The Psychology of Harry Potter

Why Harry Potter endures

0:00Hello, and welcome to Everything's Psychology. Today, the boy who lived. Why does a story about a bespectacled wizard still have its hooks in millions of people decades on? And as this is a psychology podcast, can Harry Potter teach us anything about belonging, prejudice, personality, fandom, and why we fall so hard for a world that just doesn't exist.

0:34With me to discuss the psychology of Harry Potter are Will Brooker, Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at Kingston University and author of Batman Unmasked and Why Bowie Matters, and Neela Matthews, psychologist and former guide at the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour in London. Hello both of you. Hello. So Will, I'm going to start with you. Why do you think Harry Potter has become such the phenomena that it has become, and it's still part of people's lives today?

1:07Partly it's marketing strategy. I mean, if it hadn't been picked up and expanded into a multimedia franchise and empire, then it would be a very different kind of property, which would still be a favourite of many people. For instance, like Narnia. Think of Narnia. Narnia is still precious to many people, but there is not like, you know, Land of Narnia. There's not a new HBO, as far as I know, there might be. There's not a new highly heralded HBO series of Narnia. Yeah, there's not two people on this postcard sat with Aslan t-shirts on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, look, I like Narnia. You know, Narnia plays an important part in

1:40our lives. I remember Narnia as a nice set of stories my mum read to me when I was young, okay? And that would be the role that Harry Potter could have played if it had landed differently in popular culture. It is telling, I think, they haven't managed to make a fully successful series of Narnia, contemporary Narnia movies. They've started and then they've stopped. They've dried up and restarted again. So it's partly kind of that it landed at the right time in terms of popular culture and it pushed the right buttons and the right things

2:12have been done for it in terms of expanding that platform in terms of like, you know, King's Cross, the studio experience, Hogwarts theme park and so on. But aside from that, like Narnia, I think it is a very resonant story in quite a simple sense in the best way that young people can easily connect with it and enter into it through various characters and it grows up with the characters and it taps into key powerful themes

2:44about, you know, the outsider, oppression, struggle. What I think is particularly good about Harry Potter, which is absent from Narnia actually, because Narnia takes the same characters and then kind of, I'm not going to say abandons them, but moves on to other characters. One of the best things about Harry Potter as a story, I think it grows up with the characters. Neil, I mean, Will's answer was quite, or is quite academic and I don't mean that meanly, it is that view. You are a fan of Harry Potter, you worked at Harry Potter Tour. Do you want

3:19to add anything about why it's the phenomena that it is? Yeah, absolutely. So I remember coming back from my travels in 1998. My brother handed me these three books. It was just the three and he was like, you're going to love this. How old were you then? I was 22, 23. Okay, yeah, yeah. And I was jet lagged, all the things after travelling around the world. I didn't move for two weeks. I was hooked. Now, I was hooked then and I bought the audio tape and I listened in all my travels and

3:52I travelled a lot at that time for my work and I was hooked. And as the books and ravelled, you're on the grip of it. But what's interesting when you delve into the detail and believe me, I really have, she's introducing characters and features that are key to the plot later on. The Vanishing Cabinet, which is absolutely key to the plot in book six, was introduced in book two. It was strategically placed there. It was mentioned again, you know, there's a drop and then it happens in book five and then it really drops in book six. So we have all of these little drops that are

4:26happening, which consciously done, I would think, because, and so is it marketing? Probably, although it did come at a time where I think the psychology and understanding of wizardry, the mystical, all the things, those things were rising, but there was a void there as well. To your point, it was for kids. It was simply written. It was engaging. It was fun. It was dealing with really heavy subjects. And for me, those subjects were real life experiences. So the three things that I think keep bringing people back, and I can honestly say this now having worked

5:00there, was why do people keep going? And there were thousands of people. And I went about 11 times as people that went 98 times, keep coming back, because it really captures you in the sense that it helps you belong. You mentioned that in one of your objectives, Paul. A sense of belonging for your uniqueness, where you don't belong, where you feel that you don't belong or you misunderstood. The escapism is really key. So I used to work for a big corporate, I used to have an hour and a half

5:31work. And it would be stressful. I would put that on repeat in the order of audibles and listen so I could escape. And then it's that nostalgia. So in psychology, we can talk about reminiscent bump where you know, what was your key memories that you have, which aren't just memories, they're visceral, you feel it in your gut, you feel it, you hear a piece of music, and it takes you back. Harry Potter does that with the film in spades. It's got the music, and the tour, it's got the sounds, it's got big sets, which aren't just visual effects, which was part of the beauty. You walk in and you see

6:07the mechanical version of it. But even with like the audible version, Stephen Fry's voice, amazing, you get all of the characters. So is it just marketing? There is some really good and some really bad marketing. I say that having worked there. And I was like, why are you doing that? You need to do this, having worked in marketing as well. But I do think it's because it resonates at a really deep level on all five senses, and maybe six, because Harry's very intuitive. And I think there's something

6:37that sparks there as well. Gosh, I've got a question later for you, Neela, which was, are you a super fan of anything yourself? I think you've answered that already. I think I'm going to cross that off the list. That's done. Will, coming back to you about fans, fans like Neela,

