: Exhale, it’s called.
Eric: Exhale, okay. Breathe Heavy, Exhale.
Andrew: Anyway, so yeah, mine would be Bruce Springsteen. What would be yours, Eric?
Eric: Gosh, I need a moment. I can’t…
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: I know I had hours to think about this when we planned this. But do you know what yours might be, Micah?
Micah: Whatever the next big thing is.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: You just want to make money.
Micah: No…
Eric: [singing] Money off the thing… the next big thing, yeah.
Micah: Maybe there would have been a time where I would have said Game of Thrones, but I feel like that’s already well-established, and there’s a lot of great sites out there now.
Andrew: Right, well, the question is if you were making the first one, first and only, and it was going to be popular.
Micah: Oh.
Andrew: So then it would be Game of Thrones? The big Game of Thrones one is what, WinterIsComing.net?
Eric and Micah: Watchers on the Wall.
Andrew: Watchers on the Wall… [typing sounds]
Eric: Trying to think what I would… I know what I would do.
Micah: Maybe Legend of Zelda. How about that?
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: Legend of Zelda fansite; that’s really cool.
Andrew: I would do a Nintendo one. I like talking, writing about Nintendo.
Eric: Yeah, that’s what I would… I used to… I grew up going to a website called Cheat Code Central.
Andrew: Ahh, that was the coolest site ever.
Eric: Wasn’t that the coolest site ever? It was the coolest site ever, Cheat Code Central. That was the website I had always wanted… yeah.
Micah: I want to ask Andrew, though… we’re talking about this, and Eric, it’ll give you some more time to think about your answer.
Eric: No, no, I legit… that was my answer; I was getting into my answer. But what were you doing to ask Andrew?
Micah: Oh, okay. No, I was going to ask about Hypable, though, and how really, all of this has led to creation of your site and all the fandoms that it serves.
Andrew: Yeah. Right, well, Hypable, when we started it, we wanted it to be a MuggleNet for all fandoms. That’s how I’ve been pitching it to people for years, [laughs] because we want to have that fan voice, that genuine fan voice, for a bunch of different fandoms. And in the early days, we were trying to cover every little thing about every fandom that we were covering, like, “Okay, there’s these new pictures for this TV show, and now these new pictures,” just the little things like you would’ve on MuggleNet. But now we’re trying to just more focus on passionate fan-written articles about TV shows, books, and movies, because it is impossible to cover every little thing for certain fandoms. So it’s still a MuggleNet for multiple fandoms; we’re just changing exactly how we present that. But even, I think, MuggleNet these days, you guys write original articles about particular topics within Harry Potter.
Eric: Yeah, try and have unique thought pieces and unique content.
Andrew: Because there isn’t news right now.
Eric: Well, and also, I mean, that’s what separates us from just a cold BuzzFeed or a cold… I mean, Buzzfeed is too… that’s the other thing, is people who grew up with Harry Potter alongside us are now the managing editors of online websites, and you see so many Harry Potter articles on Buzzfeed because look at who wrote them; well, old friends of ours, listeners of our show, visitors of our website, and friends, and it’s crazy to see that go. But getting back… so I would absolutely do a video game website, absolutely. Like a fansite for all the games that I used to play as a kid. Probably a Crash Bandicoot website is what I would do.
[Andrew laughs]
Micah: Crash Bandicoot.
Eric: I would have the world’s leading… but purist, only the first four. Only the Naughty Dog titles, and the Activision one that just redid those in HD, the N. Sane Trilogy; it’s great. But yeah, absolutely, video game fansite. That was the fansite I always wanted to have made for sure.
Andrew: James is also pointing out on the… he’s listening live, and he’s pointing out that IMDb recently removed its discussion boards, which was controversial, because they wanted to push their social media activity instead. Yeah, I remember when they did that a month or two ago. Basically forums. That was surprising because those IMDb discussion boards were big, but…
Eric: All I ever saw in there was people trashing each other.
Andrew: Yeah, they weren’t very… they weren’t always that great, but people liked… I don’t know. I thought… I popped in from time to time.
Eric: I liked the opportunity because it was like, if you go to a movie that you just saw, its discussion board on IMDb, it’s like, “This is the definitive conversation people are having about this movie.” Of course, it wasn’t by far at all, because the people you get on there are just your casuals with nothing better to do. But I mean, yeah, there’s some interesting questions being asked.
Micah: And maybe thinking back on it, would a Trump site have been worthwhile?
Andrew: Yeah, well, if you were the first to create a Trump fansite, absolutely. There may have been an Apprentice fansite.
Micah: Oh, I’m sure there is.
Andrew: I know, there are reality TV…
Eric: That’s actually a really good point.
Andrew: There were/are reality TV fansites…
Micah: Survivor.
Andrew: … like for The Bachelor and all them because there’s so many.
Eric: It’s probably called “The Rose,” and the other one is called “The Island,” I’m sure.
