Is Margaret Thatcher in Slytherin or Hufflepuff?
The Sorting Chat podcast sorts historical and fictional figures into the Hogwarts houses.
Welcome to PodFodder, where I talk to the people behind podcasts about why they created their podcasts. Yeah. Cool. Let’s get into it.
Today’s PodFodder features Patrick Ross from the Sorting Chat, a podcast where him and three friends fight to the death to decide which Hogwarts houses your favorite historical and fictional characters belong in. Past features have included everyone from Queen Elizabeth II and Denzel Washington to Dr. Seuss and Gandalf.
You can subscribe to the Sorting Chat here and follow them on Twitter here.
So, let’s jump into it to find out what this arduous process entails (and why no one can agree on where Margaret Thatcher belongs).
The Queue: You were told to think of this one beforehand. Describe your podcast in haiku form.
Patrick Ross: Four Hogwarts Houses. All of us belong to one. We might sort you next.
TQ: First things first, how did the Sorting Chat get started as a podcast?
PR: There’s four of us, and we all work in theater. One of my co-hosts, Megan, was on Jeopardy! a couple of months ago, and at her Jeopardy! watch party, we started “sorting” people, specifically Margaret Thatcher and what house she’d be in. We found that people were very interested in our conversation and that maybe we should start recording it. A couple months later, we started to do just that.
TQ: The first podcast came after the election, so I think Hillary Clinton was an obvious choice for a first person to sort, but how do you choose a person for each episode?
PR: We have a list, and we certainly don’t have a large following, but people who listen to episodes write in. We accept requests, and we try to honor them. So, it’s two-fold. We also try to tie it into something that’s going on. Billie Holiday’s, what would’ve been, her 100th birthday [just passed], stuff like that.
Otherwise, we’re mostly looking for people who we think are complex enough that we can talk about them half an hour. There are some people I wanted to do like Theresa May this week because of the election happening over there, but we all agreed that she’s in Slytherin, so there was no point in actually having a conversation about that.
We look for people where we think there’s some meat there, but we don’t discuss ahead of time where we’d sort them. We decide on a subject, then we go away and research, and then we come back. There’s only been one time where we were a four-way “tie” on Catherine the Great, whom we all said was Slytherin. Usually it splits, and even though we never have a four-way split, it’s even enough that we can volley back and forth.
TQ: I went through and listened to a couple of episodes, and it’s interesting how quickly the discussions become very, very intellectual discussions about — pardon me, I’m going to sound pretentious for a second — sociological topics.
So for instance, with Hillary Clinton, you mentioned that you can’t label all politicians as Slytherin and how women are already seen as “unlikable,” so it’d be problematic to say that women should automatically be in Slytherin. Did that process of looking at these issues come about organically?
PR: Yeah, it came about organically, and now, of course, we expect it. We could talk about Hillary for days let alone 30 minutes, so that stuff was going to come out. The first episode we did Hillary and the second one we did Mad-Eye Moody since we thought it’d be good to also do some fictional people to keep it purely hypothetical, but the sociological element, as you say, comes out in all of them.
We taped next week’s episode ahead of time, so it’s going to be Barty Crouch Jr. and Sr., and even though they’re totally fictional characters, we always end up getting topical. That’s who we are, the four of us, and especially now that we’ve been doing it for a while, we’re interested in not just having a frivolous discussion but getting into the meat of it.
TQ: And has there been any person you’ve done so far where the house they were sorted into was a huge surprise or maybe your opinion changed over the course of the episode?
PR: Yes, absolutely. For me personally, it was this upcoming episode [with Barty Crouch Jr. and Sr.]. With Barty Crouch Sr., I came in with a Slytherin argument, and my co-host Megan made a great argument for Marty Crouch Jr. to be a Hufflepuff, and her argument for Jr. swayed me on Marty Crouch Sr. That happens a lot.
TQ: More on the logistical aspects of podcasting, what are some challenges you’ve faced from your podcasting adventures thus far?
PR: Certainly the technology. I’ve got this unidirectional mic and a good podcasting system, but it’s only for one mic and one person. Basically we’ve been struggling with audio quality, and over the past couple weeks only really got to something that’s professional and decent.
I guess the second answer to that question is marketing. We know this is a podcast people would enjoy, but Twitter is, at the moment, our only way of reaching out, and it hasn’t broken through. So I think getting it out there and the audio quality are important, and they’re linked, because we’d invest a lot of money in audio quality if it was a popular thing.
TQ: That’s actually a good segue. Where do you see the future of this podcast going? Is it just going to be a fun side project or serious hobby, or something you hope could turn into a full-time something else at some point?
PR: All four of us work in theater, so we’re freelance largely, from job to job or company to company. It’s something that started off as a fun thing that has become a serious hobby, but I think we’d love for it to become a much more substantial part of what we do and our artistic careers.
TQ: And based on all of your experience thus far, what makes a great podcast?
PR: I think disagreement for us has been the best, especially because we don’t confer ahead of time, which we do deliberately because the surprise when we disagree or agree makes for a genuinely pleasant conversation. I don’t know going into an episode who my allies are going to be or who I’m going to be “fighting.”
One time, there was a three to one [split] where I was in the majority and [my co-host] Megan was in the minority, and she managed to convince us all that [she was right]. I think it’s fun to do it on the fly because then the disagreement is natural and instinctual.
TQ: I feel like I’d try and come up with the most ridiculous argument possible, because yeah, it’s easy to put certain people in houses based on one trait. Like, “Oh, this person’s a good person, so Gryffindor!” But you have to avoid the obvious. It’d make for a boring podcast.
PR: Yeah I have my mini agenda of complicating these houses, because I like putting good, ambitious people in Slytherin, and even more than that, I like putting people in Hufflepuff, because it’s so one-dimensional to do otherwise. That’s why Margaret Thatcher was such a hot-button issue.
TQ: I haven’t listened to hers yet, but I figured it’d be contentious.
PR: It comes up every week! We were “hat-stalled,” which happens because there are four of us, where two of us think one thing and two of us think another. So when that happens, we tell people to tweet at us and resolve the hat stall. In that case, I was the only Hufflepuff, the other three co-hosts were Slytherin, and I was able to sway one of them, which was enough to garner a hat stall. And then everyone online was on my side, which was very satisfying.