What super fans share

6:53and I'm a fan as well. I wouldn't put myself in the same class as Neela, but you studied fandom of Star Wars, of Batman, of David Bowie. What do super fans all have in common? Passion. I think you asked me for one sentence definition of fandom in preparation for our chat, and passion was a word in that. I'll give you the sentence later on. But I thought for a while about that, and passion, enthusiasm, commitment, immersion, intensity. I was going to say they make

7:30the story part of their world, but it's not so much that. It's more like the story draws them into its world, or a combination of the two. There is a connection between them and the story. Every Harry Potter fan is going to have a slightly different version of Harry Potter in their head, depending on how they kind of connected with it and intertwined it in their own lives. Memories about, like Neela said, about when you first encountered the books, when you first saw the films. Moments with friends, moments when it comforted you, when it reassured you, moments

8:06when you were waiting for the next episode. Every Harry Potter fan is going to have similar, different stories about the role that the story played in their own lives, and that's going to be true for every kind of media fandom. And I might even say every fandom. I mean, fandom is so broad, really. You know, I've still got sports fandom. I think some people are fans of politics, of news, of classical music. I think there's going to be similarities across the board there, but it's about how the thing, the media object or the object of the fandom becomes integrated into your own life

8:38and your own life history. So, Will, are you a super fan of anything? Not right now. I think there have been periods where I have been. I think partly because of the nature of, you know, how I work in terms of, like, when I write a book on something, there are a few years where I become, I think there's probably a moment during the process where I'm the world expert on that topic. And then that just goes and all goes into the book and the book becomes the, you know, the repository for my expertise. And that kind of wanes. And to be honest, it sometimes goes the other

9:13direction that I don't really want to be near that thing quite so much anymore. And it would never really return to the same level of fandom. But when I'm writing about something and really, really into it, then yeah, I'd say that's probably, that's probably a super fandom. Nila, would you argue, if Will's saying there's a best before date on his super fandom, is that super fandom? You said you started reading the books, you were 22. That's, you know, 2000, that's 26 years ago. I know that's when the films came out. Anyway, a long time and you're

9:46still a fan. Is that a sign of true fandom? My daughter, funny you said that once, because she's loved How to Train Dragon and Percy Jackson, and she's delved into all of those things. And she hated Harry Potter when I was younger. I would have it on audibles. And it scared her. And then there was this turning point. And actually, just talking to those two examples that you gave, she loves them both. But I don't think she was able to follow the thread as efficiently or fall in love with the characters as much. And also this,

10:19I'm going to take this back to Stephen Fry. We had it on a lot. And it gave us comfort to have them on. It gave us comfort to put that on when not just as a distraction, but there was someone else in the room. Now, I worked there and I was, and I do do work one-to-one. I have a very muggle job in AI

Using fiction for trauma healing

10:37now and in corporate world and back in tech. But I still work with a lot of people. And one of the things I do with Harry Potter is I do a lot of trauma healing. We do somatic work, vagus nerve work. And what I realized was when I talked to people that they would tell you something little and I would offer them an invitation to tell me what it meant to them. That would often, for me, lead to them telling me their life story and crying. Because it unpacks something for them, which was deeper, not just nostalgia, but maybe they had something with their mother or

11:09their grandmother or reminded them of something. And that encoding was really important. And so I still use the books and the spells and I shift between, this is going to be weird for you, maybe will, but between science and spirituality and tell you why the spells work. I did a meditation embodiment in the Great Hall. I was really privileged to do that, to help people with their entrainment of energy. But what is really lovely is we're talking in the same language in lexicon. It's almost like

11:39you've bridged something where you don't need to get to know anyone, which is what happens in fandom. And I think it was the same with Harry Potter. So I can say, right, what you need to do is when that person comes and they're like a dementor, working their dementors actually like depression, it sucks the life out of you. And when I'm talking to people, you understand what that means. And so what's the antidote to that? And actually, J.K. Rowling uses some very good things from science. I'm not going to go into the HeartMath Institute and the research or my own research into brain scanning studies.

12:13But suffice to say that when you use some of those tools and work with it, you get people to open up a little bit more and it really helps with that healing and getting them to where they need to. So I think there's a depth to Potter. And maybe because I'm a super fan, I can use that. But that network understands the language of what it is and what it means to feel X. Yeah. That triggers two thoughts of me, Neela, because I've done quite a few of these podcasts on a range of different topics. But as you were speaking then, two things popped into my little

12:47brain. And the first one was I did an episode on the psychology of James Bond. And Professor Adrian Furnham came on the episode and he was talking about how MI6, MI5 recruit real spies, not obviously fictional spies. And he said one of the things that they teach is tactical empathy, that you must speak the common language of the person you are trying to manipulate, persuade. And so he said, if the person you are beguiling likes archery, you suddenly like

13:19archery as well. If they listen to the Beatles, you listen to the Beatles as well, because you've got this common language and they teach that's what you need to do in order to find that connection. And then obviously then they'll be more likely to be influenced by you because you've connected with them. Now, not in the influenced, but in the manipulative way, but in the therapeutic way, it sounds like your embodied meditation is using Harry Potter in that same way of common language, connecting with people. At the end of the day, they're at the Harry Potter tour. There

13:50is a connection there and you're bringing something deeper. Yes, definitely. And I think you can really feel it and there's something deeper, the energy of and the coherence about the person. So I know the spies, they're trained to feel that deeper feeling. But for me, I'm very intuitive and really energetic. And when you talk to someone, it's superficial, that narcissist. There weren't many narcissists at the tour, I'm not going to lie. And if they were, they were Slytherin, obviously. Not all of them, but that's a whole different story, actually. But I will come back to that.

