Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: the journey. Both The Hobbit and more specifically and thoroughly The Lord of the Rings, referencing quite well established tropes about quests and more, are centered around months-long journeys by many characters, through a physical landscape as much as a mental and emotional one in turn. But there’s been some random responses in recent years from newer readers encountering Tolkien’s work that find that maybe those journeys are a little too long as if they’re getting in the way of the story. Needless to say, we don’t agree at all – and we’re sick to death of the ‘why don’t the Eagles fly them everywhere’ question – but it’s worth delving into why the idea of the journey is such a compelling as well as common one in fantasy thanks in large part to Tolkien, and what may have changed in turn since. What role do journeys have in the realm of human folklore, and what might they represent for people and cultures, whether wandering or sedentary? How has technological advances in transportation in the past two centuries made the sense of what a journey is change in the wider imagination, and how does that affect what people might see when they think of what a long journey is supposed to be like? How has fantasy itself evolved from a post-Tolkien time to a more varied and potentially surprising way around whether journeys are necessary in recent novels and stories? And were you at all thinking of a certain band by this point? (Honestly, we weren’t. Well we suppose Jared was.)

Jared’s doodle. You might recognize those silhouettes…

Zohran Mamdani! Katie Wilson! Then there’s that whole thing with Daniel Lurie and the one-week city councilwoman. Read this for more on all that.

The Bovadium Fragments – it’s out there!

Adam Serwer’s “Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons To Be Racist” and John Semley’s “Elon Musk Really Doesn’t Get The Lord Of The Rings.” (Again, our episode on Silicon Valley.)

Elijah Wood crashes a hobbit wedding.

We all know what journeys are. But Merriam-Webster is there for you too.

We have already talked about the eagles. We’re not going there again.

The Persian Empire didn’t actually call it their Pony Express of course – so let us introduce you to the Chapar Khaneh.

Oriana’s 2018 piece “I Went To All 50 States To Find America’s Heart.”

Mapquest! And Thomas Bros aka the Thomas Guide too.

Gilgamesh sure did wander around some.

Our Beowulf episode.

Shane’s impact is arguably still playing out.

The Pilgrim’s Progress is rather notable, to say the least.

Our episode on allegory and applicability.

The Argonautica, it’s one of the big ones!

Our Sword of Shannara episode – and yay the Tough Guide to Fantasyland!

Watership Down, still great.

Critical Role – it’s very well known!

It’s true that you might have heard us talk about The West Passage.

The Tombs of Atuan, heck yeah.

Rakesfall – check it out!

That “someday love will find you” reference. And yes…it’s incredibly cheesy.

The Glee “Don’t Stop Believing.” The Sopranos “Don’t Stop Believing.” Etc.

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Beren and Lúthien. One of what Tolkien considered his three ‘Great Tales’ at the heart of the legendarium material that eventually formed versions of The Silmarillion, the story of a man and an elf princess falling in love and going through many adventures of high peril, is arguably Tolkien at his most sweepingly romantic. Openly claimed by Tolkien to have elements inspired by his own courtship of his wife Edith, to the point where their gravestone features the names of the characters on it, it started in the early versions almost as a heightened fairy tale before steadily transforming into the even more epochal version in the final published form of the book. The tale is directly referenced by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings and his own story of love with Arwen is clearly seen – by many of the characters, not necessarily first time readers – as an afterecho of that romance. What makes the early versions of the story so very fairytale-like, and how much of that can be ascribed to the presence of Tevildo, the Prince of Cats? How much did Tolkien’s valuing of the story as a connection to his own life get matched by Edith’s feelings, as much as we know them at all? When does Tolkien’s own somewhat uneven poetic gift really connect in this story, and how remarkable is it that the story went through various written forms? And just how awesome is Huan? (Answer: very.)

Jared’s doodle. A little extra spooky season for everyone…

Sight Unseen can always be followed on Instagram!

The Le Guin Prize was won by Rakesfall, but it is awesome, check it out! Here’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach doing the honors (and he pronounced Jared’s name right).

Ned’s most recent big piece, on David Bowie and Scott Walker.

That stupid Erebor crypto thing. (And yes, we heard about Earendil as well.)

That stupid Ellison Eagle and Child thing.

The stupid right wing whining about a course discussing Tolkien’s racial tropes thing…isn’t worth directly linking because all the sites talking about it are clearly just whining in bad faith. So why not just read the course description? Or a much more even-handed description of what it’s about than you’ll get from the whiners? (Relatedly, our orcs episode.)

