In the wake of JK Rowling's general personal awfulness, it's become fashionable to say that no part of the Harry Potter franchise ecosystem was ever good. But does any piece of genuinely unmitigated garbage get as big as Harry Potter did, and stay that big for as long? I read the books as they came out, and my assessment at the time was that the worst of them was "fine". This episode I talk to Catherine McNamara, a much deeper Potterhead than I ever was, to talk about the books, the fandom, the movies, and the challenges of reckoning with art made by a person who just keeps on getting worse and worse in real time.