14:22Maybe they were actually, but you can feel through that if you listen deeply enough with all of you. But yeah, I think it is. I think it's most things in life that we don't feel seen. And how do you connect with people? And I'm actually going to go a little bit further and actually say things like Star Wars, things like Harry Potter, where it gives you a home where you might not have felt that home. And when you've got that joint connection, whatever

14:54that is, you feel seen. You can argue about whether or not you like Slytherin or Gryffindor or whether or not, did you like Luke and did he really have the force or was it all of those things. But it gives you a place to start a conversation. And we're in a world which feels quite lonely. Loneliness is an epidemic. So it does feel that way. So I think if you're being truth and honest, I think I got so many beautiful testimonials because I genuinely was listening

15:29and listening and hearing them and probing, which meant that people wrote back and said, oh my God, she made it magical. She told me, I would, I've got so many facts about the Harry Potter world. It's unreal. And we'll get to that, Neela. We definitely will. Well, we start there, but you're talking and what you're really trying to do is unpack and see the person you've got in front of you.

Separating art from the artist

15:49I'd like to make a point and kind of address an elephant in the room here, to be honest with you. If I'm talking about Star Wars to people, I fully agree about this. But if I say, like someone, you know, do you prefer the sequels or the prequels and so on? I agree that with a Star Wars fan that can create an immediate kind of common language. However, with Harry Potter, a lot of people think JK Rowling is one of the most hateful people on earth. And they think that the whole mythology is transphobic and also racist and various other prejudices to the point that this week on social media, I've seen people saying they're going to boycott

16:23Tim Hortons for doing a sponsorship deal with the new HBO. Now, I mean, this might not be a topic we want to get into depth here, but I think Harry Potter is so unusual, perhaps even unique, in that with some people, it can completely bring them into a world where they feel safe. And for other people, they feel entirely unsafe. And they feel this is a story which to them represents hate and alienation and oppression. Rowling is using her money to fund

16:53causes which want to wipe out their very existence. That is really extreme, isn't it? Now, obviously, that kind of person probably isn't going to come on a tour. But if that sort of person was in therapy, and you start saying, well, think about your Patronus, that could be very alienating. And it completely undermined the process, couldn't it? Yeah, and well, and I'm going to talk to that, because I think, when I was growing up, so my husband is white, my daughter, language of JK Rowling, half blood. She had, she's quite fair, she looks more

17:29Spanish. But I was able to talk to the racism that I got more than she got with the language of Harry Potter. Again, back to that. And there are people on the tour that I worked with. And it's really about the transgender issues that she talked about. And in some ways, I can, I get it, right? We lived, Warner Brothers is very, they, them, him, her, she, them, it's great. It is interesting, because the people that worked there felt like we were inclusive, and everyone was allowed at the party and all of those things. So it is the last two or three years, that's felt, I would say four years, that's really

18:03shifted people. And that has been on my conscious. And then I have to go, but the magic that it brings and what it does. So again, I do, I don't chase JK Rowling. And I have to keep checking in with what that means. But can I do more good than not? I'm not sure what the series is going to bring. I just want to go back to your point, though, Will, about the therapy. And if you bring up Harry Potter to somebody of whom is of the mind that actually that is toxic, you're right. But with therapy, and I totally imagine it with Neela's embodied meditation, that obviously they're there,

18:38they're self-selected as people that have gone to this place. And so therefore, they're not going to be that type. But it reminds me again, which was my second point from earlier, because whenever I say I've got two points, and then I say one thing, I get loads of comments to go, where's your second point? So everyone listening, this is my second point from earlier. I did a podcast with Dr. Janina Scarlett, who basically has created something called superhero therapy. And she did that with veterans of wars who are suffering from PTSD. And she found that it was a terrible situation because

19:11they are suffering from something. And yet they had been taught, often through their family, but definitely through the systemic work of the armies, that they cannot show emotion. And therefore, they were stuck. And they didn't want to talk about what they had gone through at all. It wasn't what they wanted to do. And what she found was, if she could then talk to them about superheroes, and she let them talk about it themselves. And Batman actually was one of these that she talked about on the podcast. This is how she came up with it. One of her veterans was talking, and he then

19:45suddenly went, it's a little bit like how Bruce Wayne saw his parents die, and what happened to him. And so she got him talking about Bruce Wayne. And obviously, what he was doing is transferring his pain and feelings onto Bruce Wayne as a character and being able to talk about it. And then she developed superhero therapy off the back of that, where people can actually use a secondary character, but they are talking about themselves. So I think that's probably where, you know, from the therapeutic point of view, it can still be good. But you're absolutely right, Will, you do not

20:17force a character onto somebody, because they just simply don't identify with them, it's going to be pointless. No. I'd say, perhaps it is, perhaps it is unique. Michael Jackson was another good example there. But in terms of separating the art from the artist, David Bowie was not a perfect person, by any means. And many, many of the things he did, I find extremely problematic. And when people bring them up to me, I just have to say, well, you know, you're absolutely right. I can't deny that. And what do you do then, if someone was producing music, which is very important to you, and yet the person they

20:48were, and their actions at the time, are entirely reprehensible. I've also written a book about Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, and, you know, extremely problematic figure. And the more I think about it now, the more issues I have with the guy and his behaviour, and yet, Alice in Wonderland. So what do you do? It's a personal matter, I think. It's for each individual to process in their own way, I think, how we balance art with artists in each of these cases.