That Rings of Power spy report. Have fun there.

Beren and Lúthien, specifically the book collecting and analyzing all the versions.

Our episodes on the other Great Tales, Túrin Turambar and the Fall of Gondolin.

Our Melian episode…way way long ago.

Tevildo! Truly a feline. (In terms of whether Tolkien liked cats, this is as close as it gets in terms of direct evidence.)

Moulin Rouge! Maybe it shaped you too.

Orpheus and Eurydice, a very foundational myth indeed. (And shoutout to D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.)

Lord Dunsany, one of the greats. (Check out The King of Elfland’s Daughter.)

Rizzoli! Can’t go wrong with a great bookstore.

The Finrod and Sauron song conflict (play the snippet of Christopher Tolkien reading it). Relatedly, The Rap Battle. (Trust us, you’ll know the moment when they hit it.)

Our Inklings episode.

Huan! The ultimate good boy.

The Tolkiens’ gravestone, and the names are there…

Our episode on The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Relatedly, here’s the letter to Christopher, after Edith’s death, where he says ‘she was my Lúthien (and she knew it).’

Christopher Tolkien’s reading of the story, as initially released on Caedmon.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: marriage. Tolkien himself was the child of an apparently happy marriage, though one that met with tragedy when first his father and then some years later his mother died while he was still a boy. His own marriage to Edith Bratt lasted for decades until her passing some years before his, bolstered in turn by his strong Catholic faith. When it comes to how he portrayed marriage in both his Middle-earth and other work, there’s a wide range of depictions of what marriage can be, but at the same time it’s fairly notable that very few seemingly happy portrayals of such partnerships exist across the board – and when it comes to his most notable protagonists, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, neither are married at any point before their journey to Valinor, raising questions about what Tolkien might have thought an ideal state of being was in the end. What does Tolkien say about elf marriages in particular in his work, especially in recent formerly unpublished material, and how does that tie in with the examples of human/elf partnerships across the legendarium? Why is the division between the Ents and the Entwives so seemingly thorough and absolute, but at the same time is it something that might seem as dramatic as portrayed? Would Bilbo and Frodo’s adventures, especially the scarring results of the latter’s, have meant that portraying potential relationships of any kind would have meant grappling with the impact of PTSD on those close to survivors? And why is it that maybe the happiest marriage shown throughout The Lord of the Rings itself may in fact be that of Farmer Maggot and his wife?

Jared’s doodle. If only the Purse had realized…

If you’re in or new New York City, take the chance to see Sight Unseen at the Chelsea Film Festival on October 16th!

The Curtis Brown Heritage/Tolkien Estate news via TheOneRing.net 

Past episodes of ours with marriage mentions or examples: Melian, Galadriel, Eowyn and Faramir, Aragorn, Sam Gamgee, Hurin and Turin, death, Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, the Valar, Tom Bombadil, the Ents and of course Aldarion and Erendis. (Plus Niggle as an example without marriage and friendship as its own subject.)

Tolkien Gateway’s brief summary of elvish wedding customs, what we know of them.

Tolkien’s letter to his son Michael on men and women and things. It’s…a product of his time.

Our episode on The Nature of Middle-earth, where elvish relationships are discussed in more detail.

Wells for Boys, once again!

Farmer Maggot, what a guy! 

To reconfirm, Aldarion did have two sisters, so not an only kid, but an only son.

The whole Age of Scorpius thing.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: the Inklings. Growing out of an undergraduate discussion group of that name in early 1930s Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis helped form the initial core of a further regular group that met in Lewis’s college rooms and at a favored local pub through the late 1940s. Members included Lewis’s brother Warnie, a great friend of Lewis in turn, Owen Barfield, at a later date Tolkien’s son Christopher and most notably a transplanted London writer who Lewis became a massive supporter of, Charles Williams. Tolkien, Lewis and Williams remain the perceived shining lights of the group thanks to their impact on imaginative fantasy writing that followed, Tolkien and Lewis in particular, but in retrospect, it can just as easily be argued that what seems from the outside like a colloquy of notable authors helping determine such a future course might simply be more of a cul-de-sac of far narrower attitudes and efforts than attention warrants from later generations. What were the exact connections between its key members, as detailed in later writings about them, and how equitable and participatory were they all in the meetings? What was the relative importance of Lewis to Tolkien and vice versa at the start of their friendship, and how did that change over the years? Does Lewis’s particular high profile in mid-20th century English intellectual life hold up under later scrutiny? Is Williams truly all that major a figure, beyond the fact that he clearly had an impact on Lewis’s own seemingly impressionable psyche? And is there something to the fact that in the end Tolkien, for all his own evident biases and damage done in the real world, might really have been the most grounded and normal member of them all?

