Distraction: The Lion and the Serpent (Book 5, Chapter 19)
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text
Vanessa Zoltan, Casper ter Kuile & Ariana Nedelman
4.7 • 6.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 January 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vanessa and Casper explore the theme of Distraction in chapter nineteen of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They discuss Hermione’s brilliant DA galleon, Run’s crush on Hermione (who could blame him?), and Vanessa’s continued distain for the house system. Throughout the episode they consider the question: When is distraction more worthy than the end goal?
Thanks to Kat Severin for this week's voicemail! Next week we’ll be reading Chapter 20, Hagrid’s Tale, through the theme of Peace.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Chapter 19, The Lion and the Serpent. |
| 0:05.0 | Harry felt as though he were carrying some kind of talisman inside his chest over the following |
| 0:10.8 | two weeks. |
| 0:11.8 | A glowing secret that supported him through Umberto's classes and even made it possible for him |
| 0:18.3 | to smile blandly as he looked into her horrible molding. |
| 0:23.1 | I'm Vanessa Zoltan, and I'm Caspar Tecile. |
| 0:25.7 | And this is Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. |
| 0:29.8 | Every summer, my family and I would drive the eight-hour drive from Forest Row in England |
| 0:34.7 | all the way to the north of Holland, where my family had like a shared house. |
| 0:40.1 | And eight hours is like a long time to be in the car with three sisters and two parents, |
| 0:45.1 | and there's only so many times you can play torn by Natalie and Brugula on repeat. |
| 0:50.0 | And so we would invent all sorts of games to kind of distract ourselves, and some of |
| 0:54.6 | the games included if you're stuck in traffic do a puppet show with the little hand puppets |
| 0:58.6 | that we have in the car, or if you're my sister, like pull your pants down and moon everyone |
| 1:03.0 | who you were driving past. |
| 1:04.6 | Or because we didn't have a TV as kids, we would pretend that the window in the car was |
| 1:08.6 | a TV. |
| 1:09.6 | We'd be like, what's on your channel? |
| 1:13.2 | But sitting in that car driving, being with your family but also kind of alone if you're |
| 1:18.8 | putting on your headphones or something, I have some of my happiest memories playing |
| 1:23.5 | these silly games to help time pass. |
| 1:27.4 | Our theme for this week's conversation is distraction, which immediately to me sounded |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Vanessa Zoltan, Casper ter Kuile & Ariana Nedelman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Vanessa Zoltan, Casper ter Kuile & Ariana Nedelman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.