21:20And you've mentioned David Bowie there, so I'm going to have to leap on that, Will, because I asked you if you were a super fan of anything, and you said, well, sometimes you definitely know when you're writing. But you did something quite spectacular for a year, didn't you, regarding

Immersing in David Bowie

21:34David Bowie? Well, I wanted to write a book about David Bowie, because Lou Reed died, basically. And Lou Reed was around the same age as David Bowie. And I'd always thought, I'd been a fan of Bowie since I was 13, very, very important to me. And I'd always thought, well, I don't want to write about it, I don't want to study it, because I don't want to spoil Bowie and his art by studying it. When Lou Reed died, I thought, you know, I really want to, I better do something while Bowie is still alive. Ironically, Bowie died exactly halfway through my year of immersing

22:06myself in Bowie's life and career. So in order to just try and get a handle on this research and just try and get into it in some way, I decided to get my hair styled like Bowie in 73, and then wear vintage clothes and things like that. And then to listen to the music Bowie had been listening to and read the books that Bowie had read at the time, just to try and understand his output by getting his input, really, to try and gain a better understanding by seeing what was going into this man at the time he was producing this art.

22:36And didn't you stay at the hotels he was stayed at? Yes. At the restaurants he ate at? The truth is, the truth is, like in terms of like, a lot of these things are contingent, they sort of depend. What happened is, I started doing this in summer. Summer is a very quiet period for British media. So someone jumped onto this, there was nothing else going on in August. Just one story, another story, you know, TV, global news and everything. And by the time I'd said to multiple nations on multiple cameras, I'm going to do this, I had to do it, you see.

23:07So it kind of escalated, yeah. So, yeah. Well, I'd urge people to go and look up the article, because if nothing else, the photo shoot with you was fantastic. You looked amazing. Well, there's multiple photo shoots, because I decided I have to go through every period, you know. And yes, I did stay in the same motels, ate the same food, went to many of the same places, performed with a Bowie tribute band, had custom outfits made, which I still have and drag out, drag out sometimes. Yeah, it just kind of, it grew and grew into a sort of unique project. And it comes to that point, you sort of think, I'm just going to keep saying

23:41yes to this and see what happens, because here's an opportunity. It's absolutely crazy. At the time, I didn't have children. I do now. You sort of think, this has been offered to me, this opportunity, and I might as well just commit to it and see what happens. Can I ask one question just on that? Yeah, yeah. Please ask what you want. Because we were mentioning before about superheroes and actually putting, and the other flip slide of that is when we step into the shoes of our heroes or who we want to be. And the context

24:14I'm saying this is, is we did a, I did a VR study. I was part of a VR where people had issues with their own confidence and we put them into a thing where they were Cleopatra and they were able to come out and be completely different, but their mindset shifted and their perspective shifted. So I know you had all the clothes on and you went to all the places, but did you feel that perspective change? Yes. I wouldn't say I was unconfident before, but I do feel once you've done a thing like that, you've broken a boundary. Once you've done something as bold as wear that kind of

24:49outfit on a stage in front of strangers and sing in front of strangers, you can never go back from that. Well, anyway, I can't. I mean, it might be possible to have rest past that, but it's like you've crossed so many boundaries of possible insecurity that, yeah, you can look back on, well, if I've done that, I can do this. You know, if I've done that, of course I can do public speaking because I've done something much more challenging. Yeah. Um, absolutely. I kind of was, I was actively trying to become Bowie in a way. I was actively trying to sort of channel him and sort of act as him. So yeah, completely, you could say it was a bit mystical really.

25:23When you took the clothes off and I mean that sort of metaphorically, when you stopped that experiment and came back to yourself again, did you change back or did some of that stay with you? I think some of it stayed with me certainly over a period of time. It certainly wasn't abrupt. The way I would have put it is you become a different version of yourself. You, and I, you know, when I wrote this book about why Bowie matters, it was become, it wasn't about becoming Bowie. It was about kind of incorporating some Bowie into you. It was like in the simplest way, you know, what would Bowie do? Well, but you know, Bowie did it.

