Harry Potter and the Sacred Text is an audio podcast founded by Vanessa Zoltan, Casper Ter Kuile, and Ariana Nedelman, and hosted by Vanessa Zoltan and Matt Potts, in which the Harry Potter books are read as a sacred text. Each episode, the characters and context of one chapter in the Harry Potter series are explored through a different central theme like 'vulnerability', 'betrayal', or 'friendship'. The podcast, which charted #2 on the US iTunes Charts a few months after its inception in 2016,[1] was described as "Bible studies for J.K. Rowling fans".[2] The creators condemned Rowling's views on transgender people, which became apparent from 2019.[3][4] Over its decade-long run the hosts read through the complete series twice, and concluded the show in February 2026.
History
The project originated at Harvard Divinity School, where both founders studied and shared an interest in religion without God - with Vanessa Zoltan describing herself as "an atheist and a Jew and a humanist"