The Shrieking Shack

Catching Fire chapters 16-17 We're still not at the Hunger Game. It sure seems like we're running out of book, but instead of duking it out in the arena our heroes are still meeting their foes and/or potential allies. Are Katniss and Peeta building a heist team, or are they just going to fight all these guys? We've got lots to discuss about this and more, but first we also have some Neopets updates, strings drama, and dental work to discuss! (If you're not a fan of dentist anxieties/horror stories, you can start the episode at 9:20!)

Catching Fire chapters 18-19 We are so back! We kick off 2024 with a rowdy return to podcasting about work sucking, holidays sucking, and Peeta sucking. We have some exciting news on that front this week however, although neither of us is convinced it really happened. Still, even if things are feeling a bit predictable, we certainly can't accuse these chapters of being boring! Waterworld antics, bonkers lies, trident headshots--there's a lot of wild stuff packed in here as we finally get to the Hunger Games part of this Hunger Games novel.

Deathly Hallows chapter 26. After our double-length news blowout last week, we don't have too much to cover this episode, save for some updated Fantastic Beasts casting rumors and some speculation about the general future of the franchise. Our chapter this week is another heist, during which Harry casts an unforgivable curse like ten times without anyone so much as blinking and a theatrical Death Eater tags along to make things more complicated until JK Rowling decided she couldn't figure out how to utilize him so just had him go hide in a corner. No, I'm not making that up, that's actually what happens. We also witness the EVIL PLANS of Griphook, whose plan to double-cross Harry is worse than Harry's plan to double cross him, for some reason. We also read another shockingly out of touch article from Pottermore that comes this close to realizing what's messed up about the Goblin stuff but misses spectacularly. Finally, we log into Jack Sloper's account and return to the associated subreddits to find a grab bag of cursed and delightful content. Content warning stuff: the whole news section is dedicated to ripping on JKR and Johnny Depp (and Marilyn Manson) and if you don't fancy listening to anything to do with them directly, the chapter discussion starts at 34:47.

Deathly Hallows chapter 20. We catch up with Eddie Redmayne and the WB Game Studios statements on Rowling before making our way through an absolutely dire chapter where all of our heroes are unrecognizable, even by the shifting standards of book 7. Arguing about what 'rook' means, having youth pastor chats, and holding extremely strong opinions about the role of the press for teenagers--that sounds like the golden trio alright! (?) Then we head on over to the subreddit to learn about more Game Ideas.

Surprise! Here's our mega-length news segment for this week, hot and fresh. Didn't seem fair to make people pay up to hear it early. We discuss *inhales* the Vancouver billboard, the initial Troubled Blood review that got things kicking off this week, the continued Troubled Blood reviews from The Guardian (very helpful, thanks!), the apparent pile of pre-existing Known Stuff about the Strike series, the misogyny and transmisogyny common in crime fiction generally, the Fantastic Beasts filming news, and... the announcement of Harry Potter Skyrim (which is actually continued in our third segment this week, so if you want to hear us talk more about it or think we missed an important topic, hold tight--it's probably in the full episode to be released later) It goes without saying but just in case: content warning for All Of JK Rowling's Business, as well as the related shit of classic fiction like Psycho and Silence of the Lambs and so on.