25:53You don't do exactly what Bowie did, but you sort of think, well, Bowie did it. So why not have a bit more fun and creativity with your life and don't think, well, I can't draw, I can't paint, you know, I can't sing, I can't play instruments, I can't act. Because there was certainly a time in his career where Bowie wasn't brilliant at any of those things and he did them anyway. And that's, that was really the attitude which I tried to embody from it. Interesting. Yeah. Again, it reminds me of the last episode I did, which was on the psychology of the Odyssey. Recently, Christopher Nolan did the film. And Dr. Sam Akbar talked to me about

26:25the journey and how important it is for people, that you never go back to who you were. Odysseus got back to Ithaca after going through his adventures, but he wasn't the same Odysseus and it wasn't the same Ithaca. And actually that's the important part of it, is that journey because you change. I'm interested, Neela, you must have chatted, experienced lots of the people that came to the Harry Potter tour with you. Did you get a sense that there was more than just fandom, that people were using this to help them in some way?

26:57Yes. And we had a lot of groups come in as well as they'd met online, they'd formed together, and they came in as a group together, as a network. And we had one group of women who came in 98 times and that was, when did I leave? Start of 2025. I think some people can come in and just be in that because it feels safe or it feels fun or there's a nostalgia. And lots of people don't think that much more deeply into it. But for me, I can use it and think, you know, to your point,

27:32I need to be more Dumbledore today and how can I change? And thinking about the shadow and the light of who I am and what I'm doing at that moment. And it gives me that consciousness about it. I think this is why I like using it so you can see and reflect. Like Ron's a perfect character of, in the book that, about the psychology of Harry Potter, I think there's, Ron's a great character for anxious attachment. It's like really wants to be seen, really wants to be loved. And when it's not that, he gets really angry and really, really aggressive and Snape's a lot like that as well.

28:08So I think, you know, you can see these characters growing and then there's an awareness. But when people come in, there's a mixture. I think sometimes I will inadvertently drop an invitation for them to think about, oh, that's a bit like this or maybe like that. But I think people just use it to feel better. It really depends on where they are on that journey. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I've interviewed a lot of Star Wars fans who have also channeled characters through them. I mean, they've actually used those terms, you know, they're not kind of, they haven't gone through

28:40therapy necessarily. They're certainly not trained in psychology, but that'll be the language they used. You know, what would this person do? I need to be more Boba Fett right now. So I'm feeling that. Yeah. And it can help. It gives you a language, doesn't it? 100%. Well, I'm interested. You mentioned earlier about, obviously, Harry Potter, the TV show,

Reactions to character recasting

28:57I think it's the HBO series. I think it's coming on Christmas Day when I looked it up. So it's going to be a new Harry Potter, a new Hermione. There's a new Dumbledore, new Snape. What's your thoughts on why people get so territorial about recasting characters?

29:17Well, you mentioned Snape. In terms of casting characters, there's some racism involved, isn't there, in that respect, having a black actor playing Snape. And we've seen this with other characters like the Little Mermaid in the live action Disney. So sometimes kind of gatekeeping, I think, can be genuinely tinged with prejudice. Sometimes I think it's more harmless and it's the thing that people grew up with and they don't want it sort of taken away and redone. That seems fair enough and fairly benign. I think it's understandable if

29:48you grew up with something, it becomes important to you. You sort of feel you don't want it taken away and you don't want another one substituted instead. I mean, in a minor way, I can maybe not feel that, but I can certainly understand that if you like a certain Batman, you could be upset about the casting of a different Batman. And the reason for that is even though the other one still exists, the new one becomes the official one and the new one is going to be on all the merch and everything. So Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter is now not going to be drawn on boxes for like golden snitches and stuff. And, you know, people are really invested in something. I can understand

30:24that. They feel that something's been taken from them. Yeah. And I can see that, that a lot of the time people are not defending accuracy, they're defending a memory and it's their memory. Yes. And it's the one that they wish to have. And it's interesting because you mentioned Batman there. I think with the Batman character, people understand that that Batman character is going to change at some point. They generally have two, three films or one for George Clooney and then they move on. I mean, it's only so much nipples you can take on a Batman costume before you have to just move on. Yeah, I went there. And James Bond, you know, I chatted about that recently. People

31:00understand it's a finite number of films that then moves on. They always have a discussion about it, but that's that. Harry Potter hasn't had that. Harry Potter is Daniel Radcliffe, has been Daniel Radcliffe for the last 26 years and all the other characters as well. So it's a harder thing to let go of. It's the first time people have had to let go of it, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And the Cursed Child as well obviously broke the rule on Hermione by casting a black person, you know,

31:31as well. But I think the, if I was going to go be cynical, the marketing of the fact that we hit the 25 years, they're going to do it on the 25th of December. They'll probably drop, they'll probably drop a video or a new trailer on the 31st of December, October, which was the day that Harry's parents died and he became orphan. So there's certain dates I think we are looking out for and I'm like, they'll drop that there. Because initially they said 2027 for filming and obviously they've speeded

32:01things up. So there's a marketing element to this absolutely, which I think is going to be interesting. And I think for me as a fan, that's where I'm like, oh, what's it going to be like? Is it going to be pushing for the money? And that's where I'm going to get cynical. But I'm happy for the new characters. I'm always looking at the trolls, looking at what they have to say and in some ways, petty minded about stuff. So I'm a little bit detached from all of that. I will open to experience. Let's see what happens. You confused me though, Neela. I was just going, are there trolls

32:35in Harry Potter? There are trolls in Harry Potter. Yes, there are. But you know, they're trolls on the internet. They're real ones and Harry Potter ones. Maybe they're the same on the internet as well. I don't know. They smell, they're big, they're stupid. I don't know. That's brilliant marketing idea, actually. That's fantastic. An odd thing I do as part of this podcast is I feed AI with lots of information about the podcast, publicly available things. And then I ask it, what question would it ask each of you? And so Will, I'm going to go with you first. AI has got a question for you. And it's

Does the sorting hat read reality

33:13this. I've read every Harry Potter book, roughly 900 million times, and I have never once been sorted. I have no house. Nobody has made me a scarf. You study how people build an identity out of a story they didn't write? So tell me honestly, is the sorting hat reading something real in a person? Or is it just very good at telling people what they've already decided about themselves?

