The Sorting Hat

Imaginary Worlds

Eric Molinsky

Fiction, Arts, Society & Culture, Science Fiction

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 19 October 2016

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every 11-year old goes through this, right? Your teacher places a brown wizard's cap your head, and the hat tells you what your defining characteristic is. You are brave, or loyal, or ambitious, or intellectual. Plus, your whole school is sorted into personality types. If that were real life, parents and educators would be horrified -- but it's a fantasy that Harry Potter fans have thought about for years. James Madison University professor Elisabeth Gumnior, and Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile of the podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text weigh in on the enduring appeal of the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Also featuring Kate Essig and Martin Cahill.** This is part four in a six-part series on magic and fantasy. **Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend
0:05.2	our disbelief.
0:07.2	I'm Eric Mellinsky.
0:09.4	So in the last episode I talk with Marty K. Hill, who writes about fantasy for Tor.com.
0:14.9	He says when he was growing up, he was a big Harry Potter fan, and he told me this story.
0:20.5	I was 11 and I was on my birthday and I was wandering my school.
0:24.4	Actually, he said I had to go to the bathroom, but really, I left to wander the top floor
0:29.2	of my school waiting for my owl to show up, saying that I was going to Hogwarts.
0:34.2	Which is odd because I had just been talking with a woman named Kate Essig, the same age
0:38.6	as Marty, and had the same story, except she thought her owl was just going to find
0:43.1	her.
0:44.1	I always felt a connection to her minding granger as like every bookish brown-haired girl
0:48.2	ever does.
0:49.7	And she had muggle parents and my parents were total squares, so I knew that they were
0:53.2	definitely muggle parents.
0:56.0	And you get your hopes up and then you realize you were wrong, and the only person you can
1:01.5	be mad at is yourself.
1:03.9	And the thing that most kids look forward to at Hogwarts is the sorting hat.
1:08.8	It's a magical hat that is placed on the heads of boys and girls and tells them which
1:14.4	of the four houses they'll be assigned to.
1:17.3	The houses are based on personality.
1:19.5	Gryffindor is for the brave, Slytherin for the cunning, Ravenclaw for the intellects,
	...

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