Andrew: [laughs] I mean, just to start wrapping up, Harry Potter, I think, has definitely had a profound influence, and we’re going to see it continue to have an influence as Fantastic Beasts continues. Pottermore could potentially be a defining moment for these major brands. There’s an official Star Wars website, but they don’t have a resource like Pottermore right now, certainly not something as interactive as Pottermore is.
Eric: Actually, StarWars.com is really, really good about that, releasing exclusives.
Andrew: They do break news on there, but I mean, I don’t know. I guess it’s a false equivalency, but where are their Hogwarts House Sorting quizzes and stuff like that? [laughs]
Eric: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, those directors, too, are running rampant on social, Instagramming… that’s been the new cool thing, is for film writers, directors, and showrunners to directly post to social photos of their lead actors on set in the Millennium Falcon cockpit, this, that, the other thing. It’s just… it’s all changing, and I think people will be watching what J.K. Rowling is doing and how J.K. Rowling is doing this, because she’s led the way in the past for these changes to occur, so I think we should just do what we would have done anyway, and keep an eye and see where this grows from here. I mean, 20 years and no signs of stopping.
Andrew: All right, well, I think that concludes our main discussion. Feel free to email in, MuggleCast@gmail.com, or use MuggleCast.com. You can also tweet us or Facebook us: Twitter.com/MuggleCast, Facebook.com/MuggleCast. No matter how you contact us, we’re reading all of them. We also do have that voicemail line; we’ll get back to playing some of those in the weeks ahead. And by the way, if you have a main discussion idea for us, if there’s something you’d like us to talk about, let us know; we’d be happy to take your suggestion into consideration. Our voicemail number is 920-3-MUGGLE. That’s a U.S. number, so if you’re overseas, put a one in front of it: 1-920-368-4453.
Eric: Andrew, it’s so fun having you here in Chicago, and…
Andrew: [laughs] Just reminded me of something.
Eric: What?
Andrew: Eric told me last night what my housewarming gift is once I move here.
Eric: Oh, God.
[Andrew and Eric laugh]
Eric: We should absolutely talk about this.
Andrew: Eric told me last night that to welcome me to Chicago, he’s going to give me a key to the P.O. Box.
[Everyone laughs]
Andrew: I was like, “You know, that’s very thoughtful, and that’s actually very sweet, but I know you love checking the P.O. Box. I don’t want to take that away from you.”
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: So I’ll maybe have the key; I’ll put it on my dresser or something, but I won’t access it. You can still go to it yourself.
Eric: It’s a symbolic key. It won’t actually be the key; I’ll just make you think it is.
Andrew: Yeah, right.
Eric: It’s a symbolic gesture.
Andrew: Yeah, fake key. [laughs]
Eric: “Welcome to Chicago.” But yeah, actually, speaking of the P.O. Box, if you are feeling so regretful that you didn’t send us a birthday thing, you don’t need to. Save your money.
Andrew: Oh, stop, Eric. That’s so guilty-trippy.
Eric: Save your money! I’m just telling people to save their money! But our P.O. Box, which we announce spottily, is 4044 North Lincoln Avenue, #144, Chicago, Il, 60618. You can address it to either MuggleCast or me, Eric Scull, and we will get it. But I don’t know about sending more beer, but we’ll let you know how the Pukwudgie tastes.
Micah: Please do. What do you mean, you don’t know?
[Andrew laughs]
Eric: Well, the other thing is, it’s nice to see Andrew here, but Micah, I’m going to see you. We’re all going to see each other in less than three weeks at MuggleNet Live, which is the MuggleNet Live 2017: 19 Years Later on September 1 in Orlando, Florida. We’re going to take the train from King’s Cross Station inside the Universal theme park and just really have a blast all night in Diagon Alley with unlimited butterbeer, a feast of food, and riding the rides. It’ll be a great new thing; there will be…
Micah: We’ll also be doing a podcast.
Eric: We will be doing a podcast, yes.
Andrew: For everyone.
Eric: Yeah, so the actors and cast and crew will be there, and they’re listed on the MuggleNet Live website…
Micah: Otherwise it just sounds like you’re saying we’re going to the park to have a good time, without mentioning…
Andrew: [laughs] That is all.
Eric: Well, okay, okay. You’re right, Micah. Selling point. We’re going to be doing one of these podcasts there, and maybe one of the cast members there will join us. We’ll get Sean Biggerstaff to teach us how to play Quidditch. Who knows?
Andrew: Yeah, sounds good. All right, good stuff. Thank you, everybody, for listening 12 years later. We appreciate your support. To hell with 19 years later! Talk about 12 years later.
Eric: 12 years later.
Andrew: And I’m finally getting a key to the P.O. Box. So beautiful.
[Eric laughs]
Andrew: Thanks, everybody, for listening. I’m Andrew.
Eric: I’m Eric.
Micah: And I’m Micah.
Andrew: Without Eric on a delay, he’s like, right on top of me. We did that twice.
Eric: I’m usually on a delay.
Andrew: [laughs] “I’m Andrew, I’m Eric.” See everybody next time for 333. Goodbye! 3.