33:45Thank you, AI. You know, for a very clever machine learning brain, I think you've missed something there. You've given only two possibilities. I've thought about your question hard. It isn't a simple binary here. It isn't one or the other. And I've thought about this, and I'll tell you what I think. If you have the sorting hat on your head at age 10 or 11, you're not a fully formed human being at all. You're going to be a combination of different traits. And if you have a sorting hat on your head, and it says, right, you're in this house. This is the brave house. This is the studious

34:19house. This is the nice bumbling house. And this is the villainous house at age 11. And then it puts you in a club where you get like a scarf and a common room, and you get teachers who are very much like yourself. If you're going to get taught by Snape or so on, or McGonagall, you're going to become a certain sort of person. If when you are basically a child, you are told, okay, this is the thing you are. I'm going to put you in this club with all these other people. And these are the values of your house. And they go back centuries. And we've got all these diadems and artifacts and so on.

34:52You are going to become pretty much that kind of person. And I even thought there were some kind examples of this. I believe you can both correct me. Hermione is more of a Ravenclaw, right? And Neville Longbottom was never lived up to the values of Gryffindor until like the end. Okay, so you've got people who might and Harry Potter was edging towards Slytherin as well. So you've got people who are kind of like borderline. But if Neville gets put in Gryffindor, he always feels I must live up to the values of Gryffindor until he becomes one. And Hermione isn't going to hang out with

35:25Ron and Harry if she's not in Gryffindor. So basically, to answer the AI's question, I think the house you're put in very much shapes the adult you're going to become. Yeah, that does ring your arguments in both cases there ring very behaviourist for me. And as a behavioural psychologist myself, it reminds me of the quote from John B. Watson, famously, when he said, give me any child and the environment and I can control the context environment, I can turn them into anything from lawyer, doctor, beggar, man and thief.

35:59Because at that age, like you say, they are not developed yet. And there was a study last year from Cambridge, which looked at how brain regions change dramatically. And we always knew that people generally, their brain doesn't fully come online until about early 20s. But this study showed that actually, it goes, it changes dramatically at age of nine. And then the next major development is the age of 32. And we still are in development up until that age. And then it's 60, 84, just to be

36:32completist on that one. Neela, I mean, I'm interested in that. Hogwarts, when you think about it, is kind of engineered to maximise conflict. Well, you could put that on it. You know, it's got very distinct stereotype groups, permanent, highly visible membership things, such as crests, colours, dormitories, separate meals, as a visible favouritism towards Gryffindor in the films, generally, and the books. And a very competitive nature, especially, obviously, with the house

37:03cup and what have you. And what's the thing where they fly around? Oh, gosh. Brooms? No, not the actual game. Oh, Quidditch. Yeah, Quidditch. How did I forget that? My brain just lost me there. Yeah. What's your thoughts on that? Is it not a good idea for schools to base themselves on Hogwarts? I think yes, because I think that I've thought that for a while. So I'm a Gryffindor. I have a lovely Hufflepuff cup here, because actually, most of the time, I know that

37:36there's times where I need to hone my patience, dedication and loyalty. And I want to have more of those characteristics. And there's sometimes where I need to lean in and actually be more slithering in the sense that I probably need to be a little bit more ambitious about my muggle work more than my own work, because I'm quite passionate about my own work. And then there's times where I'm just like, and I have got, I've showed this earlier, but my diadam for Ravenclaw, where I'm just like, just put your thinking cap on at the moment. Wit, beyond wit is man's greatest treasure. Use that.

38:11So there's times where I think we need to be understanding and using all those values. Now, my daughter who goes to a school and they're in a class, but their group, when they get to sports day and they do that, they all come and they shift them around. And so once a year or at various times, they collect money for a group that they're not in together all of the time, but they know that they're, I can't even remember the name she's in. I want to call it the Pink Panthers, but it's not that, it's something else. It's just that their outfit's pink and that's the values that they hold.

38:45And then the following year, they change groups and they hold the value of someone else. Now that's lovely in the sense that they're shifting, they're making, they're breaking. And there's those great psychology experiments where we know that they put the boys in, they get them to have conflict and they hate each other. The, what's it called? The sheriff's, that's it. We know that doesn't work. We've known that doesn't work for years. I suppose from a book perspective, it obviously helps curtail the stories, but I think we need more integration, but more sharing of different values

39:20as well. And that, yeah. And that's my point. I think I completely diverge from what you asked, but that is right. It was a good point to make. Um, but I don't think you have escaped your AI question because you've got one as well, Neela. Oh, okay. This is what AI is asking of you.

