New Wizards

Like a burst of red sparks from somewhere in a hedge maze, our fourth movie watch-along has appeared! Hear us react to emo Ron, Mad Eye “Too Much Business” Moody, and geek the fuck OUT over the graveyard scene. Watch-along MP3 available at newwizards.fm!

After a holiday break, the wizards are back with movie three! How many times will we mention “Primer?” Is Josh capable of identifying Gary Oldman? Will the werewolf be scary, or will it have more of a Deviantart kind of vibe? Hear our recap here, and check newwizards.fm for the watch-along MP3!

We’re clipping along and getting snaked up! Listen to us go gaga for Gilderoy, consider Salazar Slytherin’s impeccable taste in home furnishings, and wonder aloud how it is that kids grow like that. Watch along with us via the MP3 at newwizards.fm!

It’s the recap to our first watch-along! Tune-in to hear us gush about (and misidentify) British actors. This was a really good one! The watch-along MP3 can be had at the bottom of newwizards.fm — let us know what you think!

Wow… what a wild ride :’) We want to thank everyone for listening and reading along with us! We reflect on what magic really *is* one last time, consider the series as a whole, and most importantly, accept that Hogwarts is somewhere in the Scottish countryside. Stay tuned for the movie recaps and watch-alongs coming soon!

Our last mailbag episode! :’-) Thank you so, so much for all your questions and interactions throughout the series! We consider Ron — the REAL Ron — and finally discuss Gay Dumbledore, and the differences between fantasy and sci-fi. Thankfully, it doesn’t take an hour. And if you were hoping we’d touch on that voluptuous snake once more, well folks… you will not be disappointed.

In this stunning conclusion to the main story, basically all of our in-jokes and running bits become real. Were the Wachowskis a major influence for JK Rowling? Will Sonic the Hedgehog show up in the epilogue? Where did Neville learn swordplay? His Granny, probably.

Everyone’s favorite buxom snake returns, and spurns Snape’s thirsty advances — what a creep. We explore what brought him here, and consider the biggest question of the series thus far: is Snape good? We get looney with Aunt Tuney, and celebrate the books’ primary protagonist. Harry’s there too, but he dies.

The wizards are taking a longer-than-usual break! Next episode to come mid-September. In the meantime, send your questions, comments, and howlers to newwizardspodcast@gmail.com!

House Slytherin drafts the traitor McLaggan from Gryffindor. Albania is the spookiest place on Earth, like WHAT is going on there?! Ron commits Parselfraud, lol. RIP to Crabbe… we think. Right? A real hero shows ‘em how to die.

This is now a Minerva Mcgonagall stan podcast. Harry’s getting better at Unspeakable Curses, and it’s good, actually. The guardian of the Hufflepuff dorm gets his own children’s show. Snape can fly, stop bullets, and see the green ones and zeroes that makeup our reality.

The gang gets Griphooked. Aunt Muriel’s tiara makes an appearance on Antiques Roadshow. Ron goes too hard with his Transylvanian disguise and keeps saying “Bleh!” which ruins the plan. Hermoine gets lost and turns into a gross cave creature. Gold is a hot commodity.

We turn a philosophic eye toward banditry. Neville wins two tickets to see Death Grips in a radio contest. The Malfoys learn there’s no Command-Z for cronyism. Dobby, blood price... you get the idea. Ron grinds for some legendary-tier gear.

Neville is noided. Xenophilius Lovegood shows us his collection of exotic explosives. We learn about the legend of the Hallows, and consider all the many ways it could become a merchandising opportunity. Ron: friend.

Harry discovers Dumbledore’s alt-right Youtube channel. Bambi provides the gang with poisonous weaponry in a well-timed but ill-conceived Disney tie-in. In the Ronniest chapter imaginable, Ron sheepishly returns from a dumb fight, kills something, and still manages to get owned.

Ron gets splinched into three Rons. Kreacher becomes a SoulCycle instructor after Grimmauld Place gets gentrified. We break out the corkboard and yarn once again in search of the golden-haired thief. And our friend the titty snake gets a makeover.

It’s time for another reader mailbag! Big thanks to everyone who wrote in with questions, topics, and howlers. We have an EXCELLENT Ted Tonks conspiracy theory — really! More Dune-scussion! And most important of all: more Filch.

Does magic obey the laws of thermodynamics? Can you “accio” dark matter? Was Einstein a Hufflepuff? Umbridge uses Moody’s eye to cheat at canasta. Draco becomes an anti-Muggle propagandist and appears on InfoWars. The plan goes great.

