Hey everyone.  Believe it or not, Greg and I are both under the weather right now and if we would sit down to podcast tonight the result would be a raspy, nasal, and moany sounding episode.  So we are going to do you all a favor and not subject you to our ailments.

We won’t be able to podcast over the weekend- Saturday won’t work and Sunday is our (10th!!!) anniversary so we are hoping to do something special that involves just us two and not our children or (no offense) any of you!  But we hope to podcast sometime early next week.

The good news is that you won’t be totally HPProgs free over this weekend.  Actually that isn’t true.  You won’t be totally me-free.  Earlier this week Aziza from Portus recorded a Portus Preview Podcast with different members of some of the different Harry Potter Podcasts who will be at the Podcast Palooza at Portus and I was one of the podcasters who joined in.  I believe that she plans on releasing the episode sometime Saturday and we’ll be sure to link to it when it goes up.

Speaking of Portus, the main page of their website is down but if you go to any of the other pages (such as the one I linked to in the last paragraph), you can access the rest of the site.  Also, as we mentioned in the last podcast there is one last discount going on for Portus registrants.  Here is the info:

It’s May, and owls are flying all over the country dropping off those much desired tax refunds. To celebrate all the extra galleons and sickles being dropped at our doorsteps, we have decided to present you with one last discount before Portus arrives this July! From today through May 31st, enter the code TAXMAN when registering for Portus, and you will receive a 20% discount on full and day registrations. It’s the perfect time to give your friend or relative a gift registration for Portus! Act soon before the price freezes at $220.00 for a full registration!

Honestly, after recording the Portus Preview Podcast I am more excited than ever to go to Portus (we even made our hotel reservations- that is unprecedented for us, we usually wait till the last minute!!) and we hope you can join us.

In conclusion (yes I feel like I am making a speech), we hope to bring you Episode #80 of Harry Potter Prognostications some time in the beginning-middle of next week.  In the meantime, Keep On Prognosticating!

-Penny

This week, we finish up our Patterns in Potter discussion for Book 5, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  This time, we focus on Harry’s visions (courtesy of Lord Voldemort) and his driving urge to understand the truth of these visions, and what knowledge they can bring in aiding in the fight against evil.  It’s quite an interesting discussion, and we end up talking about Gödel’s Theorem, for those of you who know what that is (for those of you who don’t, that’s why there is Wikipedia), and discuss rationalism, existenialism and religion.

Send us your thoughts, we look forward to hearing from you! You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at http://audiblepodcast.com/hp.

In the news:

• Vote for the Beedle The Bard winner.
• JK Rowling received Auther Of The Year Award. Again.
• Emma Watson made Maxim’s Hot 100 List.  Penny came in right before her though.
• No Moaning Myrtle in Half Blood Prince. The actress who plays her is busy checking out nursing homes (oh snap, that was mean.  I know.  I apologize to Shirley Henderson, but come on- she is old.)
• JK Rowling to write a “Story Card” with other notable authors.

You can listen to the podcast with the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

In the week’s episode, we continue our discussion of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the central theme of truth and knowledge, specifically how the book presents the theme in context of Hogwarts, education, careers and experiential vs. learned/taught knowledge. It’s even more exciting that I can describe.

We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.

This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at http://audiblepodcast.com/hp.

And, the news:

• Radcliffe, Leung nominated for Best Kiss. BORING.
• Lavender Brown interviewed. Not the real Lavender Brown, mind you.
• Aerial footage of the Potter movie set at Leavesden Studios. This is very cool.
• J.K. Rowling won a trial. Not the trial we’re all interested in, but a trial nonetheless.

Also, check out Pensieve Memories, a new Harry Potter forum.

You can listen to the podcast using the player below, or download directly as an mp3.

Amazon has announced the semi finalists for the Beedle The Bard Ballad Writing Contest.

• Vote for your favourite in the 13-17 age group
• Vote for your favourite in the 18-and-over age group

Through May 11, 2008, Amazon customers are invited to vote for their favorite submission in both age groups. Each winner will receive a $1,000 Amazon Gift Certificate, as well as the opportunity to square off in another round of customer voting–beginning May 13–to determine the Grand Prize winner of the trip for two to London, England and a weekend with The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

In order to vote, you must be signed in to a valid Amazon.com account (account holders for amazon.ca, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, and amazon.de should automatically qualify). Make your choice carefully and vote just once–your first vote is the only one that will count.

In what will go down in history as being HPProgs’ finest hour *or* our worst episode yet, we bring to you Episode #77. We decided to go a slightly different route for part of this episode and after our very short news discussion we re-enacted part of the J.K. Rowling vs. Steve Vander Ark/RDR Books trial. All we can say is that those of you who called Greg’s accent rubbish are going to wish you had saved your insults. On a side note, when I was editing the episode I realized that we botched the name of SVA’s lawyer. It is David Hammer, not Barry. Apologies to Mr. Hammer.

Speaking of accents, we played a voicemail from Potter’s Number One Fan in which he picked up Greg’s gauntlet and gave us a multi-character Harry Potter narration. Excellent job, in my opinion.

We finished off the episode with the introduction to Patterns In Potter for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. You’ll have to trust that we are telling the truth when we say that Book 5 has a good theme.

As promised the links to the court transcripts are here. Thanks to Cris for the tip:

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3
  

It is a new month so please vote for us on Podcast Alley and as always rate and review us on iTunes and Odeo.

Finally, HPProgs has a Twitter account so please join in the fun and start following us so you can get all of our updates!

We look forward to hearing from you. You can leave comments here on the blog or send in your voicemails to 206-337-0357 in the US or 07092899490 in the UK. Please make sure to keep the message as close to one minute as possible and try to speak loudly and clearly.

You can listen to the podcast using the player below, or download it directly as an mp3.

Thanks to Travis for the heads up that for the first time in ten years a Harry Potter book is NOT on the New York Times Best -Seller List.

What is interesting is that this comes on the same day as Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People came out with JK Rowling conspicuously NOT on the list.

So what does this mean?  Now that almost a year has passed since  “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was released, is Harry Potter slowly but surely fading into obscurity?  I know it isn’t reasonable to assume that Harry Potter would stay on the Best-Seller List forever, or that JK Rowling would continually be honored for her influence on the world of literature, but this seems like a hasty fall from grace in my opinion.

More and more schools are making Harry Potter required reading so children will still pick up the series and hopefully devour it with the same zest that we’ve all done.  Unfortunately there won’t be any “between the book excitement” that helped to make the series as exciting as it was; however, we can hope that these children will still eagerly anticipate the beginning of each new book as they finish the last one.

But one has to wonder how many new adults will start reading  the books at this point. Have we come to the end of the mature examination of this series?  Adult fans of the Harry Potter series were forced to analyze the books prior to the release of each one.  In order to get the most out of the series, we spent hours pouring over the books to look for clues and hints to what was going to come.  This won’t be the case anymore.  Analysis will be all but unnecessary and this saddens me the most.

So now we can only hope that either JK Rowling will somehow decide to continue the Harry Potter Series or hopefully the next JK Rowling will emerge sooner rather than later.