Behind the studio tour curtain

39:36I've processed thousands of visitor reviews of the studio tour and the most common word is magical. Here's my problem. I know exactly what the great hall is. Painted MDF, flagstone floor, a set built to a specification. And yet everyone who walks in reports something I cannot compute from the specification. So as the person who stood in that room and watched it happen, what is it that I'll never understand?

40:06Oh, AI. You feel kind of sorry for AI, don't you, for a bit? She's getting quite existential on some of these questions. Yeah. But it also shows the lack of humanity and the lack of what makes us human. So I work in technology and product. And I always say, when people give me a requirements, give me the functional requirements and the bit that gets left, the emotional requirements. And yeah, we're emotional beings. We're feeling creatures that think, not thinking creatures that feel. So what's missing, you walk into that room and it's huge and there's magic, there's music,

40:38there's an absolute visceral, I keep saying visceral feeling that you will get. And that's the magic within you, with the energy of the people around you. And it will completely enliven you or depending on who you are, maybe it makes you feel awful, but it makes you feel something and it will, and it's more than that plasterboard. And, and the floor is absolute castle. How is it? Flagstone? Yes. It's flagstone. It's absolute flagstone. Because I knew it needed to last for however

41:10many years, 10 years. Thousands of people traipsing over it. Yeah. So it was in stage, soundstage. Jay, we brought it over to where it is now. The floor's a little bit bigger. So you'll see the grouting's a little bit wider. But anyway. That's too much detail. But you, you saw behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain. You went behind those little doors where staff go, and probably the magic disappears, and you get to see the wood at the back, and it's probably tatty and smelly around the back. Did that spoil it for you? No, not at all. Not at all. And in fact, what you don't see is, like in the Great Hall, there's

41:45little panels. And when you go to Gringotts, there's little panels that you can walk through the back and get from one to another. A little secret passageways. Little passageways. Yeah. And you get, and actually, the more you know about how they made the film, and all of the visual effects, that is where the magic really comes on. There's some great, you know, when I look at some things in, like film three is my favorite, Hermione turning the time turner. That wasn't a visual effect when the time turner went. What we found out by one of the makers was they put air blowers up Emma Watson's arms. So when she turns the time turner, it actually

42:22blows the time turner. So it's really spinning, and then it blows up faster. And then you've got the other scenes that are happening. Things like that, where I was, Gary Tomkinson came in, was having a tour. He's one of the guys, was the art directors. And he was like, yeah, yeah, we couldn't figure out another way to do it. So actually, when you're in the back room, and you're seeing it, it actually is even more special. Nice. Okay. Yeah, I've never been. And it's one of the things I do need to go and do. Right, I'm going to wrap up with some quick fire questions for you both. So Will,

Quick fire questions

42:54I'm going to start with you. Describe fandom in one sentence. Fandom is the passionate engagement with and investment in a specific form of popular culture.

43:07Harry Potter, books or films? Books. Well, this is for Will.

43:14We know you're one, Neela. I say books. I think the films are mixed. I think they get better over time as the directors change and the actors develop as well. I'll do yours in a minute, Neela. You just wait there. I'll answer Neela's as well.

43:30Harry Potter or David Bowie? In what sense? I mean, magical combat? For you?

43:38I'm going to say David Bowie because David Bowie is older and more experienced. And Harry Potter is born in the late 70s, I imagine. David Bowie has years of magical experience over him. So I think Bowie would probably... I realised afterwards, they both have a lightning bolt on their face. Well, they do, don't they? But Bowie came first. Bowie came first. In terms of magical combat, I'm saying David Bowie. It's particularly as Jareth the Goblin King from Labyrinth.

44:08Good point. Yeah, yeah. What house would you want to be sorted into? I wouldn't want to be in Slytherin. I think I'd probably be put in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. I think Slytherin is the house of the diva.

44:26I'm not going to say anything about that. One franchise whose fandom rivals Harry Potter? Star Wars. If you're asking for one, I could do more. No, I think one is good enough. And again, Star Wars, it's not about age, but Star Wars has been going longer. So it's obviously a more established, it's actually a broader franchise. That's not to say it's bigger at all, but it has at least as large a passionate fan base and it has a longer history. I would also argue that something in Star Wars' favour, and here I'm not the expert,

44:59but from the psychology side, fans of Star Wars, the original three, were starved of Star Wars for quite a long time. That's so true. And also did not get the marketing train doing everything it's doing to it at the moment. And so it wasn't spoiled. That nostalgia memory was beautiful. And then suddenly, like you say, the prequels came out and so and so forth. It may have made a change. What do you think? Yeah, the thing about, I'm not going to say spoiled, but I'm going to say it was a particularly unusual position because during the 80s and most of the 80s and most of the 90s, fans had

45:34nothing. So they had to create their own stuff. And that isn't the case with most media franchises. Yeah, yeah. Neela, I'm going to do your quick fire five. Obviously, Will, you jump in if you want to answer one of these as well. I don't think you're going to answer the first one there. Neela, which Harry Potter character would you least like to have attended your yoga classes?

45:58Definitely Umbridge. Oh. Can you imagine? Can you just follow the theory?