Ron’s wallet is the one that says “Bad Mother Fucker” on it. Where did Sirius even get Muggle swimsuit magazines from? Kreacher spills all in a very special episode of 60 Minutes. Madam Pomfrey invents the IUD.

Hermoine hones her broadsword in preparation for her upcoming quest. Scrimgeour delivers Dumbledore’s will, and reveals that he had a second, secret school that he was also running the entire time? Awkward. Ron lights his hair on fire. And Xenophilius Lovegood invites us on a tour of his candy factory.

A Starbucks barista writes “Expelliarmus” on Harry’s latte cup. All the good guys meet up at the least obvious meeting place in the wizarding world: The Burrow. Our boy Mundungus has his priorities straight. And is Voldemort strong enough to beat Goku? Find out next week...

Voldemort rents out a room in the Malfoy estate via Airbnb and uses all their olive oil? But he really knows how to cook a teacher. Then we tearfully conclude our very last Dursley Watch! Will Aunt Petunia ever reveal her shadowy past? Did Vernon remember to pack his most lethal drill for protection? Is it possible that the prophecy was actually referring to Big D?

We take a moment to honor the REAL heroes: Luna & Neville. Snape tricks Hermoine — the smartest person in the universe — with a fake mustache. Then we reflect on how dope Book 6 is, and make some predictions for Book 7. Is Ron himself the Gryffindor Horcrux?!

Buckbeak returns in this otherwise uneventful section.

Our friend Kate Dries joins us again to close the snog loop! We walk in on a weeping Draco and, in an effort to console him, slash him into stew meat. Our Grandpa drinks a yucky juice and begs us to kill him. But most important of all: is Ginny a virgin when she starts dating Harry? …??? …?!?!

Draco gentrifies the Room of Requirement. Tonks gives a cry for help via a cryptic Spotify playlist. Harry is up all night to get lucky. Why does Voldemort want to live that long? Is he breeding tortoises? And we have a few not-terrible and definitely-good thoughts on what the remaining Horcruxes might be...

Ron eats a pack of Choco-Cauldrons and wakes up in a corn field. Josh thinks Snape might be the Half-Blood Prince, or a Fifth-Blood Duke at the least. Life at Hogwarts means bumping up against McMotherfuckers, and this one’s ruining our Quidditch. Voldemort has red eyes, like in those memes.

We’re joined by our good friend: writer & editor extraordinaire and former Guy Friends Podcast co-host Kate Dries! Finally deep in the snogodrome, we consider our favorite teens’ fuckability on a teen by teen basis. Luna Lovegood is Etsy famous. And Slughorn accidentally gives Dumbledore an old taped episode of Frasier instead of a memory.

Lavender Brown wins Pantone's Color of the Year. Ron definitely deserves to be Keeper, because he’s so great at it. Katie Bell touches a necklace so expensive that even just grazing it ruins her credit score. Draco gets Harry so mad that steam whistles out of his ears. Dumbledore is a terrible babysitter.

Finally the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Snape pulls up a chair and sits on it backwards to tell it like it really is. The Half-Blood Prince was a big fan of glitter gel pens. And we take a leisurely jaunt to meet the Gaunts, relying heavily on Google Translate for the Parselmouth parts.

Molly Weasley is so shook… she’s wobblin’. We reunite with Phlegm, and are nice to her :) Professor Binns is established as Fuck Neutral. The US Treasury asks Fred & George for a loan. Draco Malfoy does a Front Foot Impossible into a Japan Air, and lands a 5-0 Grind on Harry’s dick.

Aaron Sorkin guest directs our introduction to the other minister. Snape puts a hex on Narcissa after she sets her glass down on his teak coffee table without a coaster. We meet Slughorn and immediately get an invite to connect with him on LinkedIn. Uncle Vernon and Dumbledore kiss.

We take a brief pause from our journey through the books to respond to all your letters, which have completely clogged up our chimney at this point. We talk wizard psychology! We go deeper on Queerius! We consider the characters as dogs! It’s about damn time.

Book Five is finally done after almost three months — that’s roughly the gestation period for leopards. We’re leopard dads from this book alone! We get to see what it’s like when two REAL wizards get to dueling, and it turns out it's set to “Spybreak!” by the Propellerheads. We go insanely deep on the prophecy, then break into the Finnegan household.