Jared’s doodle. Imagine the shocked looks and pregnant pauses in the action-as-such.

The Washington State Book Award! The Endeavour Award! Jared: keeping busy.

Deep Cuts: The Game! Give an ear to Oriana’s appearance…

That whole Ian McKellen/Hunt for Gollum/Frodo thing. Well.

That Hobbit first edition news was kinda fun!

C. S. Lewis: you might have heard of him. Charles Williams? You might not. The Inklings in general? They’ve been talked about.

Women Among The Inklings by Candace Frederick

Humphrey Carpenter’s Inklings book and, separately, the Zaleskis’ more recent The Fellowship.

The Mythopoeic Society – still going!

The 1979 animated The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (by noted Peanuts animator Bill Melendez) – as different from the late 1980s BBC live action version.

The Three-Headed Dragon Ghidorah meme.

William T. Kirkpatrick, the tutor of teenage Lewis. 

Elizabeth Anscombe was indeed quite a noted figure in her own right, but to be fair to both her and Lewis, she herself apparently thought the results of her debate with Lewis were blown out of proportion by later writers, per the extended quote here. 

Graham Greene – pretty well known, that guy!

Owen Barfield and his own deal: Anthroposophy.

“Mother Stands For Comfort” indeed. (We trust you are all well aware of Kate Bush.)

C.S. Lewis and Arthur Greeves did indeed have a friendship that lasted to Lewis’s death. (But that linked piece, like others, does underplay Greeves’s own identity.)

It’s not perfect (to say the least) but Williams’s All Hallows Eve is still intriguing.

Till We Have Faces, unquestionably Lewis’s fictional highlight.

The good ol’ Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

E. R. Eddison and Jared’s podcast appearance on him.

Our Notion Club Papers episode.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: dragons. Thanks to the appearance of Smaug in the book that first brought Tolkien to wider fame, dragons haven’t merely been associated with him in general but have found their way into wider modern fantasy as a whole, especially in the European tradition of the mythical beasts that he was deeply familiar with. Later writings further fleshed out the sense of how dragons operated in Middle-earth, especially via the cruel Glaurung in the stories that made up The Silmarillion, as well as providing an amusing counterexample outside the legendarium in the form of Chrysophylax Dives, the haughty but conniving dragon encountered by Farmer Giles of Ham. How exactly all these dragons found their place in his work and where Tolkien gathered inspiration from for them can vary, but there’s little question they hold a particular place worth considering. What does it say about Smaug that at the time of The Lord of the Rings there doesn’t seem to be any other dragon around – much less many other fearsome creatures of old? How do the destructive cruelties of Smaug and Glaurung in particular vary, and what are their particular overriding goals in service to others – if they serve others at all? What can be considered about the societies that aim to thrive and exist even under the seeming shadow of a destructive force like Smaug nearby, or is his presence considered much of a shadow at all in terms of the day to day? And just why is it that the one Pauline Baynes drawing of Chrysophylax sitting upright and looking like he’s trying to sell you term insurance rules so hard?

Jared’s doodle. Keeping an eye on things, as it were.

Ned’s appearance on the Hyphenate podcast. (Or maybe more a monologue…)

One More Tune, and Ned’s Patreon post on it.

TheOneRing’s report on The Bovadium Fragments. 

Collider’s piece on the animated adaptation of The Mythmakers.

Richard Ovenden’s Wikipedia…and Ned’s old one.

Dragons! They’re a thing! (And as Oriana notes, it’s important to distinguish between European and Asian dragons.)

Our Farmer Giles of Ham episode.

Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon”

The Dragonriders of Pern – there’s a lot of that.

Our Beowulf episode, where some dragon talk can be found.

Illuyanka! Gotta love some Hittites.

The Colchian Dragon who guarded the Golden Fleece.

Tolkien’s famed Hobbit illustration “Conversation With Smaug.”

Our episode on The Children of Húrin, which has all the Glaurung.