46:06Yeah, no, I didn't think you were going to come up with that. Brilliant. Dumbledore. Wise mentor or reckless manipulator? Yeah, this one's an interesting one, but I'm going to say wise mentor.

46:18And I could go into it, but I have got Dumbledore on here. I do feel like I'm, I have to, you know, when I go into a meeting and it's like, and I know there's going to be a confronting person and I don't want to be passive aggressive and I don't want to get angry and I don't want to do all the things, but I know I need my wits about me and I need to stay funny. Fair enough. So I can get my porticoins. That's why I channel him. Okay. What's your favourite scene across the books and films? I kind of alluded to one earlier about Hermione turning the time turner.

46:49All of book three. I really love the way that Alfonso Caron films that. It's very cinematic. So he's going through windows, he's going through curtains and you're traveling with him. And then there's that sort of feel. Lots of people, when he came in, I remember at the time going, oh, I don't like where Hagrid's hut is and I don't like this, but I actually really like that he helps you travel. And those little touches that happen within that film are just amazing. Okay. The question you were asked most often by visitors to the Harry Potter tour.

47:21Can I touch the hippogriff?

47:26No. No. Step away from the hippogriff. Okay. No touching hippogriffs here. I think maybe a little sign might have been erected after a while. Well, there was. It was just that the hippogriff was too close to the barrier, which I complained about all the time and then they tried to pick up the feather off the floor and anyway. Yeah. I mean, who wouldn't want to touch the hippogriff? That's fine. Now, I did have a question here about what house you were going to be, but I knew really through the talks we're going to have, you were going to give it away and I didn't know you were going to come with a t-shirt of it, but there we go.

47:56So I'm going to change it out to one that you haven't heard before, Neela, which is if Harry Potter vanished tomorrow, every book, every set, every film gone, what psychological need will be left unmet. Oh, gee. You know, I wonder whether it would be, it's that feeling of understanding, belonging and being in a world. So Lord of the Rings probably comes as close, but it's a bit more complicated and I don't really feel myself, apart from Calandra, who is the elf part of that, I really feel quite

48:33strongly with that character. But, you know, I don't travel with that. I don't feel like I'm within that world completely. Whereas with Harry Potter, you can almost feel how, what you would do, how you would feel, what the different aspects of it. I'm not even a massive Harry Potter fan and I don't think anything would replace Harry Potter if it was suddenly gone. Narnia wouldn't. There's nothing, a massive fictional world would have, would be bereft of something significant. Even though I think Harry Potter draws on a lot of other sources, it draws on it in

49:05a very intelligent and empathetic way. Brilliant. I think that's a, I think that's what I was going to say. It's a beautiful place to end, I think, because one, I don't want to take all your time up. We could go on all afternoon, I'm sure. Yes. And second, I've just seen myself in the camera and realised that it looks like I'm wearing a five-year-old's t-shirt. I think this has been in the hot wash way too much to be decent. So if you're watching on YouTube, I do apologise. But Will, Neela, thank you so much for your time to chat about the psychology of Harry Potter.

49:37Will, where can people find out more about you and your work? Oh, I've got a website. It's worldbrocker.com. They can find out some about me there if they want. I'll put it in the show notes so people can click on that and find out more about you. And Neela, what about you? I have a website and a company called Awakening Flow. But if you want to know more about my corporate world, just check it, LinkedIn. Neela Matthews, it's very, very muggle. If you want the real me, Awakening Flow. I will put both Awakening Flow and your muggle side into the show notes as well.

50:11Thank you so much. So I hope that was a magical conversation for you to listen to. As always, I try and think of things as we go through, of key takeaways, I suppose.

Key takeaways from the conversation

50:22And I've got three things I think I would be taking away from this conversation. First of all, that Harry Potter works because it meets us where we are, I suppose. Whether it's the escapism, the sense of belonging, or maybe the nostalgia that hits you the moment you hear Hedwig's theme. The story doesn't just entertain, it sort of encodes itself into our life. And yes, as Will said in the interview, that is partly marketing, but it's also a lot of psychology in there as well. The second thing I would say is that the house you're sorted into shapes the person you become.

50:58And Will made that point really brilliantly, that the sorting hat isn't just reading you, it's actually possibly making a decision. And once you're in that common room, surrounded by those values and those people, you start to grow into them. I mean, that sounds familiar to me. And it should, obviously, because that's behaviorism. That's the world of psychology saying that the environment and the context is probably the most important thing which shapes us and shapes our children and makes us who we become. So, you know, every school, every workplace, every group we're placed into makes us who we are.

51:32And the third thing I've scribbled on my pad is really that the magic isn't in the MDF. As Neela told us, she has been actually behind the curtain at the studio tour. She's seen the panels, she's seen the passages, the air blowers, actually the things spinning Hermione's time turner. And it made it more magical for her, not less. And it's because the magic she brought to it, it wasn't just the fakery all around it. And I think that's a huge psychological aspect when we bring it to any type of fandom.

52:03So, once again, thank you to Will Brooker and Neela Matthews for the conversation. I could have kept going really all afternoon on that one and really geeked down on Harry Potter. Links to their work and their connections are in the show notes. Until next time, everything really is psychology. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

52:34Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.