Uber, but for thestrals.  Neville combines gunplay, martial arts, and rapid trigonometry in Equilibrium (2002, dir. Kurt Wimmer). A man gets a baby’s head, and becomes a popular YouTuber. Sirius dies, but comes back as a snowman in Jack Frost (1998, dir. Troy Miller).

Professor McGonagall stars in the reboot of “Kill Bill,” and it’s good this time. Ron somehow eats his Number 2 pencil in the middle of taking the OWLs. Harry has a fucked up dream in which Natalie Portman dies while giving birth to twins? Hagrid has an idea so smart that it almost gets two of his students murdered, twice.

Firenze fucks an astrolabe in class. Dumbledore disappears without responding to Professor Flitwick’s Venmo request. Harry visits Snape’s worst memory and sees his dad drink a gallon of milk as fast as he can as some kind of challenge? Fred and George leave some Fred and George-shaped holes in our hearts

Snape is Morpheus, but reverse, in every way. While on a date in Hogsmeade, Harry claims to have forgotten his wallet, then goes on a rant about why tipping is for Muggles. Hermoine invents clickbait. An argument with Umbridge makes the faculty a little horse ;o)

We open with a simple prayer to St. Mungo. Hagrid starts up a stoner-doom band named Olympe’s Wrath. Good kiss wet; Harry likey. The titty snake is back, and has its own appetite for bodily fluids >:)~ We jack into the PortraitNet, discover it’s basically LinkedIn, and now we can’t unsubscribe from the emails.

Umbridge jacks into the Floo Network mainframe and wipes all of Sirius’ ports. GAME OVER. We get our first look at the Room of Requirement and ask, “How can this technology best be used for going number twosies?” Ron gets owned so hard it breaks the fabric of space and time.

Despite everyone’s warnings, Sirius starts a dog Instagram account featuring himself. Percy hopes to civilize Harry in an explainy letter, accidentally inventing Twitter threads in the process. McGonagall kills Umbridge with a naginata. At the Hog’s Head, Mummy Billy Joel has us feelin’ alright.

Our friend, venerable Potter scholar, and senior Jezebel writer Madeleine Davies joins us again for another stacked ep! Is Ron the loose cannon cop with nothing left to lose that Hogwarts needs? Is Luna Lovegood’s dad actually Elvis in hiding?? Is Professor Umbridge an amalgam of all the scariest Twilight Zone episodes??? Tune in!

We get an in-depth look at the Black family blood map, known in some cultures as a “family tree.” Harry waits in line for 5 hours at the wizard DMV. And critics are raving about Albus Dumbledore’s reimagining of Henry Drummond in “Inherit the Wind.”

New book, new look. Harry starts smoking Pall Malls and listening to The Doors. Mr. Tibbins can snap a man’s neck with his tail. We examine Aunt Petunia with new eyes, and consider just how deep this rabbit hole goes... A house is racist.

We finally uncover the mystery, if you can call it that. Sirius can’t help himself and starts licking children’s open wounds in the hospital wing. And we consider Rita Skeeter’s steady diet of aphids. Would Professor Sprout have thanked her for her services?

Some cool stuff happens in a nice graveyard, and no one gets hurt. The New Wizards have PhDs in magic linguistics now, I guess. And we consider whether Voldemort would have turned out this evil if people were more accepting of his cosplay. He learned to sew for this!

We binge on three episodes of Law & Order: Muggle Victims Unit, featuring a cameo by David Schwimmer. Fred and George are good boys who would never do a crime. And when Dumbledore invited the Sphinx to “speak at a conference,” do you think he mentioned the maze like at all?

The second task is complete, but no one seems bothered that Dumbledore and the merfolk chieftain are clearly sleeping together. Josh goes deep on some Crouch theorems, and debunks some of the lies in the mainstream media. A child is mailed death threats with biohazardous contaminants in a school cafeteria.

Is Ludo Bagman wearing a wire during his meeting with the Goblin Mafia? We take a terrible look at the mind-rending anxieties around school dances. Has Ron hit rock bottom? Will Hermoine kill and eat a house elf now that she’s cool?

We consider how a Ron-less Harry deals with being the most love-hated child on Earth… again. Is Rita Skeeter’s handbag real, or a knockoff? And we discuss how we would have completed the first task. Is bonking still on the menu?

We're making a demand here, folks: Hagrid must fuck. We discuss Mad-Eye's methods, and that awesome class scene, including Neville’s freak-out. And can institutional slavery stand up to Hermoine's bake sale?