Would you rather fight one elephant-sized spider or an elephant-teen number of smaller spiders?

This week, the answer is both.

You're listening to the Quiddler podcast, the Harry Potter Book Club for entomologists.

The thing that lives in the castle is an ancient creature we spider's fear above all others.

Well do I remember how I pleaded with Agrid to let me go when I sensed the beast moving

about the school?

What is it?

We do not speak of it.

We do not name it. I never even told Agrid the name of that red creature,

though he asked me many times. I'm Heather Pricewright. And I'm Alex Dellenberg.

And before all you pedants out there come at us, we looked it up and arachnology is a subset of entomology,

even though technically arachnids are not insects.

They're not, no.

Do not at us.

This week we are reading chapters called Cornelius Fudge and Aragog.

It's going to be great.

You are going to hear so much cursing, a special amounts of cursing this week, because there's giant fucking spiders coming at us.

Also spoilers, because there's giant fucking spiders coming at us.

And this week's adult themes are a broken criminal justice system, career counseling, corruption, self-driving cars, and of course,

arachnophobia. Before we get into the recap, we have a quick correction. It turns out for the

last 12 episodes, we've been mispronouncing our dear author's name, J.K. Rolling. It's not

rowling, it's rolling. Yeah, as in bowling. Twitter user named Alger Donovan pointed

...