Mount Rainier? Pretty…but keep an eye on it.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Arnor and Angmar. Only half-referenced in the Jackson adaptations, the long-gone realms of Arnor and Angmar don’t have much place in the original Lord of the Rings text itself – in fact, Tolkien didn’t fully introduce either of them by time and set a firm sense of what exactly they were until much later in the overall revision process, including the development of the appendices. Arnor was the northern equivalent of Gondor, a realm in exile founded by Númenor’s refugees, but one that slowly fractured and then faded away or was conquered bit by bit. Angmar was the realm doing most of the conquering, set up and ruled over by the Lord of the Nazgûl in the guise of the Witch-king, though after his final conquest of the remains of Arnor, Angmar itself was soon after destroyed via an invasion from Gondor. But while centuries have passed since both their ends, the realms have a strange, at times unsettling impact on the characters and situations in the main text. What was the legacy of both kingdoms as it affected Aragorn in particular, as well as the remnant of peoples he found himself leading, even at times at a great distance? How did the sense of history in England itself in terms of lost kingdoms and mysterious ruins play into what Tolkien imagined for both realms? Was the nature of Angmar always just a matter of convenience, and what does it mean that it seems to be drawing on numerous different peoples and species? And if nature abhors a vacuum, how much did the nature of fandom contribute in terms of fan work talking about both of them? (Answer: quite a bit.)

Jared’s doodle. (And be sure to check the follow-up post on part of the inspiration.)

The Ursula K Le Guin 2025 Prize! And indeed Jared is among the nominees. (Per his suggestion, check out Rakesfall.)

The Maine International Film Festival is about here and here’s the Sight Unseen screening information. (Plus check out Oriana’s article in MovieMaker cowritten with her husband and creative partner on the film!)

Meantime, Ned and his musical side turn up in podcast episodes on Suede and Oasis (for the latter, the segment he’s in starts around forty minutes in, and here’s the segment’s host and producer Melissa Locker’s book on Oasis fans including him, And After All).

The Rings of Power casting news du jour. 

Embracer now calls itself Fellowship Entertainment. Of course.

Alex Scopic’s article for Current Affairs, “How The Right Abuses Tolkien.” (And as ever check out our Silicon Valley episode.)

Simon Tolkien’s article “Finding Your Way Into Writing Fiction As J. R. R. Tolkien’s Grandson,” as shared via LitHub.

Arnor and Angmar – they’re places both!

It’s true there’s not as much pre-Columbian architecture in the US, but it’s worth noting what remains – here’s a useful initial guide.

Fanwork on these places? Consider Annúminas and Carn Dûm… Plus, our Karen Wynn Fonstad/Atlas of Middle-earth episode.

The Sceptre of Annúminas – more important than the city itself.

The Chieftains of the Dúnedain in Arnor, ruling over…something. But what, exactly, is unclear. (Though per this note, some scattered information emerged in some of the posthumous publications.)

Gilraen? She’s awesome. 

If you REALLY want to get into some fanfic on Aragorn’s family background, there’s this…

Ah yes, Tora Bora. Great.

Our episode on allegory and applicability.

Witches and ducks. Look, you know the scene. (We assume.)

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: The Atlas of Middle-earth, created by Karen Wynn Fonstad. First published in 1981 and then in a revised edition later as more posthumous material was released in The History of Middle-earth series, Fonstad’s detailed and extremely well thought out depiction of Middle-earth across eras became something of a definitive work over time. Combining Fonstad’s own academic and technical training as a cartographer with her own deep appreciation and love of Tolkien’s work, it sought to cover everything from the climates and geology of Middle-earth to closely-read details of buildings, cities and battles in the legendarium as a whole. At the same time, while Christopher Tolkien openly appreciated the work via comments and testimonials, it perhaps acquired the patina of being an official publication when it is more accurate to consider it as a deep example of fanwork instead, with Fonstad unable to work with the since-deceased Tolkien himself and ultimately creating her own elaborations on the texts at many points throughout. Are her textual essays and summaries the core of the book itself, or would it be the actual maps and charts that define it as an atlas to start with? What other examples of in-depth and notable fanwork from its time, whether regarding Tolkien or other creative endeavours, can be compared to what Fonstad created? Does the atlas in the end fully succeed at its stated brief or can it be seen instead as something that reaches for it but doesn’t quite fully succeed? And are the mountains in California in fact actually purple? (As Timothy Olyphant once said to Oriana, yes, yes they are.)

Jared’s doodle. Salut to a dedicated artist’s spirit indeed.

The Locus Awards nominations list, including Jared for best first novel.

The Hunt for Gollum announcement switching to December 2027. Whatever works for you.

The interview with the Rings of Power actors. They try, they do.

Our episode on fanwork.

The Atlas of Middle-earth! Easily found many different places.

The NY Times ‘Overlooked No More’ obituary for Fonstad.

