The Harry Potter Lexicon website has been in existence for almost two decades. Over that time, J.K Rowling thrilled us with her magical creation — in novels, interviews, on her websites, on Twitter, and more.
And here at the Lexicon, a small group of dedicated fans have worked very hard over all those years to catalogue all the magical details she revealed. The Lexicon website has always been seen as the gold standard for careful research and faithfulness to Rowling’s created world, all because of these amazing fans.
Now we editors of the Lexicon would like share some of what we’re so passionate about in a new way. So we’ve creating this podcast as a way for you to hear from us. It’s called the Harry Potter Minute, and in it you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing a few of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. We are fans from all over the globe who love to spend our time keeping track of the interesting details and obscure references which make Rowling’s work so rich and wonderful.
In each podcast, around four or five minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We might share something that’s stuck in our heads as we researched the books or maybe recall some event from the history of Harry Potter fandom.
The podcasts will come out once or twice a week. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts.
Today we’re going to talk Horcruxes. Specifically, how they’re made. I started thinking about this subject when I read a particularly interesting passage from Half-Blood Prince. Here’s what caught my eye: Dumbledore says that Voldemort “seems to have reserved the… Read More🎙️ OP33: What Was She Thinking• Podcast Episode
At the end of the last chapter, Hermione launched an impromptu plan to free herself and Harry from Umbridge, who had caught them using her office fireplace to talk to someone. Hermione’s plan was to pretend that they were talking to Dumbledore, telling him that the powerful secret… Read More🎙️ New Historicism and Harry Potter• Podcast Episode
New historicism is an approach to literature which regards a work of literature as a product of the historical moment in which it was created and as embedded in the ideas and ideologies present in that time. For example, a new historicist might be interested in what Elizabethan… Read More🎙️ CC4: Act 1 Scene 5: Doings at the Ministry• Podcast Episode
This is a short scene, but it’s a huge scene when it comes to important information. We get a glimpse of the time-turner that causes all of the timeline disasters in this play. We finally get a mention of Hugo! We get the official titles of Harry and… Read More🎙️ The Smell of Love• Podcast Episode
Love is obviously a powerful theme of the Harry Potter novels, but today I’d just like to talk about the powerful love potion amortentia, and how it induces the smell of what most attracts us. We first encounter amortentia in Slughorn’s classroom during his first potions lesson,… Read More🎙️ OP32: That "Saving People Thing"• Podcast Episode
Hermione says something very important in chapter 32 of Order of the Phoenix, something which helps define the overarching plot of the entire seven-book series. When Harry is frantically describing the vision he had of Sirius captured and tortured by Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione tries to… Read More🎙️ Rumors and Ruses• Podcast Episode
In Half-Blood Prince, Dumbledore shows Harry the memory in which he interviews Tom Riddle for a job at Hogwarts. I have a lot of questions about Dumbledore’s motives for allowing even this level of consideration. He does have a little bit of a thing about manners,… Read More🎙️ Paratext• Podcast Episode
Think about when you first saw that dedication to you, the reader, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. You probably read that before you read a word of the novel itself. Think for a moment about whether reading that dedication impacted the attitude you had as you started in… Read More🎙️ GF5: Looking Back and Forward• Podcast Episode
When I first read this chapter, it felt like coming home for Harry to me. After the grisly murders at Little Hangleton and the hostility of the Dursleys, I loved reading about the Burrow, encountering all the familiar faces and seeing a happy Harry. Upon re-reading this chapter,… Read More🎙️ Seeing is Believing• Podcast Episode
The inspiration for this podcast comes from several places. A recent Alohomora episode was all about Percy Weasley. In the comment section for that podcast I read a comment made by username BloodCharm. BloodCharm was talking about Percy’s falling out with his family, stating that… Read More🎙️ Watch Out!• Podcast Episode
This Lexicon Minute is about time. No, not time travel – I only have a minute and I’d be crazy to try and tackle time travel in that short time, although technically if I could manipulate time I could make that one minute last as long as I… Read More🎙️ CC1.4: A Little Bit About A Lot• Podcast Episode
In this Minute about Cursed Child Part 1, Act 1, Scene 4 I’m going to discuss a little bit about a lot, because there’s so much that goes on in just this one scene, two years of stuff to be exact. So I’ll jump right in. Read More🎙️ GF4: A Lot of Long Sentences• Podcast Episode
In this Harry Potter Lexicon Minute, I will discuss the fourth chapter of Goblet of Fire: Back to the Burrow. In this chapter, the Weasley family picks up Harry at Privet Drive. The text paints a very clear and fast-paced picture of what is happening. I relish… Read More🎙️ Canon Thoughts: The Crimes of Grindelwald• Podcast Episode
Like pretty much every Potter fan out there, I eagerly went to see “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” I was prepared to be disappointed. I’d read a number of reviews which decried the muddled storylines, the gratuitous easter eggs for fans, and the messed up timelines. So I saw… Read More🎙️ Obsessive Love• Podcast Episode
It is pretty well-established at this point that love is a central theme in the Harry Potter saga, but the more sinister side of obsessive love doesn’t get quite the same attention. We see it most clearly when love potions are involved, most notably in the case with Voldemort’s… Read More🎙️ GF3: Writing By Hand• Podcast Episode
When J.K. Rowling started writing the Harry Potter books in the 1990s, social media had not been invented. No one owned a mobile phone yet, let alone a smart device. And even though most people owned a personal computer or a laptop, receiving a letter written by hand was not… Read More🎙️ It's the Little Things• Podcast Episode
One of the things I’ve always loved about Harry Potter is the little not-quite-clues, the throw away comments linking everything together that you only notice and realise the significance of after several rereads of the books. There are too many examples to list them all here, like Aunt Petunia… Read More🎙️ OP31: The Problem With Astronomy• Podcast Episode
Chapter 31 of The Order of the Phoenix is entitled “O.W.L.s.” Let me just say that the concept of these examinations is still a bit hard for me to grasp. I realize that the OWLs and NEWTs are the Wizarding World equivalent of some sort of test that British… Read More🎙️ Diving Back In: The HP Lexicon Minute Podcast is Back• Podcast Episode
I did something recently that I haven’t done in, well, almost two decades. I took a break from Harry Potter. Maybe this has happened to you at some point too. Real life becomes just too much and you have to give something up. For me, it was too many shows… Read More🎙️ Taking a Short Break• Podcast Episode
Hey, everyone, Steve VanderArk here. This is a special announcement for listeners of our Harry Potter Lexicon Minute podcast. As you may have noticed, we’ve been taking a short break for the past week or two. The podcast isn’t ending — we’ll be back with more episodes here… Read More