Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Oh, I didn't know I could do this with images!
HPST is a podcast I started a few months ago, and as a fan of Harry Potter, I love it.
Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile are the cohosts. They are both thirty-something graduates from Harvard Divinity School, so there is a definite religious angle to the podcast, but not "in your face." Vanessa is Jewish, Casper is... not. Protestant maybe? He's also gay and married. They're both very open-minded, and the podcast, while being based in religion, has absolutely no intention of converting anyone.
I hope I didn't turn you all off, because I'm very not religious and I love this podcast, so this should tell you how not obnoxious it is.
Basically what they do is they read Harry Potter as if it was a sacred text. Each podcast is a chapter they read through a certain theme, like Love, Heartbreak, Responsibility, Expectation, White Supremacy...
Each episode is structured the same. It starts with either Casper or Vanessa telling us a personal story that relates to the week's theme. Then they both do a thirty-second-recap of the chapter (often hilarious XD), one after the other. They made a competition of it, with voting and all. Then obviously they discuss the chapter itself and the different places they see the week's theme in it.
After that there's a "sacred practice," which is the only really religious bit. They take a practice that religious people usually do with the Bible and do it with the chapter. First was lectio divina, where they pick one sentence and random and first read it literally, then metaphorically, then think of what it reminds them of, then of what it calls them to do. Havruta is one person poses a question and proposes an answer, the second person proposes another answer, and they discuss it. Floralegia is when they each pick a line that "sparkled" to them, read them together and analyze this "new" bit of text. There was also one where they read a passage and we had to close our eyes and picture ourselves in the story, as a specific character or just in the background, and think of how we'd be feeling, smelling, seeing, touching at that moment.
Then there's a voicemail, where a fan tells a story or something that they share with us. And they finish it off with weekly blessings, each for a character in the chapter representing people everywhere. Vanessa is making it a point to bless only women (so she was glad when we got to Hogwarts and she could bless somebody other than Petunia, lol).
So far the episodes are about 30 minutes each, but I only finished season/book 2 yesterday, and they're on book 5, I think they get longer.
Also, I love how the discussions often give me ideas for fics. Like in book 1, what Molly was thinking when she sent Harry, whom she'd met for all of five minutes, a great Christmas present. How Millicent Bulstrode's life must be difficult and insecure. How Myrtle's parents felt when they learned about their daughter's death and her decision to stay a ghost, and did they have a relationship with her until their own death?
For all fans of the Boy-Who-Lived.