The WPR piece about preserving Fonstad’s archive.

Karst! It’s out there.

Mm, yeah, Mensa and IQ and all. Here’s a piece to consider.

Beyond Bree! Still going, good to see it.

Other Fonstad atlases for Pern, The Land, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms.

The Encyclopedia of Arda. 

Our episodes on cartography and land.

The Civil War history book Ned mentions was The American Heritage Picture History Of The Civil War by Bruce Catton, published in 1960 and still considered a strong overview of the conflict via illustrations and accompanying notes and essays, as well as the maps in question.

The Klingon Dictionary by Mark Okrand.

Pauline Baynes’s “A Map of Middle-earth.”

Journeys of Frodo by Barbara Strachey

The Maps of Middle-earth by John Howe and Brian Sibley

Our episode on resisting Tolkien and The West Passage.

The manuscripts and maps for the Peter Jackson adaptations were done by Daniel Reeve.

The artist Ned mentions who did 1980s/90s fanzine illustrations in a style suggesting actual manuscripts from Middle-earth was Tom Loback. His map of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad can be seen in four parts at the bottom of this page featuring some of his work. 

You’ve likely heard of Timothy Olyphant.

Plan 9! (The group.)

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: monarchy, through the lens of Aragorn as king. It’s an interesting tension throughout Tolkien’s legendarium that while his foundational stories of Middle-earth have kings and queens, princes and other ruling monarchs at the core of organized societies, whether men, elves or dwarves, his ideal society of the Shire lacks them entirely. Further, as king, Aragorn not only honors their desire for relative isolation but even forbids himself from entering as the ruling monarch from the line that granted the land to the hobbits to start with. It’s equally notable as well that Aragorn seems to step from being the leader of a small society of men on an almost tribal level to seamlessly being a ruler of a massive geographic and political area, when so much of what he does is based around individual action and interaction. All this leads to thoughts on how Tolkien himself felt about monarchy in general, whether his own imagined ideal state of such a ruler or how he depicted representatives of monarchy in his fiction. What are the examples of monarchy Aragorn could have drawn on from both his own familial background and the societies before him – and how successful in the end were they? What does it mean to be a monarch and how is that signified via symbols and ritual – even extending to the Eagles? How does the fact that not every society in Middle-earth – not even including the Shire – clearly have a monarchical setup work, and what does it say about the wider structures of Middle-earth in general, even as it is organized ultimately by the Valar via Eru’s viceroy, Manwë? And what kind of garb should a monarch have? (Fabulous, obviously.)

Jared’s doodle. More serene a portrait than some…

Sight Unseen’s Instagram! And catch Oriana in full jog.

Jared’s up for the Astounding Award at WorldCon! (Scroll down near the bottom of the page.) Here’s more details on voting and all.

Ned’s recent Eurowhat podcast appearance. “Milkshake Man,” indeed. Oh and here’s the Serbian philologist. 

Wisconsin Public Radio’s story on scanning and preserving the work of Karen Wynn Fonstad.

Monarchy! It’s a thing! (It’s not a GOOD thing, though.)

Letter 52 from Tolkien’s collected letters, as well as Letter 144.

Ah yes…tax policy.

Thorongil, in brief.

Medieval English monarchy and medieval French, in brief.

Our episode on The War of the Rohirrim, which had (invented) elements of Rohan’s political society.

1930s English fascism? Oh it was out there…

Our episode on The Lost Road.

Our episode on Aldarion and Erendis, which featured Aldarion’s father Meneldur.

The High King of the Noldor! (Sadly, low survival rate.)

Chieftains of the Dúnedain.

Our episode on orcs.

The New Shadow, the famed short LOTR sequel fragment.

Tides of History by Patrick Wyman – a very good listen! – took a look at the Indus Valley civilization a few years back.

The Sceptres of Númenor and Annúminas.

The Crown of Gondor, along with the, well, let’s call it distinct drawing by Tolkien. (Relatedly, the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.)

Aragorn’s crowning – and his deep breath before turning – as adapted in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King.

