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What’s in today’s March 30th , 2026 issue
📧 What I’m reading: Kash Patel’s emails
🤳🏼 What I’m prepping: A workshop
👨🏼🍳 What I’m air frying: Air fried food
👀 What I’m watching: New Harry Potter trailer
🧠 What I’m processing: My Harry Potter childhood
You either die a hero or live long enough to become Professor Umbridge.
📧 What I’m reading
But his emails! It is not Normal Times™️, so people are not losing their minds that FBI director Kash Patel had his personal email hacked by Iranians and/or Russians. Fox News has no plans to spend an entire election cycle lecturing us on the international ramifications of using private servers. I haven’t seen a 3,000 word think piece on Patel’s personal photo collection of himself smoking cigars. No, it’s just something that happened.
And to be honest, as far as we know so far, there isn’t much in his emails. Maybe, like many stressed during the Clinton “but her emails” era, this particular incident is not that big a deal. It looks like these are emails from well before Patel became FBI director. The larger issue is national security.
Praying no one finds his Venmo username.
To me, the takeaway every time a government official is hacked, or the president gives out his personal cell to literally every journalist on the planet, is that the government should be subjected to far more cybersecurity classes. Why is Kash Patel making his password so accessible? Was he really using a porn account called Spiderkash that was last active “today,” according to a several subreddits (our fact-checkers are standing by)? What are we doing? What’s going on?
We have have older members of our government practically asking to be hacked. On the other side of the very large age gap, you have 23-year-old DOGE employees plugging all their thoughts and our data into AI. I just ask that someone please teach the government how to safely use computers.
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🤳🏼 What I’m prepping
The three co-founders of Local News International are headed to Chicago first thing Monday morning for the ONA (Online News Association) annual news conference. This will also serve as mini-reunion with LNI contributor Chris Vazquez, who lives in Chicago, presumably above a comic book store.
In addition to building more relationships in the journalism world, especially with independent journalists, Lauren, Micah and I will be teaching a workshop at the conference. We’re taking people through every step of our process, from writing to shooting to editing to publishing to responding to comments.
A big goal for me in the remainder of 2026 is to build these connections across newsrooms and seek out more collaborations. Our best journalism at The Washington Post was always when we reached across different teams with different skillsets to create something bigger than ourselves (some of this work was even rewarded last week!).
My favorite long-time collaboration has been with the good people of MediaWise. We went live with them on Friday to discuss AI literacy. You can watch that here.
Our first-ever YouTube Live!
👨🏼🍳 What I’m air frying
After months of holding heated debates in aisles of Costco, my wife and I got an air fryer. And folks, Mari was right the whole time. It’s a revelation. I knew it was good for potatoes (Samwise Gamgee would be thrilled), but it’s incredible with meat of all kinds.
What should we make next? What should we avoid? Lemme know!
I love how frustrated you get with yourself
👀 What I’m watching
We’re gonna get into the JK Rowling-sized elephant in the Room (of Requirement). But first, let’s talk about this trailer:
To my delight, as someone who edits video every day, the internet was quick to jump on one aspect of the new series: color grading.
From one of sixty million Harry Potter subreddits.
The good people of Reddit and elsewhere are absolutely right. It’s dark and gloomy and Harry is only 11. The first caption on the trailer even reflects this darkness: OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING.
This is a complaint I’ve had for years about the later Harry Potter films, which can be solely blamed on one person: director David Yates.
After the first four films, Warner Brothers decided to stop switching up directors and stuck with David Yates. Starting with the fifth film, Order of the Phoenix, Yates began making everything dark and gloomier and bluer. By the time the part 2 of Deathly Hallow came to screens, the logo was more depressing than a early 2000s emo band.
Did someone cast a memory charm on the color yellow?
And then they gave Yates the keys to the doomed Fantastic Beasts franchise. He did the same shit. The Yates Potter films were mostly actors talking quietly and emotionlessly to each other in dark corners of a Scottish castle. I know Scotland has short days towards the end of the year, but it can’t be that depressing! I mean, look at Traitors! That show has plenty of dark rooms filled with color and emotion! Daniel Radcliffe’s budding career is only further proof that Yates was forcing the whole cast to wear a horcrux locket while filming - except for that one scene in the sixth film.
Dan is allowed to have fun.
The good news: someone expelliarmus'd the directing chair from Yates for the new series. He’s not involved. I hope someone - hell, even HBO’s likely new owner David Ellison! - steps in and tells the new show’s creator to inject some life into this thing before it’s premiere this Christmas. But even if someone does cast a patronus on this dark trailer or Lumos-es a few lights, will I even watch it? Well …
🧠 What I’m processing
I’ve mentioned in a previous newsletter that the first podcast I ever listened to was waaaay back in 2005 on my classic clickwheel iPod (may she rest in peace, or pieces, wherever she ended up). That show was MuggleCast, a podcast that analyzed, and over-analyzed, everything in the Harry Potter movies and books. MuggleCast continues today, with some renewed energy thanks to the Harry Potter TV series coming soon to HBO Paramount Plus Max, or whatever it’s going to be called.
I was obsessed with Harry Potter. I stood in line for the books at midnight. I analyzed each chapter, sometimes with the unofficial companion books, produced by Mugglenet.com, the website responsible for MuggleCast. I had the LEGOS. For Halloween, I was Harry Potter in fourth grade, and Dumbledore in fifth grade. I spent an entire Jorgenson family reunion reading the Order of the Phoenix in my aunt and uncle’s suburban Texas pool. It wasn’t my fault the book was released on the second day of our reunion!
The book reaffirmed my morals. It taught me about prejudice and the importance of kindness. It taught me to treat everyone with respect while still questioning authority.
As many others have mentioned before and after me, these teachings conflict directly with JK Rowling’s vile, aggressive and despicable behavior on Twitter. She’s a transphobic monster, attacking people with vitriol and shocking anger from her billion dollar ivory tower that was built from a book series about battling hate and prejudice.
The theme of this week’s newsletter is “people who pose with cigars.”
Of course, the books covered the complexity of humans too - sometimes those we hold in the highest regard have dark pasts or tendencies. Dumbledore’s own lust for power and the Deathly Hallows ultimately led to his slow death. Harry’s own father was a giant prick when he was younger. Hagrid’s baking sucks.
But these characters all eventually own their flaws, or they’re actively aware of them and trying to get better. JK Rowling has only doubled down on her behavior - and to what end? To target a group of people with the highest suicide rate in the world? To stoke fear of trans woman by spreading complete lies about their “violent” tendencies?
It’s awful. It retroactively threatens to ruin one of the best parts of my childhood. And it leaves me with the question: can you separate the artist from the work?
When I wrote about cancel culture a few weeks ago, I received some really thoughtful emails from you all. I think this subject is somewhat adjacent and I would love to hear more. Let me know what you think about all this at [email protected].