Our episodes on Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: the 1981 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t the first time through when it came to a radio version of The Lord of the Rings, even on the BBC itself, but Brian Sibley’s magisterial 13 hour version of the book became the most acclaimed adaptation in general of Tolkien’s work until Peter Jackson’s film sequence, and it remains for many both a generational marker and a gold standard for translating the text into another medium. Performances by the likes of Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens and a young Bill Nighy remain among their most well-known and remembered, and the sheer depth that the series was able to dive into with its characters hasn’t been equalled by any other version of the book before or since. At the same time, it had to deal with the self-evident limitations of audio drama in general, while not all choices made were necessarily the most effective, even considering the original time and place of its creation. Are there problems with the medium itself which can potentially limit enjoyment or appreciation of what’s being done? What are the differences between the movie and radio adaptation in terms of showing quieter and more unsure moments among the characters from the original text? How did the dynamic between Holm and Nighy as Frodo and Sam play out the relationship between the two characters in this specific version? Can the musical score by Stephen Oliver have its place of comparison next to Howard Shore’s famed work for the Jackson films? And yeah…what IS with that eagle falsetto?

Jared’s doodle. Radio, live transmission (well, taped).

The Crawford Award! Pretty awesome! Hurrah for Jared! Read The West Passage!

More on the Tolkien letters to Donald Swann going up for auction.

The 1981 BBC Lord of the Rings radio series via the Internet Archive; various other versions are floating around, on CD, cassette or streaming.

Our episodes on various earlier adaptations from that general time – the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings, and the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

BBC Audio, the current home for their radio efforts and well beyond. Plenty to explore!

Wikipedia’s entry on the 1981 radio series. Separately, some more from there about the earlier BBC radio adaptations – the 1955 one, as well as the 1968 series adapting The Hobbit.

Brian Sibley’s page links to a wide variety of general efforts – take a spin! 

A few actor pages to explore: Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens, Gerard Murphy, Michael Graham Cox, Peter Woodthorpe, David Collings, Peter Vaughan and of course Bill Nighy.  (Plus, on the technical side, Elizabeth Parker and Stephen Oliver.)

Skye Butchard’s essay in The Quietus on the series – this is paywalled for subscribers, we should note, but we do encourage you to subscribe!

The original Star Wars trilogy radio series! Not kidding! They’re a fun listen.

Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast, a great performance indeed. And all hail The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in general in all its variations.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Introduced casually as a relative of Bilbo’s at the end of The Hobbit – one who Bilbo has a mutual unappreciation society with thanks to some missing spoons – Lobelia appears at the start of The Lord of the Rings as something of a chief antagonist, a status-obsessed hobbit eager to claim Bag-end first with her husband and then, after his death, their son Lotho. As part of Frodo’s plan to leave the Shire he happily sells Bag-end to her and departs on the eventual quest to destroy the One Ring, only to discover upon his return about both Lotho’s role as a puppet of Saruman slain by his orders as well as Lobelia’s reaction to Saruman’s ruffians that leads to her imprisonment, resulting in the end in her change of heart towards Frodo and the society she kicked against. At once a brilliantly memorable example of a pointed portrayal of the petty bourgeoisie and a surprisingly gentle moment of redemption after grave loss, Lobelia is a minor character on the one hand but one with surprising depths on the other. What does it mean to resist destructive forces in a society, and is Lobelia’s seeming to come around late in the game on that front both an example of privilege and finally reaching a breaking point? Can comparisons be made to some of Tolkien’s other older women characters in his works, in particular the Minas Tirith nurse Ioreth, in how such figures are generally portrayed in a generally male-focused society? What does it say about Lobelia that she arguably is one of the few people who could compare experiences with Frodo at being imprisoned without hope due to the forces that Sauron and Saruman seek to exploit for their gain? And did Wormtongue really make a meal out of Lotho in the end?

Jared’s doodle. You’ll pry it from her cold dead hands, you will!

Amazon’s formal Rings of Power season 3 announcement via TheOneRing.net

Also from TheOneRing.net, their report on the Australian debut of the Lord of the Rings musical. 

The Wheel of Time season 3, heck yeah. (Listen to Tar Valon or Bust!)

As noted, The War of the Rohirrim is now on Max – here’s our episode on it.

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins per Tolkien Gateway. (We object to the character portrait.)

“Welcome to the resistance.”

Our Scouring of the Shire episode, as well as our general Shire episode.

Jane Austen! George Eliot! Charles Dickens! Thomas Hardy! They’re worth your time.

Moms propping up idiot sons? Wouldn’t know about THAT. 

Vita Sackville-West had some understandable concerns with Salic law.

Ioreth! She rules of course. (And Zamîn, though we don’t have as much from her.)

A BBC report on the Dutch teens who seduced Nazis precisely to get ‘em killed.

Salut to the Umbrella Movement and everything in its wake, including as happened in Seattle.

Amazon and James Bond and whatever.

And yes, for our next episode, this might be your best listening option in advance…

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